Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Sitecore to Sanity
We are the Sitecore to Sanity 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 Sanity
Key advantages
You know where our bias' lies. We think Sanity is literally the best headless content management out there. The schema is code-based, so it can be easily versioned, scaled, and extended without a heap of third-party hoops to jump. Providing you build it with a solid foundation, which we always recommend Turbo Start Sanity, it's going to be the most valuable hub for content you can imagine.
It's got a very unique tooling called the Live Content API, which in simple terms means
when you press publish, its live.
No issues with caching, and a single API usage that scales perfectly with multichannel content delivery.
It also offers one of the best editorial experiences in the industry with Presentation and customizable content structures. We're obviously huge fans of it, and we've pivoted our business with it when we realised how ahead it is.
Real time collaboration
You write, your teammate tags in, adds citations, and updates the same doc without stepping on each other. It’s the fastest way to ship content without the “who has edit access?” chaos.
Live preview block building
With Sanity, you don’t have to guess what your page might look like. Real-time previews update the moment you type. It’s a 1:1 mirror of your site before it ever goes live, so your campaigns look right the first time.
Meta tags, structured content
Sanity’s structured content gives Google clean data and rich schema, so your pages surface higher without manual hacking. Automated schema, smarter metadata, and better rankings.
Better media management
A blazing-fast media library with first-class support for Cloudinary, Mux, Wistia and more. Upload, drag-and-drop, preview without wrestling with assets, and waiting for spins of doom.
Automated social sharing
Ever wanted to share one update, and automatically populate every social platform? Welcome to the future we've built that. Why should social media be a chore.
Automated image generation
Sanity keeps your subject centred and sharp like a tiny author thumbnail or a full-page hero banner. There are no awkward crops, or chopped heads. Your visuals just look right everywhere.
Common questions
Sitecore to Sanity migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Sitecore to Sanity 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.
Why should we migrate to Sanity instead of another headless CMS?
Sanity's Live Content API means content goes live the instant you press publish, with zero caching issues. We've migrated teams from WordPress, Contentful, Drupal, and legacy platforms, and the consistent feedback is that the editorial experience is faster and more flexible. The schema-as-code approach means your content model is version-controlled alongside your codebase. Pricing starts free for small teams and scales predictably, unlike platforms that hit you with surprise API overage bills.
What does a migration to Sanity actually involve?
A typical migration has three phases. First, we map your existing content model to a Sanity schema, which usually takes 1 to 2 weeks depending on complexity. Second, we build automated migration scripts that transfer your content, media assets, and relationships. Third, we set up the frontend integration and editorial workflows. For a mid-sized site with 500 to 2,000 pages, the full process usually runs 4 to 8 weeks. We use our Turbo Start Sanity foundation to accelerate the setup so you're not starting from zero.
How long does it take before our content team is productive in Sanity?
Most editors are comfortable within the first week. Sanity's Presentation tool gives them a side-by-side live preview that feels intuitive, especially for teams used to visual page builders. The real-time collaboration means multiple editors can work on the same document without conflicts. We typically run a 2-hour onboarding session and provide a custom guide tailored to your specific content model. After that, editors rarely need developer support for day-to-day publishing.
How much does Sanity cost?
Sanity's Free plan includes 20 user seats, 10,000 documents, 1M CDN API requests, 250K regular API requests, 100GB of assets, and unlimited locales. The Growth plan is $15 per seat/month with 25,000 documents and the same API allowances, plus pay-as-you-go overages and 5 roles including Editor, Developer, and Contributor. Enterprise pricing is custom for organisations that need custom roles, SLAs, or private datasets. Most mid-size teams we work with stay well inside Growth's limits.
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