Why So Many Companies Are Moving Their Website to Contentstack

Many organizations are replatforming from traditional CMS solutions (Drupal, WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager) to Contentstack’s headless content management platform. The driving reasons are clear: higher return on investment (ROI) and faster implementation and time-to-market. This report examines case studies and benchmarks illustrating how Contentstack delivers cost savings and rapid deployment compared to Drupal, WordPress (WP), and AEM. We also highlight industry trends in headless CMS adoption and summarize key metrics in a comparison table.

Rising Adoption of Headless CMS for ROI and Agility

Businesses are rapidly embracing headless CMS architectures to meet modern digital demands. Gartner predicts that by 2025 about 70% of new web applications will use a headless CMS, up from under 40% in 2020. Surveys show these adopters realize significant benefits: 69% report improved time-to-market and productivity, and 41% have seen a measurable ROI increase after switching to headless CMS. In contrast, legacy platforms often struggle to keep up. For example, nearly half of WordPress users say publishing content takes over an hour (14% say over a full day) on traditional setups. This gap underscores why companies are moving to more agile, composable solutions.

Forrester’s Total Economic Impact (TEI) study of Contentstack quantified these advantages. The study found a composite enterprise achieved 295% ROI over three years by moving to Contentstack. The ROI came from both cost reduction and revenue gains: content publishing processes became 90% faster, saving ~$2.0M, and content development time dropped 80%, saving another ~$0.5M. These efficiency gains freed resources for innovation and drove a 4% increase in revenue (an extra $3M profit) for the composite organization. In short, modern headless CMS solutions like Contentstack are delivering faster output with fewer resources, translating directly into financial returns.

Below, we compare how Contentstack stacks up against Drupal, WordPress, and AEM in two critical areas: ROI & cost and speed to implement/time-to-market. We reference real-world case studies from mid-market and enterprise firms that have migrated to Contentstack, highlighting quantitative results such as implementation timelines, cost savings, marketing agility, and productivity improvements.

ROI and Cost Savings: Contentstack vs. Legacy CMS

Contentstack: Lower TCO and High ROI

Contentstack’s cloud-native, API-first platform has proven to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) while boosting business outcomes. As noted, a Forrester-commissioned analysis showed 295% ROI over 3 years for organizations using Contentstack. This was driven by savings in licensing, infrastructure, and labor: one enterprise saved $2.0 million by accelerating content delivery (90% reduction in time-to-publish) and another $507,000 by eliminating unnecessary developer workloads, thanks to Contentstack’s business-user-friendly tools. In practical terms, Contentstack lets teams do more with less, publishing more content in less time, which directly translates to cost efficiency.

Specific case studies echo these savings:

