The departures and arrivals in these interviews look very different. Five of six leavers with revenue on record are below $300 million, while every buyer observed moving onto Contentful from another platform is above $350 million. The arrivals come from Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore and older commerce platforms, and describe it as the more flexible option. The leavers take the content job into their commerce platform or another CMS, and cost comes up in six of the seven exits. Its lower raters also emphasize a different problem: marketer usability and dependence on engineering. For where Sitecore’s leavers went, Contentful among them, see Sitecore alternatives.
The alternatives, by where the content went
Every destination buyers name, grouped by where the content job ended up. Three moved it into the commerce platform, three to another CMS, and one dropped it.
What lower-rating Contentful buyers complain about
That it is built for developers more than marketers. It is the complaint that most clearly separates lower raters from higher ones. “It's sort of like a developer-friendly platform because it's not easy to use from a marketer standpoint,” says a buyer rating it 6. Another, at 5, says that because their site is custom-built, “we still require engineering work in order to launch pages.”
That it is expensive for what a team gets from it. “It's an expensive tool for what we get out of it,” says one lower-rating buyer. A retailer rating it 6 running several banners says “there's a cost to each Contentful bucket that I got to go in and create.”
And that its setup can sprawl. One buyer rating it 6, now leaving, says “The configuration of our content and the site just got really bloated and overcomplicated, either through our own doing or Contentful's platform.”
Where buyers go
Seven buyers here have left Contentful or are leaving it. Cost comes up in six of the seven exits, sometimes alongside underuse or a narrower content need. Two more say they may move — one to its new parent company’s platform after an acquisition, one to the native tools of a new commerce platform — but neither has.
Into the commerce platform
One brand is moving content it stored in Contentful into Shopify because “it gets absurdly expensive the more content that's on there.” Another, when “Contentful was looking to raise their prices dramatically,” had a developer build “a solution using Shopify meta objects” for the content scheduling it had used Contentful for. A third used Contentful “for landing page building, but that has been offboarded.”
No head-to-head published yet
Another CMS
A brand moving its storefront to Shopify’s Hydrogen is switching off Contentful “because it's expensive and kind of cumbersome,” and expects Sanity to integrate better with the new stack.
No head-to-head published yet
Chosen as “a lighter-weight option that is better with our AI workflows and allows us to be a little bit more nimble.” The buyer calls it a cost saving and a clean slate. Too few buyers rate it to publish a figure.
No head-to-head published yet
“The overall cost we were paying for Contentful was really extreme,” and the buyer felt it was not keeping up with new features. With Payload, “the engineers do not really have to utilize the CMS” — they model content in code. Too few buyers rate it to publish a figure.
No head-to-head published yet
The two groups take the content job in different directions. The Shopify moves fold specific content functions into the commerce platform the brand already runs: scheduling, landing pages and stored content. The other three moves keep a separate CMS — Sanity, DatoCMS and Payload — and buyers describe different reasons across them, including cost, stack fit, AI workflows and a more code-driven content model. One more buyer kept nothing: “It did cost a ridiculous amount of money, and nobody was using it, so I just squashed it. And it's overkill.”
Want this read against your own stack?
Get my read →When does staying on Contentful make sense?
Most of its buyers rate it well, and larger companies are still moving onto it from heavier platforms.
Everyday content management. “Their platform is simple and it works, and our teams could not function without it,” says a buyer rating it 9. Another, at 8, says “we can manage product content without requiring a developer to support us to make those changes.”
Flexibility relative to heavier platforms. A buyer who moved off Sitecore says “So far, I have found Contentful to be much more flexible.” One moving off Adobe says Contentful has “been a very good partner for us and have been really flexible.” Every buyer here arriving on Contentful from another platform works at a company above $350 million in revenue; five of the six leavers with revenue on record are below $300 million.
And cost, even for those who stay. Satisfied buyers raise price too — one rating it 9 says “it is expensive at scale.” Price is not confined to the departures. Several departures, however, pair cost with underuse or with moving specific content functions elsewhere.
Our read — ours, not a buyer’s — is that the departures and arrivals here reflect very different operating contexts. Five of six leavers with revenue on record are below $300 million, and several move specific content functions into Shopify or another CMS. Every observed buyer arriving from another platform is above $350 million and comes from a heavier platform. The interviews do not establish company size as the cause, or a size at which either decision is right.
Common questions
Why do buyers leave Contentful?
Cost comes up in six of the seven departures here, sometimes alongside underuse or a narrower content need: one describes it as getting expensive the more content is stored, another as costing a lot while nobody used it. Among its rating explanations, the complaint that most separates lower raters from higher ones is that it is built for developers more than marketers, so pages still need engineering work.
What do buyers replace Contentful with?
Of seven departures here, three moved their content into Shopify — one built content scheduling on Shopify metaobjects after a price increase — and three moved to another CMS: Sanity, DatoCMS and Payload. One dropped it with no replacement. Shopify rates 8.1/10 and Sanity around 7.5, against Contentful's 7.3/10.
Can Shopify replace Contentful?
For some Shopify brands it already has. Three of the seven departures here moved content into Shopify: one stored its customer content there instead, one had a developer build content scheduling on Shopify metaobjects, and one now manages its landing pages in Shopify. In these three cases, the Contentful functions moved into Shopify include stored content, content scheduling and landing-page management.
Is Contentful too expensive for small companies?
The leavers here are mostly small — five of the six with revenue on record work at companies under $300 million — and cost comes up in six of their seven exits. Cost is also raised by satisfied buyers, who describe it as expensive at scale. The interviews show small companies leaving over cost; they do not establish a size below which Contentful stops making sense.
Why do companies move to Contentful?
The arrivals observed here come mostly from heavier platforms: Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore and older commerce platforms, plus one from WordPress. The arriving buyers describe it as more flexible, quicker to publish on, and usable by marketing teams without developers for everyday changes. Every one of those arriving buyers works at a company above $350 million in revenue.
Get this research made for your stack
Weighing a move off Contentful, or whether your commerce platform could take the content job? Do a 15-minute interview about your site, your stack and your team, and get a personalized read.
Get my personalized read — 15-min interviewNo password · your interview is anonymized before it ever informs a page like this one.