Ask buyers why they changed the platform that runs their website and two patterns emerge. Some moves are explained by the platform itself: every change needs a developer, the site cannot do what marketing wants, the cost no longer fits, or the upkeep never ends. In about two of every three explained moves, buyers also name a broader event — a commerce replatform, consolidating many sites onto one, a redesign, a headless programme or a corporate decision. The two often overlap, and no single event explains most moves. Sitecore and WordPress appear most often on the departing side; Adobe Experience Manager and Contentful are the leading destinations — AEM when an enterprise standardizes, Contentful when a team wants to stop needing a developer for every change. Observed net movement favors AEM and Contentful, but about a quarter of moves have no recorded origin, so net comparisons are less complete than destination counts, and none of this measures vendor churn, growth or market share. The companion reads are what headless-CMS buyers wish they'd known, where the ratings live, and top complaints about CMS platforms.
The pressure that builds
These are the product-related reasons buyers give for reconsidering a CMS. Some moves are explained by these issues without a broader event; in others, the same frustrations accompany a replatform, a consolidation or a redesign.
Every change needs a developer
Tied for the reason buyers name most, and the commonest reason behind moves to Contentful, Webflow and other editor-friendly platforms. It cuts across architectures: one team left a setup “that was very dependent on engineering”, another a hard-coded site, moving “to something that's a little more malleable and editable on the fly without significant coding capabilities.” The goal is the same either way — marketers publishing without a ticket.
Named in this context: Contentful · Webflow · WordPress · AEM
The site can't do what marketing wants
Tied with developer dependence: personalization, design flexibility, multisite and scale. It is the main product reason for leaving WordPress. “We were kind of outgrowing WordPress as we saw it,” one buyer says; another, who moved a site to a design-led builder, was blunter: “I was exasperated with WordPress. We wanted more seamless animations and engagement with our core website.”
Named in this context: WordPress · Sitecore · AEM
Cost at scale
Less common overall, but concentrated: most of the companies leaving Contentful in these interviews name cost, and they move somewhere lighter — an in-house build, a commerce platform's native content, or a smaller headless tool. Cost also ends tools that a replatform makes redundant: one page builder became “too expensive to justify keeping it, considering what we are able to use it for once we replatform.”
Named in this context: Contentful · Webflow · AEM · Sitecore
Dated, and expensive to keep running
Platforms that have aged, and the upkeep that comes with them. “At the time, we had a really old-school CMS, and it was very clunky,” one buyer recalls. Another moved “because we were investing so much in keeping the lights on”: “Every time we updated one of those CMS layers, it would impact other parts of the website.” Security comes up too, mostly for open-source sites moving to enterprise platforms.
Named in this context: Drupal · WordPress · Sitecore · in-house builds
The event that fires the decision
These are the broader events buyers associate with about two of every three explained moves. They help explain when a company acts, though they often overlap with the product pressures above, and the interviews do not always establish which one caused the decision.
A commerce replatform takes the website with it
The event buyers name most. When a retailer or brand moves its store to Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud or SAP Commerce, the content platform often goes too — sometimes into the new platform's native storefront, sometimes onto a headless CMS chosen alongside it. Most of these moves name no complaint about the old CMS: “We got off of some older legacy platforms that we had Sitecore. We walked away from that.” Another buyer on a page builder: “Webflow was a great tool. Like we used it as a page builder, and with the Shopify transition, it's just not necessary anymore.”
Named in this context: Shopify · Salesforce Commerce Cloud · SAP Commerce · Sitecore · Webflow
Many sites, onto one platform
Regional sites, brand sites and landing-page tools brought under one roof, usually for governance rather than features: “Instead of having three CMSes, everything should be housed under one system, which is governed by the same rules and the same people, to cut down on risk and to simplify our tech stack.” Many of these consolidations land on AEM, and consolidations, suite decisions and mandates together account for most of AEM's explained arrivals.
Named in this context: AEM · WordPress · Webflow · HubSpot CMS
A redesign, or a programme to go headless
A new website is a natural moment to change what sits under it: “different teams as they did redesigns and things like that, switched to different CMSs.” Architecture programmes do the same, usually to separate content from a commerce or CRM platform: “So we wanted to decouple the content management system from the base system. We didn't want to use Salesforce as our main CMS.” A headless programme is the event most often behind moves off AEM in these interviews.
Named in this context: Contentful · Contentstack · Optimizely · AEM
A suite decision, a mandate, an acquisition or a new leader
The remaining events. Every suite decision in these interviews is a move onto Adobe: “We're in the midst of going in full effect with Adobe in the entire suite, so we're moving off some of the other CMS platforms that we've had.” Mandates are not always welcome — “there are teams that are very frustrated that they're being required to move over to AEM.” Acquisitions settle which platform the combined company keeps, and new leaders bring their own: “Because I had used Contentful in my old role, in fact, two previous companies.” Two events are notably rare. Contract renewals almost never trigger a CMS move here. And forced version changes, such as an end of support, tend to keep companies with the same vendor, upgrading to its newer edition rather than leaving.
