Your content works hard for you — but it can be hard for you to work with content, especially when you have a lot of it.

That’s why most people use content management systems (CMSes) to make that job easier. Your CMS helps you manage, edit, and publish content across your digital channels, via a user-friendly interface. For clarity, when we talk about “content” here, we mean every digital asset that you hold in your network (text, images, video, audio, and so on) — basically, anything you might want to use online.

It’s difficult to overstate how important content, and by extension your CMS, is to your online presence, and certainly to your marketing strategy. Most businesses understand that value, with  research from early 2024 suggesting that over 40% of businesses increased their content marketing spend in the previous 12 months, and almost 50% planned to do so in the next 12. Meanwhile, the digital content creation market is set to grow at a compound annual rate of around 12.8% in the next decade — to a value of over $90 billion.  

But content needs inevitably become more complex as organizations grow, and the content strategy that worked when you were a start-up, is unlikely to still be cutting it five years down the line when you’re looking to launch new marketing campaigns, in multiple languages, or start publishing content on store displays, wearables, or Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In fact, even businesses that understand their evolving content challenges may not have the means to tackle them, with research suggesting that almost half of B2B marketers do not actually have a scalable content creation model to help them reach that next level.

The point is, if you’re struggling to meet your content needs, it might be time to consider moving to a new CMS. 

In this post, we’re going to explore that issue, with an introduction to how, and why, you’d migrate from one CMS to another. We’re going to drop in some useful tips and insight as we go to help you avoid common migration process pain points, and enhance your content in its new home — including putting together a CMS migration checklist.

Defining CMS migration

Simply put, a CMS migration is the transition from one content management system to another.

In practice, this means moving every piece of digital content within your tech stack from your existing management architecture to a new one. It’s a little bit like moving house: you need to pack up all your clothes, personal belongings, appliances, and pets, but you’d leave behind the walls, windows, carpets, and doors — no matter how fond you are of them.

And, like real-world moves, content management system migration is easier said than done. As part of a successful CMS migration, you’ll need to review your digital footprint comprehensively to ensure that you capture everything you need, and then consider how you’ll move it between CMSes without disrupting your existing content offering, including your website’s functionality, your SEO scores, and the experience of users.

Before we get into the how of CMS migration, let’s look a little more closely at the why.

Why you might need a different CMS

CMSes have come a long way — from monolithic systems like WordPress, in which back-end administration is tangled up with the front-end presentation of content, to decoupled and headless systems which separate the back end and front end entirely, and bring new levels of flexibility to the content management process. At the same time, content trends have also evolved: market influences and changing demographics affect the shape of campaigns and force brands to push their content into new creative territories. 

In this landscape, it’s common for an outdated CMS (especially an inflexible monolithic system) to encounter problems, prompting the need for migration to a newer system. That need is typically driven by business value: your CMS may simply not offer the necessary functionality or flexibility to make you more money, or may have become so inefficient that it's costing you money or wasting time. 

And beyond the immediate business need, it’s worth remembering that CMS problems can have cascading effects. An initial lack of flexibility may hamper the efficiency of certain teams and prevent them keeping pace with an evolving technical landscape — which, in turn, means they can’t capitalize on innovations, can’t scale, and so can’t reach, engage, or retain customers. Ultimately, the organization itself may fall behind faster-moving competitors, and begin to see financial performance dip. 

So, ideally, when you make the move to a new CMS, you should be able to do so with an understanding of how the new environment will improve your content. With that in mind, let’s look at some key business value drivers behind a CMS migration. 

Feature access

CMS platforms typically share a set of core features, which converge around the storage, creation, editing, and publishing of content. Beyond that baseline functionality, however, there’s variance in the features that a given CMS platform may provide: some, for example, may offer multilingual support or advanced SEO analytics features, all of which can enhance the way that you manage your content or how users experience it. 

Feature variance is often a consequence of CMS architecture. A monolithic CMS platform typically offers no scope to integrate new features, while headless CMSes are built to facilitate an array of third-party integrations via application programming interfaces (APIs) — and, ultimately, allow for fully customizable tech stacks. 

Scaling

If you’ve been working with the same CMS platform for years, or using the same system you used at start-up, it’s likely that your content strategy has changed drastically in that time. Whether it's more employees, more customers, or more products, business growth factors increase your content burden and, while your existing CMS can scale with that burden to a point, there will eventually be a level of performance it can’t meet. 

A new CMS can help you scale up content creation, along with the kinds of content experiences you deliver for audiences across different digital channels. It also helps you scale your teams, reducing the bottlenecks between critical contributors that typically impact content efficiency.  

Performance 

From slow load times and poor responsiveness to frequent page crashes, there will be signs that your CMS is struggling.

