Sitecore sits at the bottom of the headless CMS ratings, and its lower-rating buyers describe problems including slow development, dependence on Sitecore specialists and dated infrastructure. Four of the six observed departures went to headless CMS platforms. For some accounts on older Sitecore versions, the choice is not simply stay or go: some buyers describe moving to Sitecore’s newer platform as a substantial migration, and one weighs it against external alternatives.
The alternatives, by what they are
Every destination buyers name, sorted by the kind of platform. Four moved to a headless CMS; two moved to Adobe Experience Manager.
What lower-rating Sitecore buyers complain about
That it is slow to build on and hard to change. “It's very monolithic and the way it's architected is slow for us to build, too cumbersome for us to support,” says one buyer rating it 3. Another, at 6, says “we're really constrained to the templates that we have to execute within Sitecore.”
That it depends on specialists. “It requires a lot of work and developers that have the knowledge of Sitecore,” says a buyer rating it 4. Some run it through an outside agency or partner.
That it is dated. “It's an extremely outdated platform, inflexible infrastructure,” says one rating it 5.
And that moving to its newer architecture can be substantial. Some buyers moving from older Sitecore implementations toward newer Sitecore architectures describe the transition as a project in its own right. One is “very dismayed by the amount of expense and resource and time it's taken to convert,” and says that in the headless version “they withdrew some components, some capabilities”; another notes that “they did drop some of their A/B test learn capabilities in that conversion.”
Where buyers go
The four headless moves carry different reasons: governance, connectivity, publishing speed, and ease of use or cost. One Adobe mover cites scalability, personalization and ease of use; the other is still uncertain about the result.
Headless CMS
One left because “there were so many access and so many integrations with different platforms that it became very difficult for data governance,” and finds the guardrails much stronger now. The other rebuilt on a headless stack with Contentful as the CMS after “Sitecore and Salesforce was not connected natively,” and calls Contentful “one of the best.”
A team whose deployment schedules were “long and convoluted and complex” when it came to publishing. Since the move it values “Our ability to preview and create content faster” — while keeping Sitecore’s asset management, which it still rates well.
Chosen for ease of use, templating and cost, against a Sitecore setup the buyer calls “absolutely not comparable as a CMS, so we had to change. It was way too old.”
No head-to-head published yet
Enterprise suite
One team moved because Sitecore “was not scalable, lacked features like personalization, and lacked ease of use for the business users to create web pages.” The other, six months in, is less sure: “Is it better than Sitecore?” — an integration it expected has not happened yet, and its view of the new platform is still middling.
No head-to-head published yet
Four of the six observed departures went headless, but for different reasons. Some of these migrations also show that a CMS replacement can sit inside a broader systems change — a new commerce platform in one case, a company-wide systems shift in another — rather than operate as a like-for-like CMS swap.
What about Acquia?
Acquia does not appear among the six observed Sitecore departures here. But two buyers selecting a new CMS evaluated Acquia directly against Sitecore, and both chose Acquia. A global consumer-goods manufacturer called it “kind of a neck-to-neck choice. There wasn't a massive difference,” and went with Acquia on commercial terms: a contract “about 15% less than what Sitecore was potentially offering,” and the option to “exit the contract with a three-month notice period.” An industrial equipment company compared Acquia with Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore and Kentico, and says it “came out as the most capable and the best option for us.” Acquia rates around 7 on too few ratings for a decimal. The head-to-head is in Sitecore vs. Acquia.
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Get my read →When does staying on Sitecore make sense?
The interviews do not settle staying as a rule, and few buyers rate Sitecore highly. But some teams are moving onto Sitecore rather than off it, and they describe what they value.
Platform depth. One buyer who just completed a large migration onto Sitecore calls it “a very powerful platform, and I think we've just started to tap the potential here.”
For some buyers, operational usability relative to Adobe. One prefers it to Adobe, saying “their operational user experience is more friendly.”
The migration decision for older Sitecore implementations. Buyers on older versions are weighing Sitecore’s SaaS offering as well as its rivals, and one who rates that offering highly on what they have seen of it is candid about the cost of the switch: “if we go to SaaS, then that's as good as considering someone else.”
Our read — ours, not a buyer’s — is that for some older Sitecore accounts, staying may itself involve substantial migration work. The interviews show why some buyers evaluate Sitecore’s upgrade and external alternatives together; they do not establish which is the better choice for a given account.
Common questions
Why do buyers leave Sitecore?
The reasons vary by buyer. The four headless movers give different reasons: one cites slow, complex publishing; another governance across access and integrations; another a missing native connection to Salesforce; and another describes its Sitecore setup as too old. One who moved to Adobe Experience Manager cites scalability, personalization and ease of use for business users. Separately, buyers who rate Sitecore 6 or below describe problems including slow development, dependence on Sitecore specialists and dated infrastructure.
What do buyers replace Sitecore with?
Four of the six went to a headless CMS: Contentful twice, Contentstack and Builder.io once each. The other two went to Adobe Experience Manager. Contentful rates 7.3/10 and Adobe Experience Manager 7.2/10 across the corpus, against Sitecore's 5.9/10; Contentstack and Builder.io each rate around 7 on fewer ratings.
Is Contentful better than Sitecore?
The interviews do not establish one as universally better, though the ratings are far apart: Contentful 7.3/10 against Sitecore's 5.9/10. The two buyers here who moved to Contentful describe different problems with their Sitecore setups: one struggled with governance across access and integrations, while the other rebuilt headless after Sitecore did not connect natively to its Salesforce setup. Both speak positively about Contentful after the move.
Is Acquia better than Sitecore?
The interviews do not establish one as better. Two buyers here weighed them directly and both chose Acquia: one called it close and chose Acquia on contract cost and exit terms, and the other picked it after comparing it with Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore and Kentico. Acquia rates around 7 on too few ratings for a decimal, against Sitecore's 5.9/10. Neither buyer was leaving Sitecore; both were choosing a new platform.
Should we upgrade Sitecore or move to another CMS?
The interviews show why some buyers evaluate the two paths together. One describes Sitecore's headless conversion as expensive and resource-intensive, and lost capabilities along the way, while another says moving to Sitecore's SaaS offering is “as good as considering someone else.” The interviews do not establish whether upgrading or switching is the better choice for a given Sitecore account.
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