From Sanity to Magnolia

We are the Sanity to Magnolia migration experts

Challenges with Sanity

Key pain points

We obviously prefer Sanity, so much so that our own website is on Sanity. But if you don't have the right implementation team, you might find yourself in a bad situation. Its highly customizable nature can lead to complexity and time-consuming setup processes for less experienced developers. We've inherited our fair share of stinkers, but we advise that before you jump ship, you let us look over it to see if it's salvageable.

That said, if you are considering moving, we can help you migrate away with automated migration scripts, web scraping, and content mapping. It'll be a 1:1 with whatever platform you choose.

Not always plug-and-play

Sanity gives you a ton of flexibility, but it’s not a “drag-and-drop” CMS. If your team prefers instant themes and presets, you’ll need a little extra setup to get started.

Potentially high resource demand

As your content model grows, Sanity gives you incredible power and real-time performance. Just keep in mind that very large projects may require a bit more horsepower behind the scenes.

Less ideal for beginners

Editors love Sanity once everything is set up, but teams switching from traditional CMSs may need a short onboarding period to learn the workflow.

Infrastructure management needed

Unlike hosted CMS platforms, you own your content pipeline. That gives you full control and scalability, but also means setup and environments need to be managed properly.

Technical skill required

Since Sanity is schema-driven, developers can model content precisely the way your business needs it. Non-technical teams benefit from that structure, but setup usually requires engineering support.

Complexity in setup

Sanity doesn’t force rigid templates or assumptions. You have to define everything like content, structure, and workflows. The tradeoff: a bit more initial setup for much more flexibility long-term.

Benefits of Magnolia

Key advantages

Magnolia shines if you’re the kind of organisation that genuinely needs the full DXP kitchen sink. It packs personalisation, workflows, multi-site orchestration, multilingual publishing, DAM, marketing automation hooks, and every enterprise acronym you can think of. If your teams run complex global content operations with strict governance, Magnolia’s mature permission system, stability, and long-standing enterprise reputation make it a safe, compliant option.

To be transparent, we don’t actually prefer or build with Magnolia (or any of the DXP-flavoured headless CMSs). They try to do everything, and like most jack-of-all-trades platforms, they don’t excel at the things modern teams actually need that is speed, flexibility, clean workflows, and sane pricing. We’d happily point you toward modern alternatives like Sanity that give you 10× the agility without the enterprise bloat.

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Java-based enterprise integration

Built on Java, Magnolia plugs neatly into large enterprise stacks that already rely on Java systems and legacy infrastructure. If your organisation lives and breathes JVM, Magnolia won’t fight your architecture.

Secure, scalable architecture

Magnolia’s core is engineered for high-security, high-traffic environments, with strong access control, clustering, and enterprise-grade stability. It’s built to survive heavy editorial activity and large content delivery demands.

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Real-time page templating

Editors can adjust components and layouts and immediately preview results, making large enterprise content operations faster and less error-prone.

Editable component previews

Magnolia’s component-level previewing gives editors clarity on how complex pages come together, reducing back-and-forth with developers and keeping multi-team workflows sane.

Multi-site management tools

Designed for global brands, Magnolia supports multiple sites, languages, and regional variations under one roof.

Advanced workflow automation

From multi-step approvals to compliance-driven publishing flows, Magnolia handles heavyweight governance. This is the stuff big enterprises actually need when 20 departments want access but only 2 should publish.