• Elastic (Tech Industry): After migrating from WordPress to Contentstack, Elastic slashed its content management costs and infrastructure spend. By bringing content updates in-house (no longer relying on external web agencies), Elastic reduced ongoing content management costs by 78%. Infrastructure costs plunged as well: under WordPress they spent ~$7,000 per month on servers, which Contentstack cut by over 87% to ~$890 per month. Overall, Elastic is now operating at roughly one-fifth the development cost of their previous WordPress setup, a dramatic TCO improvement. As their webmaster summarized, “Since moving to Contentstack, Elastic’s costs have been reduced across the board,” while traffic doubled at a fraction of previous cost.
• Pirelli (Manufacturing): This global tire manufacturer chose Contentstack specifically to reduce CMS operating costs and remove vendor/license fees associated with their legacy platform. By migrating 218 regional websites onto Contentstack, Pirelli “right-sized” its licensing and eliminated reliance on costly third-party support. The result was streamlined content management and lower ongoing expenses. In short, Pirelli achieved a more scalable solution without the prohibitive license costs of their old system.
• Drupal vs Contentstack Cost: Drupal is an open-source CMS with no license fees, which gives it an apparent cost advantage at first glance. Indeed, a 5-year TCO analysis noted Drupal can be a cost-effective choice for large enterprises due to zero licensing and a vast free plugin ecosystem. However, Drupal’s hidden costs lie in development and maintenance. Complex Drupal projects often require specialized (and costly) developers and lengthy implementation cycles. Upgrading between major Drupal versions (e.g. 7 to 9) can demand significant effort, and ongoing support may need external partners. These factors can erode ROI if an organization doesn’t have ample in-house expertise. By contrast, Contentstack’s subscription includes fully managed infrastructure, automatic scaling, and frequent feature updates, reducing the burden on internal IT. One comparison noted that Contentstack’s flexible pricing and lower upkeep deliver higher ROI than traditional platforms with hefty maintenance overhead. In essence, Contentstack shifts costs from CAPEX (servers, upgrades, lengthy dev work) to a predictable OPEX model, often yielding net savings. For example, Ebner Media, which migrated dozens of magazine sites from WordPress to Contentstack, was able to cut developer resource needs by 50% and unlock new revenue streams, improving their cost-to-value ratio substantially.
• WordPress vs Contentstack Cost:  WordPress is free to install, but enterprise users often encounter scaling costs (performance plugins, security add-ons, larger hosting requirements) and may rely on agencies for custom development. Elastic’s experience was telling: their WordPress environment was so cumbersome that even simple content changes incurred consulting delays and fees, hurting their agility. Moving to Contentstack eliminated these bottlenecks and outside expenses. Additionally, WordPress’s total cost can spike with downtime or security issues, whereas Contentstack’s SaaS model ensures uptime and security patches are handled by the provider. Contentstack’s customers also avoid the costly version migrations that open-source CMS sometimes require. All these factors contribute to a lower TCO. In Elastic’s case, monthly platform costs shrank by almost 90% after migrating off WordPress, and marketing teams can now publish content without incurring developer or agency charge, a direct boost to ROI.
• AEM vs Contentstack Cost: Adobe Experience Manager is a powerful enterprise CMS/DXP, but it comes with very high licensing and implementation costs. AEM licenses can run in the six or seven figures annually, and Adobe typically requires certified partners or staff, adding to expenses. Contentstack, on the other hand, is a subscription SaaS with a usage-based model and no infrastructure to manage. Many companies find Contentstack far more cost-effective than AEM for similar capabilities. For instance, Burberry and Walmart (among other global brands) have adopted Contentstack to avoid the heavy licensing fees of legacy DXPs. The Contentstack blog explicitly highlights “cost-effectiveness: lower initial costs with high ROI” as a key advantage over AEM. While AEM can deliver value if fully utilized, its steep TCO means organizations must invest heavily up front. Contentstack’s composable approach lets teams “start small” and add capabilities as needed, often yielding quicker payback. In practice, Contentstack customers have optimized costs by eliminating third-party dependencies and only paying for what they use. The bottom line: for many migrating off AEM, Contentstack provides similar enterprise functionality at a fraction of the ongoing cost, improving the ROI of their digital experience initiatives.

Contentstack consistently demonstrates ROI through cost savings in operations, infrastructure, and labor. Case studies report reduced licensing costs, less spending on outside support, and better utilization of developer time. Whereas Drupal and WordPress offer low entry cost, their maintenance and scaling can eat into ROI. AEM offers extensive features but at a very high price point. Contentstack strikes a balance by delivering enterprise-grade capabilities with a lower TCO, translating to tangible ROI gains (e.g. 295% ROI in three years). Many organizations also see positive revenue impact after adopting Contentstack, for example, Dawn Foods saw a 50% increase in online orders after launching their Contentstack-powered e-commerce site, indicating that the investment in a modern CMS can directly drive top-line growth as well as reduce costs.

Speed to Implementation and Time-to-Market

Speed is a critical metric in digital initiatives. Migrating to Contentstack often dramatically accelerates both initial implementation and ongoing content delivery cycles. Below we compare the timeline and agility outcomes for Contentstack vs. Drupal, WordPress, and AEM.

Faster Initial Implementation

Contentstack’s implementation is notably fast thanks to its cloud setup and intuitive tooling. In multiple cases, companies have stood up new sites or completed complex migrations in a matter of weeks or a few months:

