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Sanity / Contentful / StrapiLondon-Based TeamAPI-First Architecture

Your London Team Ships Content Without Developer Tickets

Q: Can we meet in person to plan the CMS migration?

Yes. We're based in Zone 1 and we'll do onsite discovery workshops if it helps get stakeholder alignment. Usually we'll meet once for kickoff, then work remotely day-to-day with Slack and Linear. Some clients prefer weekly in-person sprint reviews during the build phase -- we can do that. Most technical decisions happen async through Loom recordings and GitHub discussions, but face-to-face time helps when you're mapping complex editorial workflows or explaining the migration strategy to non-technical teams.

Q: Do you handle GDPR compliance for headless CMS setups?

Yes. Every London client we work with needs GDPR-compliant data handling. We'll configure your CMS with proper data residency controls, audit logging, and user consent workflows. For Sanity, that means hosting datasets in EU regions and setting up field-level permissions. For Contentful, we'll use the EU datacenter and configure role-based access. We don't provide legal advice, but we'll implement the technical controls your DPO specifies. If you're collecting user-generated content, we'll build deletion workflows and export tools to satisfy subject access requests.

Q: Which headless CMS do you recommend for London-based teams?

Depends on your editorial team's technical comfort and your content model complexity. Sanity works well for structured content with relationships -- publishers, ecommerce catalogs, event platforms. The Studio UI is fast and the query language (GROQ) is powerful. Contentful fits teams migrating from WordPress who want a more traditional CMS feel. Strapi's good if you need self-hosted for compliance reasons. We've shipped production systems on all three for London clients. We'll recommend based on your content types, editorial workflows, and where your data needs to live.

Q: What's the typical timeline for a headless CMS migration in London?

A straightforward Sanity or Contentful build with schema design, content migration, and Next.js frontend takes 8–12 weeks. Week 1–2: discovery and content modeling workshops. Week 3–5: CMS schema build and editorial workflow setup. Week 6–8: frontend development and preview environments. Week 9–10: content migration and editor training. Week 11–12: QA, performance tuning, launch. Enterprise migrations from legacy systems with complex taxonomies or multisite structures can run 14–18 weeks. We'll give you a fixed-price quote with milestone-based payments after the discovery phase.

Q: Have you worked with London agencies who resell headless CMS builds?

Yes. We white-label headless CMS development for London design agencies and brand studios who don't have in-house Next.js or Sanity expertise. You stay client-facing, we handle the technical build. Communication runs through Slack, you'll get weekly progress updates, and we'll join client calls if needed. We've done this for agencies in Soho, Fitzrovia, and King's Cross. Typical engagement: you sell the project, we deliver the CMS + frontend, you own the ongoing client relationship. We're happy to sign NDAs and stay behind the scenes.

Q: What is a headless CMS and how is it different from WordPress?

A headless CMS stores and manages content but has no built-in frontend. Content is delivered via APIs to any frontend — Next.js, mobile apps, kiosks. WordPress couples content and presentation together, which limits performance and multi-channel delivery. Headless gives you editorial flexibility without frontend constraints.

Q: Which headless CMS should I choose: Sanity, Contentful, or Strapi?

Sanity suits teams that want maximum customisation and real-time collaboration. Contentful is strong for enterprise organisations with complex content governance. Strapi is open-source and self-hosted, ideal when data sovereignty matters. We assess your editorial workflow, budget, and technical requirements before recommending a platform.

Q: How long does a headless CMS project take to build?

Most headless CMS projects run six to eight weeks from content audit to launch. Simple marketing sites with under ten content types can ship in four weeks. Complex builds with multi-language support, e-commerce integration, or large content migrations may take ten to twelve weeks.

Q: Can you migrate our existing WordPress content to a headless CMS?

Yes. We build automated migration scripts that extract posts, pages, media, taxonomies, and metadata from WordPress. Content is transformed into structured schemas, validated against the new model, and imported with full revision history. We verify every record with checksums before decommissioning the old system.

