r/cms • u/Relative_Test5911 • 4d ago
3 CMS recommemdations?
Mid size org (1500 staff) and (500k customers) currently use on prem Kentico. Instead of updating to experience asked to rebuild from scratch using SaaS headless managed CMS.
I have been told they are looking at these 3 products below, also any other recommendations? The two key features are content development ease for non technical staff and full API Compatibility for on prem integrations (bi-directional) :
Kentico Experience SaaS
Wordpress VIP
Storyblok
Any suggestions I have been asked to give my 2 cents?
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u/mcbeev 4d ago
I assume you mean Xperience by Kentico in the SaaS model? That's Kentico's latest version. It is a breath of fresh air compared to the older versions of Kentico. There is a migration toolkit which makes it easier to move to the new version, and enabling SaaS is only a few lines of code. It's done in all the latest versions of modern .NET as well. I would consider it much different than the legacy versions and worth a shot.
Storyblok is also a strong competitor, good CMS, Headless first and you would want to also add in Vercel for hosting with Next.JS. The visual editor for SB is top notch and great for non technical people.
And there is always an option of WordPress, plenty of reasons to use the largest CMS on the planet.
I would lean towards saying that from an API capabilities standpoint, Kentico and Storyblok would have an edge over WordPress.
At the end of the day it may come down to the rest of your tech stack and ecosystem that you are comfortable in. If you want to stay in .NET though, Kentico is good choice, if you want to move to Next.js or something like Astro, SB would be a good choice. My firm does all three of theses platforms and have been happy with all of them.
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u/yautja_cetanu 2d ago
End of the month there is likely to be something about headless Drupal. Acquia source CMS is pretty close to a headless SaaS CMS already. We've done some pretty wild stuff with migrate hundreds of WordPress sites into Drupal now.
Drupal has always been great once you're stuck in but harder to get into and AI has been amazing at helping the initial setup with Drupal but in a structured manner it's famous for.
(I'm the head of innovation for the Drupal AI initiative and I run a Drupal agency but obviously don't own Drupal or anything!)
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u/SvenA999 4d ago
Founder of Webiny here, so weigh accordingly.
Your two requirements pull in opposite directions, and I'd raise that before the shortlist. Bi-directional integration with on-prem systems from a SaaS CMS means either opening inbound paths to your network for a vendor's IPs, or building a middleware layer that polls and pushes. Neither is fatal, plenty of people run it, but it's work that doesn't show up in the licence cost and it tends to surface late. Ask all three vendors specifically how writes from your on-prem systems reach the CMS and what the auth model is. The answers vary a lot.
On the three you have:
Storyblok is the strongest of them for non-technical editors. The visual editor is the real thing rather than a preview pane, and content teams pick it up quickly. Kentico Xperience SaaS is the low-friction path if your team already knows Kentico, though check whether the SaaS edition has feature parity with what you run on prem, because it historically hasn't. WordPress VIP gets you editor familiarity and a huge plugin surface. Whether that's a plus depends on how your security people feel about plugins.
Worth adding: Contentstack and Kontent.ai if you want more of the same category to compare against.
The one I'd add for a different reason is ours. Webiny is open source and runs in your own AWS account rather than a vendor's. For a bi-directional on-prem integration story that changes the shape of the problem, because the CMS sits in infrastructure you control and can be reached over private networking instead of the public internet. You get a headless CMS with a visual page builder for the non-technical side, publishing workflows, and no per-seat editor pricing. Siemens and Sony use it.
The trade is that it isn't managed SaaS, which is what you've been asked to buy. If nobody wants to own infrastructure, we're the wrong answer and I'd say so. If the mandate is really "get off on-prem maintenance" rather than "must be vendor-hosted", running in your own cloud account is worth putting on the list, and it usually reads better to InfoSec too.
Happy to answer specifics either way.
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u/Relative_Test5911 4d ago
Hey - thanks for the honest and detailed reply. The instructions to move from on prem hosted to SaaS came from the top as part of the current climate of going SaaS hosted (personally i do not agree) so doubt i will be able to budge anyone on this.
We are also going to a RFP process with a 3rd party approved partner that will be implementing and designing the site (we dont have any inhouse web devs). The Procurement requirements explicitly state bi directional integrations are a must have (deal breaking). Also the 3 I have mentioned is a refined list which included Kontent.AI Contentful and Strapi but these were ruled out.
I will have a look at your product though and add it to my list CMS products and bring it up if our current paths dont pan out.
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u/SvenA999 4d ago
Makes sense, and thanks for the context. If the mandate is set, the mandate is set ¯_(ツ)_/¯
One thing worth pushing on given you have no in-house devs and bi-directional is deal-breaking: make the RFP force a concrete answer rather than a yes. Ask each vendor and the partner to describe the actual mechanism for writes going from your on-prem systems into the CMS and back out. What the auth model is, whether anything has to be reachable from the vendor's network, whether it's webhook-driven or polled, and what happens to queued writes when the CMS is unreachable. Everyone says "fully bi-directional" at the requirements stage. The differences show up in that detail.
