# Sitecore to Storyblok migration > How to migrate from Sitecore to Storyblok, with a side-by-side comparison and FAQs. --- ## Source: Sitecore - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://www.sitecore.com - **Pricing:** https://www.sitecore.com/products/xm-cloud - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Target: Storyblok - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://www.storyblok.com - **Pricing:** https://www.storyblok.com/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-08-03 ## Key advantages If you've ever tried explaining "headless" to a content team and watched their eyes glaze over, Storyblok is your peace offering. The visual editor is genuinely good: editors see changes on the real page preview instead of filling out abstract field forms. That's the upside. The downside is that the API lacks a few basics, like fetching child or sibling pages directly, and the tier jumps get steep once you need more locales or seats. If Storyblok is your choice, we can make it work, we know where the rough edges are and how to set it up cleanly. ### Visual editing capabilities Yes, you read that right, you can do real-time, on-page editing. Make a change, see it instantly, no staging limbo, which means you can stop "guess and publish." ### Component-based approach You can build a component once and use it everywhere. You can also update a button or banner in one place, and the entire site fixes itself. ### Efficient content structuring Your content stays clean, organised, reusable, and not scattered across 40 pages. Developers work with structured data, editors drag-and-drop pieces like Lego. Everyone gets to stay sane. ### Strong multi-language support One CMS, many languages, no chaos. Localise content without duplicate pages or messy spreadsheet exports. ### Collaborative environment Writers, designers, and editors can all jump in at the same time without breaking each other’s work. Add comments and approvals. View version histories for teamwork without the headache. ### Highly customisable If your design system can imagine it, you can use Storyblok to model it. There are custom fields, workflows, and logics that can bend to your stack rather than the other way around. ## Key pain points Storyblok is not our first recommendation for a headless CMS. The product looks polished, but documentation sprawl makes initial setup harder than it should be, and non-technical editors routinely get lost navigating spaces, stories, and nested components. Pricing is the bigger issue. Extra locales are $20/month each, extra seats are $15/month each, and custom roles, SSO, and the GraphQL API are all gated behind the custom-priced Premium and Elite plans. Teams on Growth ($99/month) often end up on Growth Plus ($349/month) not because they want the extra features, but because they hit an API request or locale limit. You'll also lean on third-party integrations for a lot of ordinary tasks, which means more code paths to maintain. Webhook behaviour has changed between releases without clear deprecation notices. The platform works fine once it's set up. Getting there just takes more engineering than the marketing suggests. ### Customisation can take effort Storyblok can do almost anything, but sometimes the "how" involves developer time, CLI commands, or manual tweaking. Great control, just not always plug-and-play. ### Some integrations need extra work For things like CRMs or complex platforms, you’ll likely build the integration instead of installing it. Expect a bit more engineering. ### Slower editing Real-time previews are great, but large pages or heavy components can load slowly. Occasionally, the editor UI feels less intuitive than the rest of the platform. ### Asset management isn’t perfect Renaming assets, bulk editing, or cleaning libraries can take longer than expected. It doesn't feel as polished as the rest of the system. ### Permissions are fixed Roles are predefined. For smaller teams, that’s perfectly fine. Bigger teams may want more granular access controls than Storyblok currently offers. ### Pricing jumps with scale You get a free tier, but some advanced features sit behind higher plans. It’s worth it for projects if you want to pay more; just something teams should budget for early. ## Frequently asked questions ### 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 Storyblok cost? Storyblok's Starter plan is $0 with 1 seat, 2 locales, 100K API requests, and 100GB of traffic. Growth is $99/month for 5 seats, 2 locales, 1M API requests, and 400GB. Growth Plus is $349/month for 15 seats, 10 locales, 4M API requests, and 1TB. Add-ons run $15/month per extra seat, $20/month per extra locale, $10 per extra 1M requests, and $75 per extra 250GB. Premium and Elite are custom-priced and gate SSO, custom roles, and the GraphQL API. The catch most teams hit is the gap between tiers, because there's no gradual scaling. A Growth account that runs over on traffic or locales jumps straight to $349/month, a 3.5x increase for what's often a small overage. ### Does Storyblok have a visual editor? Yes, and it's one of the best in the headless CMS space. You see real-time changes as you edit, directly on your site preview. It's the main reason many teams pick Storyblok. That said, Sanity now offers a comparable experience through its Presentation tool, which gives you live visual editing with more flexibility in content modelling. If the visual editor is your primary reason for choosing Storyblok, it's worth comparing both before committing.