Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform

From Contentful to Contentstack
Key pain points
With all good things, there’s a “depends on how you use it and who is using it” clause. Contentful usage-based pricing can quietly snowball, especially for smaller teams or projects running on lean budgets. Its API-first approach might make developers grin, but the non-technical users might find themselves staring at setup screens, wondering, “Wait… where’s the editor?”
More often than not, the main reason Contentful sucks is that the developer has built it incorrectly, as it has a whole host of opinionation that isn't widely known. E.g.
You need to be extremely careful with the number of documents you build, as you could very easily push yourself into enterprise from an early stage.
We'd always recommend speaking to us first, before completely writing it off.

Potentially high costs
Contentful isn’t a cheap CMS. As your traffic, models, or team grows, pricing can climb faster than expected.

Complex for non-technical users
Marketers and editors may need a small learning curve before they feel at home. It’s powerful but not always plug-and-play.

Integration dependency
A lot of magic happens through third-party tools. Great for flexibility, but it does mean extra setup instead of getting everything out-of-the-box.

Limited native features
Contentful keeps the core CMS clean and minimal, but that also means more building and configuring to get advanced functionality.

Learning curve for new teams
,If your team is moving from a traditional CMS, expect some onboarding time. Structured content is amazing but new for many.

Requires careful management
Because it’s so flexible, projects need good governance. Without it, content models can get messy and harder to maintain over time.
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.

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.

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.
Book a meeting with us to discuss how we can help or fill out a form to get in touch
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