From Directus to Sanity

We are the Directus to Sanity migration experts

Challenges with Directus

Key pain points

Directus looks fantastic in demos, but things get rocky once you actually try to use it at scale. Cloud plans jump to enterprise the moment your team grows past five users, and the API limits are tight enough that any traffic spike means aggressive caching or a surprise bill. It feels flexible until you realise the platform has a lot of operational overhead baked in.

On the dev side, updates can introduce breaking changes, the documentation doesn’t always keep pace, and the extension ecosystem is pretty thin. Localization is technically supported but fiddly and easy to misconfigure, and large datasets make the UI noticeably sluggish. And if you want anything deeply custom, you’re suddenly living in Vue.js land, which is not where most teams want to spend their weekends.

Breaking update changes

Directus has a habit of shipping updates that occasionally break things you weren’t planning to fix. Unless you're on an enterprise plan, you don’t get clean version control.

Limited extension ecosystem

The plugin ecosystem is still pretty bare. Anything even mildly niche ends up becoming a “let’s just custom build it” moment, which defeats the purpose of picking a CMS with extensions.

Complex localization setup

Yes, it supports multilingual content, but setting it up feels like assembling IKEA furniture blindfolded. It works, but expect extra config, extra steps, and extra patience.

Version control paywall

Want safe rollbacks, controlled releases, and predictable deployments? Great, Directus will tell you to upgrade first. Versioning is locked behind higher-tier plans, which is… bold.

Vue.js knowledge requirement

Custom interfaces and deeper tweaks need Vue.js, so if your team only speaks React, prepare for a small identity crisis (or a hiring plan).

Large dataset performance issues

Heavy tables and deeply relational data can slow down queries and the UI, forcing you to optimise more than you probably wanted to.

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.

Multiplayer - multiple users editing the same blocks at the same time

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 content API and presentation editor - a way to be able to edit things side by side, directly within Sanity

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 and structured content help to build websites, UI showing the ability to edit granularly

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.

Image generation and optimisation, directly within Sanity CMS, showing a space alien getting optimised

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.