Named in this context: AEM · Contentful · Sitecore
Where they go
Among completed migrations and committed replacements being implemented in these interviews, Adobe Experience Manager is the most frequently observed destination, followed by Contentful, then WordPress and Shopify's native storefront. The two leaders gain for opposite reasons: moves onto AEM mostly come with a consolidation, a suite decision or a corporate mandate, while moves onto Contentful mostly come from teams that want to stop needing a developer for every change. Several companies moved from Sitecore to AEM and none the other way; several moved from AEM to Contentful and none back. WordPress leavers scatter most — up to AEM or Optimizely, across to site builders such as Webflow, or to headless platforms. Sitecore leavers mostly go to AEM or to their new commerce platform. AEM leavers mostly go headless or build their own. Not every company stays headless: a few ecommerce brands have already moved from a headless setup back to their commerce platform's native storefront, and a couple more are planning or considering it. Only the completed and underway returns are counted in the moves above. Within the counted moves, Sitecore and WordPress show the largest observed net losses, while AEM and Contentful show the largest observed net gains. These are directional findings from the interview set, not vendor growth or churn rates. Because roughly a quarter of moves identify a destination without the platform being replaced, arrivals are documented more completely than departures, and net movement should not be treated as a complete accounting of customer transfers. The ratings for each platform are on what headless-CMS buyers wish they'd known, and the alternatives buyers weigh for each incumbent are on the Sitecore, AEM, WordPress and Contentful alternatives pages.
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What happens after the move
Buyers who have moved describe a migration that rarely ends on cutover day. One lost search visibility it never recovered: “there were technical SEO issues that weren't addressed in that rollout so we just automatically dropped and weren't able to regain that necessarily.” Another spent the first stretch rebuilding what the old site already did: “We actually lost features and functionality. So my first nine months there was just getting it back up to parity.” A third admits that “we've underestimated by about half how long it was going to take us to do anything.” Some moves do pay off quickly — “It has been phenomenal since the switch,” says the buyer who left a platform that was costing too much to keep running.
The counter-current: why many stay
Migration effort is the anchor buyers name most: “Unfortunately, moving away from a CMS is one of those painful decisions which would really impact us both from a marketing and product side.” Capacity is the second — “We are not looking to migrate at this point in time because it's very resource heavy and we are a bit under-resourced on the content and web front.” Skills hold teams in place: “you make a commitment and you kind of have to stick with it because the end users know the application, and that's the skill set.” Old sites are hard to move — “at this point we have so many historical websites with Wix that it's a pain to move.” And some platforms are simply tolerable: “It doesn't move the needle on making things go faster, but it's also not broken enough to replace it either.” Headless has its doubters among buyers who made the move: “I think that being headless was a mistake, and we should not be headless.”
What this means if you're weighing a switch
In about two of every three explained CMS moves, buyers name a broader event alongside the replacement decision, most often a commerce replatform or a consolidation, and many of those moves involve no stated complaint about the previous platform. Other moves are explained primarily by developer dependence, capability gaps, cost or upkeep, and these pressures can also contribute when a larger initiative creates the opportunity. Our recommendations, not practices buyers describe: if a commerce replatform or a site consolidation is coming, decide the content platform as part of it rather than inheriting whatever comes with the new stack; be clear whether the problem is the platform or the dependence on developers, since the moves in these interviews run toward enterprise suites and away from them for those different reasons; plan redirects and search visibility into the migration rather than after it; and budget for a period of rebuilding to parity, since that is what buyers who moved describe.
Common questions
Why do companies switch CMS platforms?
In these interviews the pressures that build are needing a developer for every change, capability gaps such as personalization, design flexibility or multisite, cost, and platforms that feel dated or take constant upkeep. In about two of every three explained moves buyers also name a broader event — most often a commerce replatform that takes the website with it, or consolidating many sites onto one platform, followed by redesigns, headless programmes and corporate decisions. Events and complaints often overlap, many event-led moves name no complaint at all, and no single event explains most moves.
Which CMS do companies switch to?
Among completed migrations and committed replacements being implemented in these interviews, Adobe Experience Manager is the most frequently observed destination, followed by Contentful, then WordPress and Shopify's native storefront. Moves onto AEM mostly come with an enterprise consolidation or an Adobe suite decision; moves onto Contentful and other headless platforms mostly come from wanting to stop needing a developer for every change. These are observed decisions, not churn rates.
Why do companies leave Sitecore?
In these interviews companies leaving Sitecore most often do so alongside a broader event — a commerce replatform, a move onto Adobe's suite, or consolidating sites onto one platform. Where they name the product, they describe developer dependence, capability gaps, an ageing version and the upkeep it takes. AEM is the commonest destination for Sitecore leavers here, and none moved from AEM to Sitecore.
Do companies go back from a headless CMS?
Some do. In these interviews a few ecommerce brands have completed a move from a headless setup back to their commerce platform's native storefront, usually as part of a commerce replatform and citing cost or the developer effort headless takes, and a couple more are planning or considering it. Headless platforms are still far more often a destination than the platform being replaced, and the commonest reason buyers give for moving to Contentful is to stop needing a developer for every change.
Why do companies stay with a CMS they complain about?
Because a CMS migration is a large effort that touches marketing and product at once, teams are often under-resourced for it, developers and editors are trained on the current platform, and older sites and integrations are hard to move. Some companies renew while saying they will probably stay, and some describe a platform that is not good but not broken enough to replace.
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