Your Contentful Bill Just Hit $489/Month and You're Still Pre-Revenue
Why leave Contentful?
- Paying $489/month jumps to undisclosed enterprise rates with no warning
- Editing the admin UI requires enterprise tier or custom React workarounds
- Fetching a post with related content burns three separate API calls
- Adding a staging environment or temporary user doubles your monthly bill
- Parsing Contentful's rich text AST requires custom renderers for every frontend
- Real-time collaboration locks behind higher pricing tiers your team can't justify
What you gain
- Your first three editors and 500K monthly API requests cost nothing
- GROQ queries return posts, authors, and images in one call with your exact field structure
- Sanity Studio ships as a React app you rebuild to match your editorial workflow
- Your content team edits the same document simultaneously on the free tier
- Portable Text serializes to HTML, React, or Vue without AST archaeology
- Your CMS bill scales with actual usage, not arbitrary seat and environment taxes
The Contentful pricing problem
Contentful''s pricing model charges per space, per environment, and per user. As your content operations scale, costs grow non-linearly. Teams that started on Contentful''s free tier find themselves on $489/month plans -- and then discover that the next tier is enterprise pricing with no published rates.
Why teams switch to Sanity
Sanity''s free tier is significantly more generous than Contentful''s. But pricing is not the only reason teams switch. GROQ (Sanity''s query language) is more powerful and flexible than Contentful''s Content Delivery API. Real-time collaborative editing is built in. And Sanity Studio is a fully customisable React application -- not a fixed admin UI with limited extension points.
The migration process
Contentful content exports cleanly via its Management API. I write migration scripts that transform Contentful content types to Sanity schemas and migrate all entries, assets, and relationships. The frontend is updated to query Sanity instead of Contentful -- often with significant query simplification thanks to GROQ.
The migration process
Discovery & Audit
We map every page, post, media file, redirect, and plugin. Nothing gets missed.
Architecture Plan
New stack designed for your content structure, SEO requirements, and performance targets.
Staged Migration
Content migrated in batches. Each batch verified before the next begins.
SEO Preservation
301 redirects, canonical tags, sitemap, robots.txt — every ranking signal carried over.
Launch & Monitor
DNS cutover with zero downtime. 30-day monitoring period included.
Contentful vs Sanity
| Metric | Contentful | Sanity |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Limited entries + types | Generous (500K API calls) |
| Query language | REST API (multiple calls) | GROQ (single query) |
| Admin customisation | Limited extensions | Full React app (Sanity Studio) |
| Collaborative editing | Paid tier only | Built in (all plans) |
| Rich text format | Complex AST | Portable Text (cleaner) |
| Pricing model | Non-linear scaling | Predictable, linear |
Common questions
Why are teams leaving Contentful?
Three reasons: pricing that scales non-linearly (free tier to $489/month with a big jump to enterprise), a fixed admin UI with limited customisation, and a query API that requires multiple calls for related content. Sanity solves all three.
How complex is the migration from Contentful to Sanity?
Contentful has excellent export tools (Management API). Content types map cleanly to Sanity schemas. Entries and assets migrate with a custom script that preserves all relationships. A typical migration takes 3-5 weeks including frontend query updates.
Will my editors need retraining?
Sanity Studio has a different interface than Contentful, but most editors prefer it within a few days. The editing experience is more intuitive — especially for structured content with nested components. I provide documentation and a walkthrough session.
How does GROQ compare to Contentful's API?
GROQ fetches exactly the data you need in a single query — including nested references and computed fields. Contentful's API often requires multiple calls and client-side data assembly. Frontend code becomes simpler and faster with GROQ.
What about Contentful webhooks and integrations?
Sanity supports webhooks for all content events. Existing integrations (Vercel rebuild triggers, Slack notifications, etc.) are reconfigured to use Sanity webhooks. The functionality is preserved with minimal effort.
Is Sanity's free tier really better than Contentful's?
Sanity's free tier includes 3 non-admin users, 500K API requests/month, and 20GB bandwidth. Contentful's free tier limits you to 5 users total with 1M API calls but aggressive content type and entry limits. For most small-to-medium teams, Sanity's free tier is more usable.
Ready to migrate?
Free assessment. We'll audit your current site and give you a clear migration plan — no commitment.
Let's build
something together.
Whether it's a migration, a new build, or an SEO challenge — the Social Animal team would love to hear from you.