• Elastic’s 3-Month Replatform: Elastic had an “aggressive timeline” to redesign and merge their web domains. Using Contentstack, they were up and running in just 3 months, which “by CMS implementation standards…would’ve easily taken 6 to 9 months” on a traditional platform. This is a time savings of at least 50% compared to the norm. The quick deployment was aided by Contentstack’s ease-of-use. Onboarding for new users required virtually 0 hours of training due to the intuitive interface. Elastic’s team could migrate content and go live rapidly, whereas their old WordPress system (with its complex staging and duplication issues) would have made a similar overhaul much slower.
• Pirelli’s Global Migration in <1 Year: Pirelli set a goal of migrating over 200 websites from their legacy CMS in under 12 months, a daunting timeline. With Contentstack’s help, they completed 218 site migrations in just 10 months. A dedicated team of 13 used Contentstack features like modular content blocks and webhooks to automate and accelerate the process. Achieving this scale of migration so quickly would be extremely difficult on monolithic systems. (For context, an Adobe partner notes that a “proper migration [to AEM]…happens over the course of a few months, not weeks or days” and requires careful pacing. Pirelli’s full replatform of hundreds of sites in under a year exemplifies the speed of a headless approach.) This fast implementation minimized Pirelli’s period of dual-running old and new systems, which in turn contained costs and risks. It also meant the business began reaping benefits (better performance, easier content updates) sooner.
• Drupal Implementation vs Contentstack: Drupal projects often involve significant setup and development time, especially for enterprises with complex requirements. Installing and configuring Drupal can be a “painful exercise” with many steps and a steep learning curve for new users. Medium-complexity Drupal migrations typically span 3-6 months or more depending on custom development needed. Contentstack, in contrast, can be deployed with minimal configuration. One internal study noted a new website could be stood up in 4 steps on Contentstack, with business users onboarded in under 30 minutes, and content publishing happening 2-10× faster thereafter. In essence, Contentstack trades the upfront complexity of Drupal for an out-of-the-box agility. Organizations that want to avoid lengthy development cycles (and version upgrade projects) are drawn to Contentstack for this reason. While Drupal’s flexibility is powerful, that flexibility comes at the cost of time and technical overhead. Contentstack’s composable, API-first model lets developers and content teams move faster by splitting frontend and backend work and leveraging ready-made integrations.
• WordPress Quick to Start, Slower to Scale: WordPress is known for its quick initial setup for simple sites. A small business can launch a basic WP site in days. However, at enterprise scale, WordPress implementations can slow down. Customizing WordPress for complex workflows, integrating at scale, and migrating large content libraries can take many months (often requiring refactoring or heavy plugin usage). In the case of Dawn Foods, they opted to build their new digital ordering platform on Contentstack because all viable e-commerce solutions were moving to API-first, and they needed an agile platform that would scale. Similarly, after experiencing Contentstack, Dawn Foods’ VP of Digital remarked that in older systems like Adobe or Sitecore “it was pretty painful” to manage content, whereas now his team can handle everything without technical skills, a testament to faster enablement. In short, WordPress may offer speed to launch for a basic site, but migrating off WordPress to a headless CMS can actually accelerate development cycles for evolving an enterprise site. Elastic’s team found that once on Contentstack, they could execute major redesigns and site updates far more frequently. Three major redesigns in 18 months. Something that would have been unthinkable under their old WP process where even minor updates took weeks.
• AEM Implementation Time: Adobe Experience Manager implementations are typically large projects. They often involve custom development, integration with other Adobe tools, and extensive training, which can lead to launch timelines of several months to a year for a full rollout. One migration guide frankly states: moving to AEM “is an intricate process” and should be “well-structured [and] reasonably paced”, with most cases taking months (not weeks) to execute. Companies that lack the in-house AEM expertise might spend even longer or incur delays. Contentstack offers a faster alternative for those who feel locked into protracted AEM projects. For example, Burberry transitioned to a composable stack (including Contentstack) to gain speed and flexibility that a heavy platform like AEM couldn’t easily provide. In practice, teams report that Contentstack shortens the time to deliver new digital experiences, whereas “AEM’s monolithic setup increases development cycles” and slows how quickly content gets to market. Contentstack’s cloud services and partner network enable quicker stand-ups and iterative launches (e.g. launching one pilot site, then scaling to others), as demonstrated by Pirelli’s phased approach. Thus, organizations migrating from AEM often do so to escape long development queues and to start delivering value faster with Contentstack.

Improved Publishing Speed and Marketing Agility

Beyond the initial go-live, Contentstack significantly speeds up content updates, campaign launches, and the overall marketing workflow compared to traditional CMS platforms. This ongoing agility is a major driver of ROI, as marketing teams can respond to opportunities in real-time without bottlenecks.

