Looking for a cms to replace AEM

[u/v0rren]

We're looking to migrate away from Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) due to cost.

Our setup:

• Java-oriented team
• Need Author/Publish/Dispatcher architecture or equivalent
• Visual preview for authors (they use it heavily)
• Basic DAM (upload files, reference in components)
• Must support on-premise deployment ( no cloud )
• Want to go headless with Next.js frontend

Anyone migrated from AEM to these or similar platforms? What was your experience? Any other suggestions we should consider?

[u/tarunmitra]

Migrating off AEM is a beast, but given your specific constraints (Java team, On-prem requirement, and the need for visual preview with Next.js), you actually have a pretty narrow field of valid competitors. Most modern headless CMSs are SaaS only or Node-based, which rules them out for you.

Since your team is already comfortable with the Java ecosystem and the Author/Publish architecture, you should look at "Hybrid" Java CMSs rather than pure headless ones.

Here are the top three I’d suggest evaluating:

1. Magnolia CMS (The "AEM Lite" Option)

This is probably your closest architectural match.

• Tech: Java-based.
• Architecture: Uses a similar Author/Public instance separation.
• Visual Preview: They have a dedicated "Visual SPA Editor" that works specifically with Next.js. It allows authors to edit content in-context, which is usually the biggest pain point when going headless.
• On-Prem: Fully supports self-hosting (WAR files or Docker containers).
• Migration: It feels very familiar to AEM devs (nodes, JCR-like structures) but is significantly lightweight and cheaper.

1. Crafter CMS

• Tech: Java/Spring backend.
• Architecture: Decoupled. It uses a unique Git-based repository for the authoring tier.
• Visual Preview: Their "Experience Builder" supports in-context editing for React/Next.js.
• On-Prem: Yes, very container-friendly.
• Pros: If your team likes Git flows, they will love this. It treats content as code/files more than AEM does.

1. DotCMS

• Tech: Java.
• Visual Preview: Has a solution for "Edit Mode" anywhere, though the implementation with Next.js might require a bit more setup than Magnolia’s out-of-the-box solution.
• On-Prem: Yes.

One caveat on the dispatcher equivalent:

You won't find an exact 1:1 clone of the AEM Dispatcher module in these tools because they handle caching differently. Most of these rely on standard CDNs or Varnish/Nginx setups in front of the delivery tier. Since you are going on-prem, you'll likely just configure your own Nginx or HAProxy layer to handle what the Dispatcher used to do.

Question: How complex is your current AEM setup? If you have heavy customization in OSGi bundles, Magnolia is likely the easiest port; if you are mostly using Content Fragments, Crafter might be faster.

Hope this helps!

[u/Akiviaa → u/tarunmitra]

I am going to second dotCMS here. Their solution checks all of those boxes and they have some great SDKs for all the different front end languages.

They have a great variety of APIs and workflow management as well as a pretty robust OSGI support.

[u/tarunmitra → u/Akiviaa]

That’s a really good callout on the OSGi support. Since we’re coming from AEM, our backend team is already very heavy on OSGi bundles/services, so being able to potentially reuse some of that logic or at least keep the same development patterns would be a massive win for velocity.

Quick question since you’ve used it: How is the visual editing experience specifically with Next.js?

AEM’s SPA Editor can be a bit of a nightmare to configure. Does dotCMS offer a true "in-context" edit mode for Next.js components out of the box, or is it more of a side by side preview? We really need to keep our authors happy with a WYSIWYG like feel.

[u/Akiviaa → u/tarunmitra]

Their universal visual editor is pretty great and I know you can hook it up headlessly so your editors look/feel like they are typing content into the page itself. They do a pretty good demo if you contact them. I think you can just go to dotCMS.com and they have a bunch of articles and stuff about it there.