Q: Will our editors need to learn to code to use a headless CMS?

No. Modern headless CMS platforms like Sanity and Contentful provide visual editing interfaces. We customise these studios with drag-and-drop page builders, live preview, and role-based dashboards so your editorial team works faster than they did in WordPress — without touching code.

If you're a product lead in London watching content updates queue behind engineering sprints, you've hit the monolith wall.

We build headless CMS solutions that disconnect your content from its presentation layer, giving editorial teams full control while developers ship faster frontends.

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98+

Lighthouse Score

Avg. across builds

< 200ms

TTFB

Edge-cached globally

60%

Faster Publishes

vs monolithic CMS

Vendor Lock-in

Content stays yours

What Headless CMS Actually Decouples -- And What Stays Connected

Your editor hits publish. The webhook fires. Your Next.js frontend rebuilds in 22 seconds, pulling fresh content through a GraphQL layer that validates every field before it renders. That's headless CMS: your content lives in a structured repository (Sanity, Contentful, or Strapi), served through APIs to any frontend your business needs -- website, mobile app, digital kiosk, email template. Traditional platforms bundle content storage, editing UI, and frontend rendering into one brittle monolith. Headless splits them. Editors get a purpose-built dashboard with custom workflows and role-based permissions. Developers build in React or Vue without touching the CMS codebase. Your pages load in under 1.2 seconds because they're static-rendered at build time, not assembled per request. When you need to publish to a new channel, you query the same API -- no content duplication, no second CMS licence. The architecture scales without forcing a platform migration every three years.

What is holding your current website back?

Common gaps we find in nearly every audit.

WordPress or Drupal rebuilds take months and still feel sluggish

Risk: You spend six figures on a monolithic rebuild that fails Core Web Vitals within a year.

Editorial teams are blocked by developers for every content change

Risk: Publishing bottlenecks slow campaigns and cost revenue during peak periods.

Your content is locked inside a single platform with no API access

Risk: Expanding to mobile apps or new channels means duplicating content by hand.

Page load times exceed 3 seconds despite caching plugins

Risk: Google penalises slow pages, and bounce rates climb above 50% on mobile.

Your CMS vendor raised prices and migration looks impossible

Risk: Annual licensing costs compound while you stay locked into their ecosystem.

Multiple microsites each run their own CMS with separate logins

Risk: Brand inconsistency, duplicated effort, and security vulnerabilities multiply across properties.

How We Build This Right

Every safeguard, built in from Day 1.

Content Modelling

We design structured content schemas that serve web, mobile, and future channels from a single source of truth. Every field is typed, validated, and documented.

Preview & Visual Editing

Live preview environments let editors see changes before publishing. No more guessing what content looks like on the frontend.

API Security & Auth

API keys, RBAC, and webhook verification are configured from day one. Content delivery endpoints are read-only and rate-limited.

Edge Caching & ISR

Content is served from Vercel's edge network with Incremental Static Regeneration. Pages revalidate in seconds, not minutes.

Migration & Import

We extract, transform, and load content from your existing CMS with full revision history. Zero content loss, verified with checksums.

Analytics & Content Performance

Structured content enables granular analytics tracking per component and content block. Measure what actually drives conversions.

What We Build

Purpose-built features for your industry.

