Migrate to Payload CMS without losing content, SEO, or editorial workflows.

Eliminating plugin debt, improving performance, and moving to a typed system your developers can actually extend — without the constant security patching and plugin-conflict maintenance.

Unwinding years of plugin-dependent data, cleaning up ACF sprawl, and mapping Gutenberg or Classic Editor HTML into structured Payload fields and Lexical blocks.

Posts, pages, categories, tags, media, users, and roles map cleanly to Payload collections. ACF field groups become typed field definitions.

Gutenberg and Classic Editor HTML are parsed into Lexical blocks; WooCommerce product/order data, shortcodes, and plugin-specific blobs need custom transformation scripts.

Medium. Permalink structures must map 1:1 and 301 redirect automation covers every retained URL. Most clients see an SEO lift from improved speed and schema markup.

When plugin debt, security patching, or performance ceilings are blocking your roadmap.

Adobe Experience Manager licensing scales per author and per environment, and most changes route through specialized AEM developers or a systems integrator. Teams move to Payload to cut licensing overhead and regain a code-first, TypeScript-native stack their in-house engineers own end to end.

AEM’s JCR repository, nested content fragments, and DAM-managed assets don’t map 1:1 to a document model. Workflows, versioning, replication, and permissions are deeply embedded in the platform.

Content fragments and experience fragments translate well into Payload collections and blocks; structured component definitions become typed field groups.

DAM assets need re-processing and re-referencing; workflows and replication rules are rebuilt as Payload hooks and access policies rather than migrated verbatim.

High. AEM URLs often include dispatcher and selector segments, and vanity URLs plus redirect maps must be reconstructed carefully.

When AEM licensing and integration overhead exceed the value of its enterprise workflows, or when you want to bring development in-house.

Drupal’s entity-reference and Views layers are powerful but opaque — extending them requires Drupal specialists. Payload gives you a typed REST/GraphQL API your generalist team can maintain and extend without a PhD in Drupal architecture.

Nodes, fields, taxonomies, paragraph bundles, and Views queries form a tightly coupled graph that resists flat extraction.

Content types map to collections, taxonomy vocabularies to relationship fields, and paragraphs to Lexical blocks or nested groups.

Views-generated listings and dynamic references are re-implemented as queries and front-end logic; field formatters and contrib-module data often need manual interpretation.

Medium to high. Pathauto aliases, taxonomy term paths, and multilingual path prefixes must be preserved 1:1.

When your team spends more time managing Drupal module upgrades and entity architecture than shipping features.

Wix locks content into a proprietary builder with limited export, poor API access, and template-driven URL structures that hurt SEO at scale. Moving to Payload gives you a system you actually own, with a real data model and a Next.js frontend.

There is no clean content export — data lives inside template blocks and Wix’s closed data model.

Almost nothing maps directly. Wix is a site builder, not a structured CMS, so the content model is rebuilt from scratch in Payload.

Content is extracted from the rendered site and re-authored into a typed Payload schema; media is re-hosted and re-linked.

High. Wix URLs are messy and often change, so a full redirect map from old Wix URLs to clean new slugs is essential.

When you have outgrown the builder and want ownership of your content layer and frontend.

Squarespace is great for getting started but caps customization, data portability, and integration. Growing teams hit walls on schema design, multilingual content, and headless delivery.

There is no structured export; blog posts, products, and page content sit inside template-specific structures.

Like Wix, the model is rebuilt — Squarespace collections become Payload collections and Globals.

Blog content and product/catalog data are extracted and re-modeled; the design is rebuilt on Next.js.

Medium. Squarespace blog and product URLs need redirect mapping to the new structure.

When you need headless delivery, custom data relationships, or full ownership of your content layer.

Webflow’s CMS is shallow beyond marketing pages — complex relationships, localization, and backend logic push teams toward a real headless CMS. Per-seat and hosting costs also climb as you scale.

Webflow CMS collections have hard item limits and limited field types, and reference fields are basic.

Webflow CMS collections map to Payload collections and reference fields to relationships — the mapping is conceptually clean.

The frontend rebuilds on Next.js while the collection schema expands to richer field types and nested relationships.

Medium. Webflow CMS item slugs and collection paths should map 1:1, but the domain and hosting move requires careful DNS and redirect handling.

When Webflow’s CMS limits or hosting costs block your roadmap and you want a Next.js + Payload frontend.

Cut SaaS API and record costs, regain ownership of your backend code, and drop the proprietary query layers (GROQ for Sanity, Contentful’s billing model). Move to a standard TypeScript-first environment.

Contentful Rich Text JSON must convert to Payload’s Lexical format; Sanity Portable Text plus GROQ must move to standard REST/GraphQL with Lexical.

Content types and schemas map to collections, locales to Payload localization, and references to relationship fields.

Rich text formats need format conversion, and asset pipelines plus CDN references are re-pointed to your own storage.

Low. URLs are usually frontend-controlled, so SEO risk lives in the frontend rebuild rather than the CMS swap.

When API billing, vendor lock-in, or integration limits outweigh the value of the managed editor.

Better TypeScript integration and a far superior developer experience for custom admin extensions, with a fully code-defined schema that is easier to version and review.

While structurally similar to Payload, Strapi still requires a full rebuild of the admin UI and a data-load script to handle relationship differences.

Content types map almost directly to Payload collections and components to blocks or field groups.

Relationship IDs and media references are remapped during import; lifecycle hooks are re-implemented as Payload hooks.

Low. Like other headless CMSs, URLs are frontend-controlled.

When you want a tighter TypeScript workflow and a code-first schema without leaving the self-hosted, open-source model.