How long does a CMS migration take?

Most mid-market migrations run six to twelve weeks end-to-end. What sets the number is content volume, template count, and how much of the design system needs rebuilding alongside. We scope with a fixed timeline before any code moves.

Will we lose SEO traffic during a migration?

Not if redirects, sitemaps, and structured data are handled in front of the launch, not after. The teams that lose traffic are the ones who treat those three as a launch-week task. We treat them as the first three stages.

Which CMS should we migrate to?

Most teams we work with land on Sanity because the structured content model, portable text, and reference-based schemas hold up as the team scales. Contentful is the right answer when the stack demands enterprise contracts or multi-region delivery. We recommend based on the destination, not the retainer.

What does a CMS migration cost?

It depends on content volume, template count, integrations, and how much of the design system is being replatformed alongside. We send a fixed-fee proposal after a scoping audit. The number isn't a surprise, and it doesn't move mid-engagement.

Can you migrate off WordPress?

Yes. It's the most common migration we run. WordPress to Sanity handles content export, media rehost, SEO metadata reconciliation (Yoast/RankMath), and category/tag reference wiring as part of the standard scope.

Can you migrate off Webflow?

Yes. Webflow migrations are usually driven by content-model constraints, editor UX complaints, or the need for real localization. We move the content and rebuild the design system in code so the new site isn't tied to a page builder.

What about HubSpot, Drupal, Sitecore, or AEM?

All four are migrations we've run. Enterprise migrations usually mean a longer discovery, more content types, and integration work with existing marketing or CRM stacks. The core process is the same. The scope just gets longer.

Are you a headless CMS agency?

Yes. We build and migrate headless CMS sites on Sanity and Contentful, with a Next.js frontend on top. Migration is where most teams find us, but plenty of the work we ship is greenfield headless builds.

What's the worst-case scenario if a migration goes wrong?

The recovery engagements we've been called into all look the same on the surface: the launch went clean, and then over the next two to four weeks the rankings dropped. Every one of those failures was preventable if the migration process had run the checks in front of the launch. That's the process we run, because we've seen the other one.

The last CMS migration you'll ever run. On the last codebase you'll ever need.

We handle the parts most migrations quietly break. Redirect maps, structured data, sitemap parity, and the thirty days of monitoring after DNS flips.

Global Headless CMS Market

Source: Grand View Research. 2027–2032 values modeled using the published 17.5% CAGR.

How many teams are moving to headless?

The teams shipping the fastest marketing sites today aren't on WordPress, HubSpot CMS, or a page builder. They're on a structured content backend with a Next.js frontend.

The move is happening because the constraints of legacy CMSs have stopped being tolerable at the pace modern marketing runs.

What you get on the other side of the migration.

Content lives in one system, ships to every surface.

Marketing site, app, mobile, campaigns, partner portals. All pull from the same structured content. No more duplicating copy across CMSs and hoping they stay in sync.

The base your personalization and experimentation stack sits on.

Structured content, real references, and typed schemas mean A/B tests, localization, and personalization aren't bolted on. They're a natural extension of the model.

Editors stop filing tickets to change a headline.

The best migrations don't just move data. They rebuild the authoring UX around how your team actually publishes, so shipping content stops depending on the dev queue.

Every legacy CMS complaint has a headless answer.

These are the reasons teams call us. None of them are nice-to-haves. They're the daily friction that slows marketing down until a replatform is the only honest option left.

With headless

On a legacy CMS

New templates live in code, versioned like every other part of the stack.

Templates locked inside a page builder

Structured content model + Portable Text means marketing edits without a ticket.

Every content change routes through engineering

Metadata is a first-class part of every content type, not a bolt-on.

SEO metadata scattered across plugins and custom fields

Authoring interface is designed alongside the schema, not left to defaults.

Publishing UX that editors avoid

Instrumentation is scoped and wired during the migration, not the quarter after.

Analytics and A/B tooling bolted on after the fact

Content delivered via CDN-cached queries; frontend rendered on Vercel's edge.

Site speed capped by the CMS itself

Migrations we've shipped, by the numbers.

The metrics we can back up on the migrations we've actually run. Not the story we'd like to tell.

