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From Sitecore to Adobe Experience Manager
We are the Sitecore to Adobe Experience Manager migration experts
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Challenges with Sitecore
Key pain points
Sitecore is one of the most expensive CMS platforms on the market. Licensing starts around $40,000-$65,000/year for basic XM, and a full XP or XC deployment with implementation lands in the $500,000+ range over three years. On top of the licence, you need specialised .NET developers on retainer, and those contracts aren't cheap either.
The complexity catches most teams off guard. Upgrading between Sitecore versions is closer to a rebuild than an update. Content is stored in a tree structure that doesn't map cleanly to other systems, which makes migrations painful and locks you into the platform longer than you'd like. The editor UI still feels like a late-2000s enterprise portal, and anything beyond basic publishing needs developer involvement.
Most mid-sized companies using Sitecore pay for personalisation and marketing automation they never turn on. If that sounds familiar, a headless CMS paired with a modern frontend gives you 80% of the useful capability at a fraction of the cost. We've moved clients off Sitecore and cut annual platform spend by 60-80% without losing functionality that actually mattered.
Benefits of Adobe Experience Manager
Key advantages
AEM is the kind of platform you only choose if you’re a Fortune 500 company or you enjoy voluntary suffering. I’m not an Adobe fan. It’s bloated, overpriced, and built to lock you into their ecosystem. But fine, here are the positives. The Adobe integration is the real draw. If your organisation already lives inside Creative Cloud, Analytics, and Target, AEM becomes a giant DXP monolith that handles assets, personalisation, segmentation, and multi-channel delivery from one place. The DAM is genuinely strong, now split into Assets Prime and Assets Ultimate tiers, and it scales to enormous traffic when you throw infrastructure at it.
If you’re not operating at scale, you’ll spend absurd money for problems a clean Sanity + modern composable stack solves better and cheaper. If you are considering AEM or escaping it, get in touch. We’ll help you choose something that won’t haunt your ops team for the next decade.
Integration with Adobe tools
AEM connects with Creative Cloud, Analytics, and Target, letting teams move assets, data, and personalisation logic across tools without friction
Robust digital asset management
The DAM is genuinely powerful. It has AI tagging, smart cropping, versioning, and bulk optimisation for massive media libraries.
Consistent multi-channel delivery
AEM can push content to web, mobile apps, email, and more from one central source. Ideal for enterprises that need consistent messaging across every customer touchpoint.
Flexible architecture
Runs headful, headless, or hybrid. Teams can serve Content Fragments over GraphQL, author on a live frontend with the Universal Editor, or ship through Edge Delivery Services, then mix that with legacy setups. Adaptable for companies with complicated stacks.
Scalable enterprise-level operations
AEM is designed to handle huge traffic, global teams, and heavy workflows. It scales reliably when backed by proper infrastructure and Adobe’s cloud.
Intuitive user interface
For an enterprise platform, the UI is relatively approachable, helping large content teams manage complex workflows without needing to touch code.
Common questions
Sitecore to Adobe Experience Manager migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Sitecore to Adobe Experience Manager migration
How much does Sitecore cost?
Sitecore doesn't publish pricing, but based on what we've seen across client projects, expect to pay six figures annually. Licensing alone typically starts around $40,000 to $65,000 per year for a basic XM setup, and jumps well past $100,000 once you add XP or XC modules. Factor in implementation (often $150,000 to $500,000+), hosting, and the specialised developers you'll need on retainer. For mid-sized companies, the total cost of ownership over three years can easily exceed $500,000. We've helped teams migrate off Sitecore and cut their annual platform spend by 60-80%.
How hard is it to migrate away from Sitecore?
It depends on how deep you are. A basic Sitecore XM site with standard content types can be migrated in 8-12 weeks. If you're using Sitecore's personalisation engine, custom pipelines, or XP analytics heavily, the timeline stretches to 3-6 months. The biggest pain points are content extraction (Sitecore stores content in a tree structure that doesn't map cleanly to other systems) and rebuilding any custom .NET components in a modern stack. Our team typically runs the migration in phases, starting with content export and schema mapping before touching the frontend.
Is Sitecore worth it for mid-sized companies?
No, not in most cases. Sitecore was built for large enterprises with dedicated IT teams and six-figure CMS budgets. Mid-sized companies consistently overpay for features they never use. The personalisation engine sits idle, the marketing automation goes untouched, and the team ends up using it as a glorified page editor. A headless CMS paired with a modern frontend framework gives you better performance, lower costs, and faster development cycles. We've moved multiple mid-sized companies off Sitecore onto leaner stacks and the feedback is always the same: they wish they'd done it sooner.
What are the best Sitecore alternatives for enterprise teams?
It depends on what you actually use Sitecore for. If you need structured content with real-time collaboration and flexible APIs, Sanity is our go-to recommendation. If your team is locked into the Adobe ecosystem, AEM is the obvious (expensive) alternative. For teams that want enterprise workflow controls without the Sitecore price tag, Contentful or Hygraph are worth evaluating. The key question is whether you genuinely need a monolithic DXP or whether a composable stack of best-in-class tools would serve you better. In our experience, composable wins almost every time.
How much does Adobe Experience Manager cost?
AEM is one of the most expensive CMS platforms going. Adobe publishes no list prices, so everything is a custom enterprise quote. From contracts we've seen, AEM Sites licensing tends to start around $60,000 per year on its own, and a full AEM as a Cloud Service deployment usually lands in the six figures, often $200,000 or more annually once you factor in usage. Implementation runs another $100,000 to $500,000+, and Adobe support contracts add 15-25% of licensing on top. We've watched companies pay more for their AEM contract than for their entire engineering team's salaries. If that ratio sounds familiar, it's time to rethink the stack.
Can I migrate from AEM to Sanity?
Yes, and it's one of the more common moves we handle. The work is real but tractable. For an enterprise instance, plan for a few weeks to a few months depending on how customised AEM is. The biggest bottleneck is content extraction. AEM's JCR (Java Content Repository) stores everything in a proprietary node structure that needs custom tooling to export cleanly. Custom OSGi bundles, Sling models, and heavy DAM workflows all get rebuilt or replaced, usually with something far simpler. We run a parallel build, standing up Sanity and a modern frontend while AEM stays live, then cut over once content and redirects are validated. Editorial teams keep working throughout.
What are AEM's main limitations?
Cost is the headline, but it isn't the only one. Development is slow because nearly everything routes through Java, OSGi, and Sling, so even small changes need a dedicated dev. Performance degrades the moment you customise the platform. The author UI is dense, and routine content work often still depends on engineers. You're also tied to Adobe-certified partners for setup and upkeep, and contracts tend to carry multi-year lock-ins. The headless side (Content Fragments served over GraphQL, plus the Universal Editor) works, but it's bolted onto a DXP monolith rather than built lean from the start.
Is AEM overkill for most sites?
For most sites, yes. AEM earns its keep when an organisation already lives inside Creative Cloud, Analytics, and Target and needs governance across hundreds of properties. If you're not using several of those Adobe tools, you're paying enterprise rates for a CMS that's slower to build on and more expensive to staff than the alternatives. We've met teams who adopted AEM on a consultant's recommendation, then found they used maybe 15% of it. A Sanity backend with a Next.js frontend would have cost a fraction and shipped faster. Three things to watch if you do leave. DAM assets with custom metadata and renditions don't transfer automatically. Dispatcher and Sling URL patterns need careful redirect mapping to hold SEO value. Contract lock-ins can carry steep early-termination fees.
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