From Magnolia to Sanity

We are the Magnolia to Sanity migration experts

Challenges with Magnolia

Key pain points

Magnolia is the definition of “enterprise for the sake of enterprise.” The setup is heavy, the learning curve is brutal, and unless you have a Java team lying around, good luck getting anything done without burning through budget. The proprietary modules lock you in fast, integrations feel like a maze, and the admin interface slows to a crawl once you start dealing with real content volume. The pricing is expensive, opaque, and somehow still manages to feel bad value. If you're not a Fortune 500 with a tolerance for pain, it’s a project risk.

And honestly, who even uses Java anymore?

Steep Java learning curve

Magnolia expects your team to be fluent in Java and its ecosystem, which slows onboarding and makes even simple tasks feel heavier than they should.

Resource-intensive setup

It demands serious infrastructure and long setup cycles, which immediately rules it out for teams that expect fast iteration or modern DevOps workflows.

A dark grid background with a security shield and a fuzzy white shape containing a gray circle.

Vendor lock-in concerns

Once you're in, you're in. Magnolia’s proprietary modules make moving away painful, expensive, and often not worth the engineering time.

Complex third-party integration

Connecting Magnolia with modern tools and APIs isn’t straightforward, usually requiring custom Java work instead of simple plug-and-play integrations.

A dark UI of a web development environment with component icons and a lightning bolt graphic.

Native subscription support

Licensing is firmly enterprise-tier, with opaque pricing and steep annual fees that can balloon quickly, a bad fit unless you're Fortune 500.

Proprietary module reliance

Key features live behind Magnolia’s own tightly controlled modules, limiting flexibility and forcing teams to work the “Magnolia way” instead of choosing best-in-class tools.

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.