From Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack

We are the Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack migration experts

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Last verified: August 3, 2026

The process

How we migrate from Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack

01
Access and gating audit
First we check the existing Adobe Experience Manager and see whether the data is clean enough to move straight over to Contentstack, and plan around any auth walls or bot protection in the way.
02
Rendering assessment and extraction
Then we work out how Adobe Experience Manager renders its pages and pull the content out, even without CMS access.
03
AI-assisted sanitization
Everything extracted runs through our sanitization pipeline, which flags slop, normalizes structure, and leaves us clean content to work with.
04
Content-model design with the client
Before anything moves, we agree the Contentstack content model with you, shaped around how your editors actually work.
05
Transform and soft-migrate
We transform the content to the agreed schema and run a full dry run, so mappings and edge cases prove out before production.
06
Execute the real migration
Once the dry run is clean, everything moves into Contentstack in one controlled cutover.
07
Redirect mapping and throttled sitemap submission
Every old URL gets mapped to its new home with the right redirect, so rankings and link equity survive the move.
08
Agentic-browser QA
Finally, automated browsers sweep the new site for data issues, design regressions, and missing SEO signals.
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Challenges with Adobe Experience Manager

Key pain points

AEM’s biggest flaw is simple: everything about it is expensive. The license, the hosting, the maintenance, the consultants, the upgrades, and the people required to even use it. The learning curve is a cliff, implementation cycles move at glacial speed, and the UI feels like punishment for asking to edit content. Performance tanks the moment you customise anything, and collaboration is basically "email the PDF and pray." If you ever see the word specialised in an AEM context, just assume the invoice comes with an extra zero.

It’s the definition of a heavyweight DXP built for organisations with more bureaucracy than sense. For everyone else, it becomes a slow-moving, over-engineered system that requires Adobe-certified babysitters just to stay alive. If you’re considering scrapping it for something faster, saner, and built this decade, we can help you migrate without dragging the AEM baggage along for the ride.

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High complexity and cost

AEM is one of the most expensive CMS/DEXP platforms on the market, with licensing, hosting, and maintenance costs that only make sense for very large enterprises.

Steep learning curve

The platform is dense and requires specialised training just to perform routine tasks. Most teams can’t operate it without dedicated experts.

Prolonged implementation periods

Even simple projects take months. Rollouts, upgrades, and workflow changes move slowly and require careful planning to avoid breaking things.

Challenging navigation of capabilities

AEM packs in a huge feature set, but finding and configuring what you actually need can feel like wading through molasses.

Necessary reliance on Adobe partners

You’re essentially forced into using Adobe-certified agencies or consultants for setup, maintenance, and troubleshooting and they don’t come cheap.

Not ideal for smaller companies

The cost, complexity, and operational overhead make AEM a poor fit for startups or mid-sized teams. Most will drown in it long before they benefit from it.

Benefits of Contentstack

Key advantages

Contentstack is one of the more polished enterprise headless CMS platforms. It has API-first, composable, and loaded with the usual DXP buzzwords. It actually backs some of it up. The workflows are strong, role-based approvals are genuinely helpful for large editorial teams, and the visual builder plus modular blocks give marketers enough power to ship pages without pinging developers every 30 seconds. Its omnichannel delivery, multi-region CDNs, and fast APIs make it a solid fit for global brands with heavy traffic and complex localisation needs.

But this is firmly in enterprise territory. We generally don’t recommend platforms in the "DXP with 47 whitepapers" category, but if you must pick one, Contentstack at least has a smoother developer experience than most. The composable architecture is well thought out, integrations behave predictably, and the SDKs play nicely with modern frameworks like Next.js. If you're a Fortune-500-sized team and want help figuring out whether this is the right bet, or want a modern alternative instead, get in touch.

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Enterprise-grade composable architecture

Built for large teams shipping across markets. The stack scales fast, stays stable under heavy traffic, and doesn’t crumble the moment your marketing team schedules a global launch.

Advanced workflow and approvals

Contentstack’s workflow engine handles multi-step approvals, roles, and governance without duct tape. Perfect for teams that need structure instead of Slack chaos.

Multi-region CDN delivery

Your content gets pushed worldwide through edge CDNs, keeping delivery fast even when your customers are nowhere near your servers.

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API-first microservices design

Developers get flexibility without wrestling with legacy monolith logic with REST, GraphQL, and webhooks.

Extensive React/Next.js SDKs

Strong developer tooling means faster builds and fewer hours wasted writing boilerplate just to fetch and render content.

MACH-compliant infrastructure

Fully modular, cloud-native, and replaceable in parts. Plays nicely inside modern composable stacks instead of dragging you back to 2010.

Common questions

Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack migration FAQs

Answers to the most common questions about Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack migration

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.

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.

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.

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.

Contentstack doesn't publish pricing, which is standard for enterprise DXP platforms and frustrating for everyone else. Based on what we've seen, expect the entry point for a small team to start around $3,000-$5,000/month, with enterprise contracts landing in the $50,000-$150,000+ per year range depending on API usage, regions, and seats. Implementation costs run separately and typically require 8-16 weeks of developer time. If you're comparing against Contentful or Sanity at the enterprise level, Contentstack is generally in the same ballpark as Contentful but significantly more expensive than Sanity for comparable functionality.

For most mid-sized teams, no. Contentstack was built for Fortune 500 content operations with global teams, complex approval chains, and multi-region delivery requirements. If your team has 5-15 people managing content across 2-3 markets, you're paying enterprise prices for capabilities you'll never fully use. The workflows and governance tools are genuinely good, but they come with complexity overhead that slows smaller teams down. We typically steer mid-sized companies toward Sanity or Contentful, which offer strong workflow controls without the enterprise onboarding burden. Contentstack makes sense when you have 50+ content editors across multiple regions. Below that threshold, leaner platforms deliver more value per dollar.

Ask three questions first. Do you actually need multi-region CDN delivery and MACH-compliant architecture, or is that just nice to have? If you're serving one market from one region, you're paying for global infrastructure you won't use. Second, does your editorial team have the patience for a steep onboarding curve? Contentstack's content modelling is powerful but requires careful upfront architecture. Third, what's your exit strategy? Contentstack contracts often span multiple years, and the custom integrations you build create switching costs that grow over time. We always recommend running a proof-of-concept with real content before signing an annual contract. That 2-week investment can save you from a 2-year mistake.

Projects migrated without a hitch

Join the growing list of successful migrations

Slingshot Bio

Roboto converged Slingshot Bio's WordPress and Shopify sites into one headless Shopify build on Next.js and Sanity, instrumented end to end and AI-ready.

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Jamb

We rebuilt Jamb on Sanity and Next.js, merging two legacy PHP sites into one calm catalogue without losing the SEO equity their antique and reproduction collections had built up.

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Tray.ai

Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform

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The Tray.ai website homepage after the large-scale re-platforming migration

Mario Testino

From Sanity overages to instantaneous publishing, we brought Mario Testino into the fast lane, and did it in style.

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The Mario Testino photography portfolio site with instant publishing

Get in touch

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We are the Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack migration experts

How we migrate from Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack

Access and gating audit

Rendering assessment and extraction

AI-assisted sanitization

Content-model design with the client

Transform and soft-migrate

Execute the real migration

Redirect mapping and throttled sitemap submission

Agentic-browser QA

Challenges with Adobe Experience Manager

Benefits of Contentstack

Common questions

Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack migration FAQs

Answers to the most common questions about Adobe Experience Manager to Contentstack migration