These kinds of performance issues can quickly affect user experiences and degrade brand reputation, so it’s worth being decisive about resolving them. Remember, content performance is not only an issue for your website: you may be struggling with content across multiple channels, including mobile or IoT devices — all of which can damage user experiences.

Cost effectiveness

Maintaining your current CMS simply may no longer fit the budget. Alternatively, a new CMS may offer features with greater cost benefit. For example, a monolithic CMS typically provides all-in-one service consistency and comprehensive technical support, but a cost-benefit analysis may reveal that, although it carries high upfront costs, a bespoke tech stack, built in a headless CMS, can deliver more bang for your buck over the long term.

Security concerns

Even if your CMS isn’t changing, hackers are — and, as their methodologies evolve, it’s likely your network is developing vulnerabilities. 

There’s no shortage of reasons why you should be on top of your cybersecurity, but, beyond potential regulatory consequences such as breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is the reputational damage that an attack can cause. A CMS migration may offer enhanced security: breaches of a monolithic CMS, for example, may compromise the entire system, but decoupled and headless CMSes are typically better at mitigating the effects of an attack.

Ease of development 

Certain CMS architectures make it easier for developers to work on the tech stack, without disrupting other workflows. 

While a monolithic CMS typically requires technical know-how in order for users to create and publish content, decoupled and headless CMSes separate content and code to make that process more accessible. Migration from one CMS to another could be a way to optimize the content workflow, letting writers, editors, and designers focus on content creation, while developers concentrate on the tech stack and custom code.

Fragmentation

Many older monolithic CMSes are designed for a single purpose — typically powering content on a website or a mobile app. When the organization running that website or app decides to scale up and reach audiences on a wider range of platforms, their existing monolithic CMS often struggles to expand with them, prompting them to copy content from that single platform into multiple platforms. 

That fragmentation causes inefficiencies, especially in organizations that have different website teams (ecommerce, marketing, mobile, and so on). Teams that aren’t able to work together or share content have to slow down, moving content between platforms by copying and pasting, or by reformatting. Fragmentation also affects the user experience, since information available on one channel may not be available, or may be different, on another. 

CMS migration offers a solution to the fragmentation challenge. By selecting a system with the capability to manage multiple online channels, you can protect the integrity of your content along with the way that users experience it.  

Migrating from monolithic to headless

We’ve focused on some key pain points, but the motivating factor in many CMS migrations is simply that older architecture is no longer meeting an organization’s expanding content needs.

Maybe you need your content to be displayed in different languages, or need real-time updates on product deliveries, or need an ecommerce module so you can start selling products. If your all-in-one monolithic CMS doesn’t offer some suddenly critical functionality (or the possibility of integrating it) you might quickly find yourself turning toward the flexibility of a headless system.

Headless CMSes decouple their back administrative layer from their frontend presentation layer and, in doing so, give developers access to a completely modular software infrastructure in which to build tech stacks from the ground up. The headless environment sacrifices all-in-one vendor-locked convenience for developmental freedom — which typically suits the evolving content needs of a growing business and which, crucially, future-proofs content for both challenges and opportunities coming down the line. 

CMS migration risks

Regardless of your reasons for migrating to a new CMS, it should go without saying that you need to know where your content is going, and how your experience with it might change.

As part of that precaution, it’s important to remember that you’re never going to achieve a one-to-one transition in which every small detail and feature of your current CMS is matched by its replacement. That being the case, you’ll have to have a plan for the risks that emerge over the course of your migration. Let’s look at some of the key issues.

Feature disparity

While your new CMS will broadly match the core functionalities of your existing platform, it’s inevitable that certain specific features won’t be replicated in the new environment. Be open to developing workarounds as a way to accommodate potential feature-loss. 

Search engine optimization performance

CMS migration is typically motivated by a desire to enhance content performance, but there’s an array of potential search engine optimization (SEO) hazards involved in the move itself. Changes to URLs, copy/paste errors, or even changes to the Google search algorithm may all damage your page ranking. Map the potential pitfalls prior to your migration and have a plan to address SEO problems should they occur.

Content mapping

If you’re moving from a monolithic CMS, your content may be stored in a proprietary format in your database, or may be prerendered into HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. When it’s in that format, the content can’t be used on any other platforms, and probably can’t be used outside the CMS it was designed in. 

It is possible to remove the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and any proprietary elements, from the content in order to make it generic and machine-readable across platforms — and available to be mapped into new environments. You’ll have to factor the time and cost of that extraction process into your schedule when you begin the migration.   

Design incompatibility

Your new CMS may not support the same layout and design choices as its predecessor. While you can account for the broad aesthetic strokes of your content in the new CMS, smaller layout and design issues, such as line spacing or font choice, may emerge as snags and require a creative rethink.