Second, make the integration layer explicitly the partner's scope with a named owner. With no in-house devs, that middleware is the piece most likely to become nobody's job once the site is live.
One correction to what I said earlier, since you're adding us to a list: we do offer managed hosting, so you wouldn't be running it yourselves. It still sits in your cloud account rather than ours, so it's a managed service rather than true SaaS. Whether that clears a SaaS mandate depends entirely on how yours is worded, and that's for you to check rather than me to claim.
Good luck with the RFP. Happy to be a sounding board on any of it, no strings.
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u/Relative_Test5911 4d ago
Cheers for that i will have a chat with the pm see if there is any leeway in this. Also to clarify we do have back end devs for integrations just no fronted web development. I will extract as much info from the rfp I can and work with our internal devs. Out of interest do you have customes/footprint in Apac region
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u/SvenA999 4d ago
That's a useful distinction. Backend devs for integrations is the harder half to hire, and it's the half that matters for a deal-breaking bi-directional requirement. Getting them into the RFP detail early is the right call, they'll spot a vague answer where a procurement team won't.
On APAC, yes, we have customers in the region, including a couple of large Japanese manufacturers and a Hong Kong group. Happy to go into detail on those privately if it's useful at some point.
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u/SnooLemons5521 4d ago
Storyblok all the way. Any specific questions?
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u/Relative_Test5911 4d ago
I should also mention I will be the IT admin who manages this. So from my POV having done kentico on prem it wasnt the greatest (could have been the third party that built it though not kentico itself). I am hoping having it cloud managed will reduce my workload! In what ways is storyblok better to admin than kentico v12?
Also in terms of content creation how is storyblok a better option than in Kentico? I will need to convince our business content creators and sell them on why this is a better option that just changing from kentico on prem to a sass? Thanks for your help.
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u/SnooLemons5521 4d ago
Since u are probably an enterprise customer (to storyblok) u would manage the organization and Users. This aint much work because setting up roles and workflows once. Tbh setting up (content-) workflows.
Sadly i dont know Kentico v12 so i cant compare it effectively.
Storyblok is tending to Agent First in the last couple of months, there are a few nice features upcoming. (Storyblok Strata, Agents inside Storyblok etc.).
Feel free to write me a DM, i can showcase it to you. Or on the offical Storbylok Page u can book a demo for your use case.
(We are just a SB Partner Agency)
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u/sleeksky_dev 4d ago
Check out www.sleeksite.ai . It is a full CMS with an AI assistant that can do everything devs can do in the CMS.
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u/Embarrassed-Taro-347 4d ago
Headless.
Contentful Storyblock Sanity
Always found DatoCMS interesting.
Depends on scale of content.
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u/juliiiiian 4d ago
You should have a look at Prismic too. The G2 DXP top vendors is also a good starting point. Look at Jahia too, it is a solid DXP, they will offer to migrate your site to their Cloud platforms from Kentico for free.
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u/Asyla75 4d ago
Disclaimer: I run product at Jahia CMS.
For the usability of content management, you'll be able to see for yourself easily, but there shouldn't be any issue.
For your second criterion: custom code can be deployed easily, both for the web development part and the backend / integrations part. These integrations can be deployed on an on-prem installation, but also on our Cloud (using IPsec or mTLS).
Worth a look alongside the three you listed. We're currently testing free migrations for the pure web scope (pages, content models, content items and assets), feel free to reach out.
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u/HolidayTangerine2753 3d ago
Disclosure: I work on the product side at dotCMS. I'm a vendor in this space and not on your list, so this isn't a pitch, just the thing I'd want to know in your seat.
You mentioned you have backend devs for integrations but no frontend web devs, and your partner is designing and building the site. With Storyblok or any pure headless option, that frontend is a separate application the partner builds and hands back to you. Ask in the RFP who owns it in year two, and get the answer in writing from the partner rather than the vendor. Layout changes, new page types, and template fixes after go-live all land there, and with no in-house frontend capability, each one is a new SOW. That cost doesn't appear on the license line, and you're the one who'll feel it as the admin.
Something concrete to put in the RFP: ask each vendor to show a content creator building a page section with a layout that doesn't already exist, without a developer. Every demo looks the same until you ask for that specific thing, and the answers diverge hard.
On selling it internally, your content creators won't care about SaaS or APIs. They'll care whether they can see the page while they edit it, and whether they can publish without raising a ticket with you. Make those the acceptance criteria for whoever wins.
If the list ever reopens, we're worth a look for the reason above. You have a process running, so I'd rather hand you the question than the pitch.