Rebuild cycles stretch to six months because frontend and CMS are welded together

Bespoke Sanity Studio dashboards with custom input components, editorial workflows, and role-based access your team actually uses

Content changes require developer intervention -- editors can't fix a typo without a ticket

Composable page builders in Contentful that let marketers assemble landing pages from pre-approved blocks -- no dev queue

Page speed stalls above 3 seconds despite every caching plugin your host recommended

Typed GraphQL schemas with automatic code generation so your frontend never queries a field that doesn't exist

Your content is trapped in proprietary schemas with no export path to mobile or IoT

Locale-aware content structures with field-level translation fallback chains and automatic hreflang tag injection

Licensing fees compound annually while migration risk keeps you locked in their ecosystem

Webhook-driven deployments that rebuild your Next.js site in under 30 seconds when editors hit publish

Each microsite runs its own CMS instance -- login sprawl and brand drift multiply

Unified headless architecture connecting Sanity content with Shopify, Saleor, or Medusa product catalogues in one editorial experience

Built on a Modern, Secure Stack

Next.jsSanityContentfulStrapiVercelGraphQLTypeScriptTailwind CSS

Working with London clients

London-specific delivery

London market context

London's tech scene runs on headless architecture. From fintech around Old Street to ecommerce brands in Shoreditch, teams here expect composable stacks that scale globally. GDPR compliance isn't optional -- every CMS needs proper data residency controls. The market's mature: buyers know the difference between Contentful and Sanity, they've tried Prismic or Strapi, and they're looking for implementation partners who've shipped production systems. AWS eu-west-2 latency matters when your editors are in Clerkenwell and your API consumers are worldwide. We see two buyer profiles: funded startups moving off Webflow, and enterprise teams migrating legacy WordPress multisites to headless. Both need structured content models, preview environments, and editorial workflows that don't break.

How we work with London

London's our HQ studio -- you'll work directly with Aryan and the core engineering team. We can meet in person for discovery workshops, sprint planning, or technical reviews. Most weeks we're at the studio in Zone 1; some weeks we're remote but always on GMT. Communication runs through Slack for daily updates, Linear for tickets, Loom for async demos. You'll get calendar invites for standups and retros. For London clients, we'll do kickoff onsite if that helps stakeholder alignment. Remote-first by default, but in-person available when it moves the work forward.

Recent London project

Whitechapel Heritage Press

independent publishing

A London publisher with 400+ book titles needed a headless CMS to manage metadata, excerpts, author bios, and chapter previews across their main site and three imprints. Their WordPress install was sluggish and didn't support structured content relationships. We built a custom Sanity schema with cross-references between authors, series, and titles, then connected it to a Next.js frontend deployed on Vercel. Editors got a portable text editor with custom blocks for pull quotes and footnotes. We migrated 12 years of WordPress content with zero downtime using incremental static regeneration.

Editors now publish new titles in under 10 minutes instead of an hour. Lighthouse performance score went from 52 to 97 on mobile. The structured content model powers their API for third-party retail partners, which wasn't possible before.

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Budget context for London projects

London headless CMS projects typically range £18k–£65k depending on content model complexity and migration scope. A simple Sanity + Next.js build with 5-8 content types and editorial workflows runs £22k–£32k. Enterprise migrations from WordPress multisite or Sitecore with custom field mappings, preview environments, and role-based publishing go £45k–£65k. Monthly retainers for ongoing schema changes and CMS updates start at £2,400. Funded startups around Shoreditch often budget £25k–£35k for MVP headless builds. Enterprise clients in the City allocate £50k+ for compliance-heavy implementations with audit logs and content governance.

Our Development Process

From discovery to launch. Quality at every step.

Content Audit & Schema Design

Week 1

We map every content type, relationship, and editorial workflow in your organisation. The output is a documented content model ready for implementation.

CMS Setup & Studio Build

Week 2–3

We configure your chosen headless CMS, build custom editing interfaces, set up roles and permissions, and deploy preview environments.

Frontend Development

Week 3–5

Next.js frontend built against the live CMS API. Server components, edge rendering, and component-level data fetching for optimal performance.

Content Migration & QA

Week 5–6

Automated migration scripts move existing content with full validation. We test every page, every breakpoint, every CMS field against acceptance criteria.

Launch & Handover

Week 6–7

Deployment to production with monitoring, editor training sessions, and 30 days of post-launch support. Your team is self-sufficient from day one.

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