100+

Headless sites shipped

6–12 wk

Typical migration timeline

Zero

Traffic-loss incidents on our monitored launches

The trusted web team for 12% of the Forbes Cloud 100

Trusted by marketing and engineering teams to build, launch, and evolve high-performing websites.

“

Great agency relationships are measured in years, not projects. Six years later, Webstacks is still an extension of our marketing team and a trusted partner behind our website.

”

Bryan OlshockChief Marketing OfficerServiceTitan

Every migration we run follows the same six stages.

Skipping any one of them is where the rankings drop off, so we don't. The stages are the same whether we're moving 40 pages or 4,000.

Stage 01

Snapshot

Before anything moves, we lock a baseline: current URLs, current rankings, current structured data, current sitemap, current internal-link graph, current image inventory. That baseline is what every post-launch check is measured against.

Stage 02

Target content model

We design the content model in the destination CMS around your team's actual workflow (content types, field labels, references, portable text), not the CMS's defaults. Publishing UX ships as a first-class deliverable, not a last-minute polish pass.

Stage 03

Full redirect map

Every legacy URL gets a destination. Not the top 100. The full inventory, including the pages nobody has looked at in years but that still funnel authority into the ones that matter.

Stage 04

Structured data parity

We catalogue every JSON-LD type on the old site and reimplement each in the new templates before the launch date. Nothing quietly drops off, because nothing gets to launch without it.

Stage 05

Staged launch

The new site goes live behind a feature flag or a staging domain first, so the redirect map, sitemap, and structured data can be verified against real crawlers before DNS flips.

Stage 06

30 days of monitoring

The month after launch is where rankings actually settle. We watch coverage, impressions, organic-page counts, and 404 rates every day so regressions get caught in hours, not weeks.

Every migration ships against our SEO, performance, and accessibility standard.

We don't replicate what you had. The new site holds itself to the same fixed baseline every migration we run does. And the launch doesn't happen until it clears.

SEO

Redirect map, sitemap parity, structured data catalogued and reimplemented, canonical URLs, hreflang if you localize. Verified against real crawlers on staging before DNS flips.

Performance

Core Web Vitals budget agreed at scoping, held through launch. LCP, INP, CLS regression tests run against every PR. No launches with red vitals.

Accessibility

WCAG 2.2 AA target baseline. Semantic markup, keyboard paths, focus order, contrast, and ARIA. Reviewed on every component, not audited after launch.

Content-only vs. full replatform.

Not every migration needs a full frontend rebuild. Two scopes we run, side by side, so you can tell which one fits before we ever talk.

Content-only migration

Full replatform

Scope

Content and metadata move to the new CMS. Existing frontend stays.

Content, templates, and frontend all rebuild on a new stack.

Design system

Untouched. Same components, same tokens.

Rebuilt in code. Components, tokens, type system, the lot.

Publishing UX

Improves by the new CMS itself.

Purpose-built for your team's workflow.

Timeline

4–6 weeks typical.

8–12 weeks typical.

Best for

Teams whose site design still works, but whose CMS has outgrown them.

Teams replatforming the site and content system in the same window.

A migration is the moment to fix what's broken.

Replatforming isn't a lift-and-shift. It's the only window in a marketing site's life when you can rebuild the content model, publishing UX, and SEO foundation without stopping the business.

Content audit

Every URL, orphan page, redirect chain, and duplicate reviewed before it moves. What ships is what matters.

Content model

Rebuilt around real editorial workflow, not the source CMS's defaults. This is where publishing speed comes from.

Design system

Components rebuilt against tokens so the visual language of the site holds up across pages and templates.

Redirect strategy

Full URL inventory, not the top 100. Long-tail authority is where most migrations quietly lose it.

Structured data

JSON-LD catalogued on the old site, reimplemented on the new. Article, FAQPage, Organization, Product, everything.

Analytics + experimentation

Instrumentation, events, and A/B tooling scoped during the migration, not the quarter after go-live.

Platforms we can migrate your website from.

We support migrations from pretty much every platform out there.

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How Gong migrated from WordPress to a composable, Sanity-powered platform built for speed, scalability, and brand consistency.

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In this story, we detail our ongoing work with ServiceTitan––from migrating to a new tech stack, increasing content production, and implementing a unified design system across multiple ServiceTitan subsidiaries.

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