Faster Content Updates (Weeks to Minutes): Several Contentstack clients report an order-of-magnitude improvement in how quickly they can publish or update content:

At Dawn Foods, content updates that previously took up to a week to deploy on a legacy “monolith” CMS are now published in less than an hour using Contentstack. Overall, Dawn Foods’ online order site runs 80% faster in publishing tasks compared to their old system. This means marketing promotions or copy changes that once waited in IT queues for days are now live the same day, a huge boost in responsiveness. The marketing team can create, review, and publish personalized experiences without any developer assistance, a level of self-sufficiency they call “astonishing”.

Pirelli saw similar gains on a massive scale. When launching a new product globally, Pirelli must update content on 50+ regional sites in 25+ languages under tight timelines. With their previous CMS, this was exceedingly slow; but “with Contentstack…the operating time has been cut in half” for these large coordinated updates. They also noted content publishing is now 75% faster than before, and editors are 55% more efficient in creating content. In effect, what took days can now be done in hours, and editors can manage much more content in the same amount of time.

Elastic eliminated a major publishing bottleneck by moving to Contentstack. Under WordPress, their process was clunky: WordPress lacked a true staging environment, so editors had to repeat every change multiple times (for staging and for two production domains), often involving an external agency, causing weeks of delay for “simple updates”. After migrating, Elastic’s content team handles changes internally and instantly. Silvie Shimizu, Elastic’s webmaster, reported that publishing speed jumped by 5× (500% faster) with Contentstack, and what once took weeks now takes days or less. The cumbersome WP workflow was replaced by a streamlined, single-step publish to multiple environments. Additionally, because 100+ content managers at Elastic can now use the CMS without technical help, the volume of content and frequency of updates have increased without bottlenecking developers.

More Frequent Releases and Innovations: A fast CMS enables rapid iteration. Dawn Foods, for example, rolled out six major releases in the first six months after their Contentstack launch, an unprecedented pace for their business. This includes new features and improvements based on real customer feedback. Such agility was possible only because the underlying CMS and architecture (Contentstack + MACH components) allowed parallel development and quick deployments. Similarly, Ebner Media’s tech lead noted that with Contentstack “we’ve managed to develop so fast…new products that weren’t even in our original plan” emerged, and they transformed existing products rapidly. The speed unlocked by Contentstack drove unexpected innovation and new revenue streams for Ebner. In contrast, their legacy WordPress setup often required hours or days to perform updates, and launching a new digital magazine could take months. Now they can spin up new digital publications or localized editions in a fraction of that time, using Contentstack’s reusable content models and localization tools (one source of truth for all content).

Empowering Marketing (Less IT Dependence): A key reason for faster content cycles is the reduced dependence on IT once on Contentstack. Non-technical users can create and modify pages through Contentstack’s friendly UI, scheduling content or using live preview without coding. As a result, marketing teams gain true agility. For example, at Dawn Foods the marketing and customer service teams can even adjust wording on the site within minutes to respond to customer feedback (such as updating unclear sign-up page text immediately). In the past, even minor text changes would wait in backlog. Contentstack’s impact is often described as “magical” by business users who no longer wait on developers. This independence also means organizations can capitalize on market opportunities faster (launch campaigns, seasonal promotions, product announcements) without lengthy lead times.

Drupal and AEM Publishing Speed: Traditional platforms like Drupal and AEM typically involve more developer intervention for publishing workflows or new content types. Drupal’s content authoring can be efficient for simple posts, but creating new landing pages or microsites often requires developer configuration or theming work, slowing time-to-market for campaigns. AEM, while featuring in-context editing, still has a steeper learning curve for non-technical users and often requires training to use its advanced features. In fact, the monolithic nature of AEM can slow down development cycles. One Contentstack vs AEM comparison noted that AEM’s complexity “increases your development cycles and the speed at which content gets to market,” whereas Contentstack’s design enables quicker deployment of new apps and content. Moreover, organizations on AEM sometimes limit the frequency of releases because of heavy testing/QA overhead with each deployment. Headless CMS users tend to ship updates more continuously. For example, while Adobe touts AEM’s potential to improve time-to-market, these gains often require significant up-front implementation of AEM’s tools. By switching to a composable architecture, many teams find they can move faster through smaller, incremental changes.