Your step-by-step CMS migration checklist

A successful migration shouldn’t be a leap of faith. If you understand why you want to change your CMS and you’re aware of the potential risks, it’s time to start thinking seriously about what that process is going to look like for your organization.

Although your transition process is going to be unique, it’s a good idea to build out a CMS migration checklist that incorporates the following core components and steps.

1) Migration team

Your migration team should be made up of people with the technical skills to navigate your new CMS architecture but should also include non-technical personnel who can optimize content experiences in that environment, and ensure that your content strategy is being served. 

In practice, this means recruiting engineers with the relevant coding knowledge (JavaScript, React, Next.js, Gatsby, and so on), along with creative contributors, including editors, designers, and content modellers.

2) Selecting new content architecture

You wouldn't buy a house sight-unseen, and there’s no reason to expect you’d do the same for your digital content. We’ve outlined the key reasons for a CMS migration above, and so you should assess potential new systems based on their alignment with criteria such as scalability, security, SEO performance, and even scope for future customization.

Remember, it’s unlikely that you’ll find a CMS that meets your content needs perfectly (although you can build flexibility into your choice by opting for headless architecture). Most platforms offer demos, free trials, and even free accounts so you can try out the new environment before you buy. Contentful’s free account tier is available for exactly that reason!

3) Content audit 

You not only need to understand what you’ll be moving from one CMS to another but how you’re going to move it — which means you’ll need to conduct a content audit. During the audit, you’ll create an inventory of every aspect of your digital presence and the content assets that comprises — that means mapping your website, listing web pages, their URLs, text, images, and other media files, and all associated metadata.

Your content audit is a critical part of the migration process and will help you decide what you need to move across, and what can be deleted or merged. If you’ve been running the same CMS for years, it’s likely that items of older content are no longer of any use — meaning that they can be removed or possibly refreshed.  

Consider how audiences will experience content (that is being migrated) in its new home, make a note of any broken links and create a redirect plan. Identifying broken links during the content audit (and creating a redirect plan) is essential to avoiding SEO issues post-migration, and signals good site maintenance to search engines.

4) Backing up data

This is where CMS migration has the edge over a house move: in a digital environment, you can protect your most valuable assets to make sure they don’t get lost or damaged by careless movers. 

In practice, this means backing up your content data. You can use your content audit to work out what needs to be saved, and then decide on the most efficient way to do that. It’s a good idea to back up content in multiple formats: not only does this protect you if one version of the back-up fails, but can help mitigate any formatting issues that you encounter in your new CMS. 

5) Phased migration

Even the smoothest CMS migration will involve challenges and you should be prepared for unexpected snags. You can mitigate the effect of migration challenges by moving your content, and your functionality, in phases — rather than transposing your entire content landscape in one go.

If you’re moving from a monolithic to a headless CMS, for example, you could choose a single microservice from your new environment to test content as a first phase of your migration, and then build on that foundation until the transition is complete. Think about tailoring your migration phases to your business needs, rather than proceeding in a templated fashion, and execute the process in a way that will provide the best return on investment.

It’s worth remembering that it is possible for multiple CMSes, including Contentful, to work together in the management of a single organization’s content, so a phased migration period could extend to months or even years before all content is moved over to its new environment. While you may not need your migration to last that long, it’s worth knowing you have options in the event of unexpected challenges or delays. 

However you choose to execute, it’s also useful to think about using specific content migration tools to smooth the path to your new environment. 

6) Final review and launch

Once your phased migration is complete, and tested, you’ll need to perform a final review of the content in its new architecture before launch. The review should focus on detail, accuracy, and completeness, and should include checking that you have a URL redirect plan in place to ensure traffic reaches its intended destination. Pre-launch, you’ll also need to train employees how to use the new CMS, and perform other critical tasks, including security testing. 

Expand content horizons with Contentful 

Your CMS migration might have practical motivations, but it should be about possibility. If you’re transitioning away from a traditional monolithic CMS, a headless environment is a chance to expand your content horizons by taking control of every aspect of the content lifecycle, across every digital channel. 

The Contentful® Composable Content Platform is built to help you go beyond that goal, leveraging APIs to open up an ecosystem of modular microservices, and enable users to build their tech stacks from the ground up — along with truly unique content experiences. With Contentful you could, for example, create your website with Next.js, integrate ecommerce with Shopify, while using the Contentful platform itself to take care of your content management needs. Don’t take our word for it: you can browse possibilities for your content on the Contentful Marketplace.

The point is, if you’re ready for, or planning, a CMS migration, don’t be afraid to lean in to your ambition. Get used to thinking differently about what your content can do: it’s never been easier to create incredible new content experiences and, with a content platform like Contentful, that power is at your fingertips.

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