Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Strapi to Uniform
We are the Strapi to Uniform migration experts
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Challenges with Strapi
Key pain points
Strapi has a fan club because it’s self-hosted, which sounds great until you realise that means you are now responsible for every update, every backup, every scaling issue, and every “why is the server down again?” moment.
Wouldn’t it be easier to use a cloud infrastructure that just… scales, instead of babysitting infra at midnight? And having to maintain a Node.js environment for your content editors is completely unnecessary pain, in our opinion.
It also isn’t exactly friendly for non-technical teams. If you don’t have solid developer talent, the learning curve hits hard, and even simple customisations can turn into “let’s build this from scratch” moments. Plugins help, but not always, and you’ll quickly run into gaps that require custom development. Add the lack of traditional CMS features out of the box, and setup time (and costs) spiral fast.
If you're set on Strapi, fine! Just let us look at it first so we can tell you whether it's actually doable or whether you're about to become a full-time system admin by accident.
Steep learning curve
Strapi looks simple at first, then politely reminds you it’s a developer-first tool. Non-technical teams usually hit a wall long before they hit publish.
Node.js knowledge required
If your team, especially your content team, doesn’t speak Node.js, prepare for a few “so… what does this error mean?” moments. Strapi assumes you’re comfortable under the hood.
Limited traditional CMS features
Things that come out-of-the-box in classic CMSs often need custom setup here. If you’re expecting plug-and-play page building, Strapi is not for you.
Custom development needs
If you need anything slightly beyond the basics, it quickly drifts into “can we ask a developer to build this?” territory. Great for flexibility, not so great for speed.
Plugin limitations
The plugin ecosystem is growing, but not everything works flawlessly, and some gaps still require hand-rolled solutions, which means more dev time than you planned.
Cost-efficiency concerns
Sure, Strapi is free… until you factor in hosting, DevOps, scaling, and ongoing maintenance. “Open-source” doesn’t always mean “cheap.”
Benefits of Uniform
Key advantages
Uniform positions itself as a “composable DXP,” which is enterprise-speak for “it does a bit of everything on top of your actual CMS.” To be fair, the visual workspace is genuinely useful. Marketers get drag-and-drop control, personalization, and A/B testing without pinging developers every five minutes. And if you’re already juggling multiple systems (CMS, commerce, DAM), the orchestration layer can tidy up the chaos.
That said… we’ll be honest, we don’t really build with DXPs like this anymore. Whenever a headless tool starts shouting “DXP” from the homepage, it usually means heavyweight architecture, unnecessary complexity, and a bill only Fortune 500 companies would smile at. If you’re considering it anyway, feel free to get in touch. We’ll happily walk you through better, modern alternatives before you sink a quarter’s budget into something you probably don’t need.
Visual experience composition
Uniform’s visual builder lets marketers piece together pages without pinging developers every 5 minutes. It’s basically a drag-and-drop layer on top of your headless stack.
Multi-source content federation
Uniform pulls content from multiple CMSs, DAMs, and commerce tools into one interface, so you don’t need 10 tabs open to build a single page
Real-time collaboration tools
Teams can edit, plan, and experiment together without overwriting each other’s work. It’s built for big organisations where ten people touching the same page is a weekly occurrence.
Enterprise-grade scalability
Uniform is built to handle traffic spikes and heavy personalisation workloads. It’s overkill for small sites but a safe bet for enterprises terrified of a Black Friday outage.
Omnichannel content management
You can pipe the same content across web, apps, and any other channel marketing dreams up. Useful for brands juggling multiple experiences without wanting to rebuild the same page three times.
Built-in A/B testing
Uniform ships with native testing and targeting, so teams can experiment without gluing together half a dozen tools. It’s marketer-friendly and fast.
Common questions
Strapi to Uniform migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Strapi to Uniform migration
What is Strapi used for?
Strapi is an open-source headless CMS built on Node.js. Teams use it to manage content and serve it to websites, mobile apps, and other frontends through REST or GraphQL APIs. It's popular with JavaScript developers who want full control over their CMS without paying SaaS fees. Common use cases include marketing sites, blogs, e-commerce product catalogues, and multi-channel content delivery. It works well when you have dedicated developers on the team. Without them, it gets painful quickly.
How much does Strapi cost?
Strapi's Community Edition is free and self-hosted. That sounds great until you factor in hosting ($20-100+/month depending on traffic), database costs, backups, and the developer time to maintain it all. Strapi Cloud's Essential plan is $18/month per project, Pro is $90/month, and Scale is $450/month, each with higher entry, seat, and API limits. Enterprise Edition is custom pricing and adds SSO, audit logs, and review workflows. The hidden cost is always developer time. We've seen "free" Strapi setups cost $500-1,000/month in maintenance hours alone.
What are the best Strapi alternatives?
Sanity is our top recommendation for teams leaving Strapi. You get a managed platform with no server maintenance, real-time collaboration, and a content studio that non-technical editors can actually use. Contentful is another option if you want a large plugin ecosystem, though it's more expensive. If the self-hosted aspect of Strapi matters to you, Directus is worth a look. It gives you a similar open-source approach with a more polished admin interface.
Can I migrate from Strapi to a managed CMS?
Yes, and we do this regularly. We export your Strapi content types and entries through the API, then map them to the target platform's schema. Most Strapi-to-Sanity migrations take 2-4 weeks. The content itself transfers cleanly. The harder part is usually replicating custom controllers, middleware, and lifecycle hooks that teams built into Strapi. We rebuild that logic in the frontend or through serverless functions, so you're not losing functionality in the move.
Is Strapi good for production websites?
It can work, but self-hosting a CMS for production means you're responsible for uptime, scaling, security patches, and database management. Every Strapi version upgrade risks breaking custom plugins. We've rescued several production sites that went down because a Strapi update conflicted with a custom controller. If you don't have a dedicated DevOps person, we'd steer you toward a managed CMS like Sanity where infrastructure is handled for you and your team can focus on content.
How do we migrate away from Uniform?
Uniform is an orchestration layer, not a traditional CMS, so migration means detangling it from the systems it sits on top of. Your actual content likely lives in a separate CMS, DAM, or commerce platform. The Uniform-specific parts, including composition layouts, personalisation rules, and A/B test configurations, need to be rebuilt in your target platform or replaced with dedicated tools. We typically spend 2 to 4 weeks on Uniform-specific teardown, on top of whatever migration the underlying content sources require.
Why do teams leave Uniform?
The price-to-value ratio is the most common complaint. Uniform's enterprise pricing is steep, and teams find they're paying premium rates for an abstraction layer that adds complexity rather than removing it. The learning curve is real. Teams consistently need weeks of onboarding to become productive, and the orchestration model introduces debugging overhead that frustrates both developers and content editors. When the contract comes up for renewal, many teams conclude they'd be better served by a simpler architecture.
Do we actually need a DXP like Uniform?
Probably not. We've worked with teams that adopted Uniform because they were managing content across 4 or 5 different systems and wanted a single editing interface. In practice, most of those teams would have been better off consolidating into one strong headless CMS and using it as the single source of truth. The "composable DXP" pitch sounds good in a sales deck, but it often means you're paying enterprise prices to glue together tools that could be replaced by a cleaner architecture. We're happy to audit your stack and give you an honest answer.
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