Contentstack consistently accelerates time-to-market both at the project level (faster implementations) and the day-to-day level (faster publishing and iteration). Companies migrating from Drupal, WordPress, or AEM have reported dramatically shorter timelines: months saved in initial rollout and hours or days saved on each content update. This agility has concrete business results. More frequent content means more opportunities to engage customers (as Dawn Foods experienced with increased online sales), and faster response times mean higher customer satisfaction. Marketers feel more in control, and developers are freed to focus on high-value tasks instead of tedious content updates. All these factors contribute to a virtuous cycle where speed improves ROI, and ROI justifies further investment in speedy, flexible technology.

Contentstack vs. Drupal, WordPress, AEM

The table below summarizes key metrics and outcomes for Contentstack and how they compare to Drupal, WordPress, and AEM, based on case studies and industry benchmarks:

Table Notes: ROI = Return on Investment; TCO = Total Cost of Ownership. “Time-to-market” in the agility row refers to how quickly content or new experiences reach end-users (shorter is better). Contentstack data based on case studies and Forrester TEI; Drupal/WordPress/AEM data based on industry reports and typical enterprise usage patterns.

Industry Trends and Future Outlook

The case studies and data above illustrate a clear pattern: organizations achieve tangible gains by moving from legacy CMS platforms to Contentstack’s headless CMS. They reduce costs (both in terms of direct expenses and developer time) and they dramatically increase speed (both initial deployment speed and continuous content update velocity). These improvements in ROI and agility align with broader industry trends:

Headless CMS adoption is accelerating across enterprises as digital experience demands grow. Surveys indicate a strong preference for solutions that enable omnichannel delivery and rapid change. For instance, in one global survey, 86% of headless CMS users (in a tech-savvy country like the Netherlands) reported increased ROI after switching, and 70% of companies in Germany saw performance and scaling improvements post-migration to headless.

Composable architecture is becoming the norm. Instead of one monolithic suite, companies are opting for a stack of microservices (CMS, commerce, search, etc.). Contentstack, as a headless CMS, often serves as the core of a composable Digital Experience Platform. This approach not only speeds up implementation (since pieces can be added or replaced independently) but also future-proofs the business. It’s notable that Contentstack was recognized as a “Leader” in the Forrester Wave for CMS in Q1 2025, the only pure-play headless vendor in that Leader quadrant, indicating that even analysts see headless CMS as ready for prime time in large enterprises.

Marketing agility drives revenue. The ability to launch campaigns quickly and update content on the fly has real revenue impact. As mentioned, Dawn Foods saw a 50% jump in online ordering once their new digital platform (powered by Contentstack and other MACH tools) went live; partly because their marketing/content team could frequently refresh content and personalize the experience, keeping customers engaged. Faster time-to-market means capitalizing on trends and customer needs in the moment, which legacy CMS with slower processes might miss. This is a key competitive advantage in fast-moving markets.

Developer productivity is improved. By removing mundane content tasks from developers, headless CMS lets them focus on building innovative features. For example, Contentstack’s TEI study noted that development teams reclaimed 20%+ of their time, which they could reinvest in strategic projects. Companies migrating from code-heavy CMS (where every change is a ticket) to Contentstack often report higher morale and output from their engineering teams. This productivity boost is an “invisible ROI”, not always captured in dollars, but evident in faster development of new capabilities.

In conclusion, companies migrate to Contentstack over Drupal, WordPress, and AEM to achieve faster time-to-market and greater ROI; two outcomes that are deeply intertwined. Contentstack’s headless, cloud-based approach shortens implementation cycles and empowers non-technical users, which reduces costs and drives efficiency. Case studies from Pirelli, Dawn Foods, Elastic, Ebner Media, and others provide concrete proof: migrations that once seemed risky are now yielding months saved in launch times, double- or triple-digit percentage improvements in content velocity, and significant cost optimizations (50-80% cost reductions in various areas). Industry benchmarks further reinforce that headless CMS adoption leads to better productivity and ROI for a majority of organizations.

As we move into 2026 and beyond, the trend is clear. Organizations that prioritize marketing agility and efficient digital execution are turning to platforms like Contentstack. Those who stick with slower, legacy systems risk falling behind in customer experience and spending more for less return. With a composable CMS like Contentstack, enterprises position themselves to respond quickly to market changes, scale content across channels, and ultimately drive growth while keeping costs in check. The investment in a modern CMS pays off both in immediate gains (speed and cost savings) and in the long-term ability to innovate. In the digital era, that combination of ROI and speed is the key to staying ahead of the competition.