Migration
Salesforce says it now owns Contentful: should you renew, renegotiate or leave for Sanity?
Short answer
Contentful is worth renewing or renegotiating while your team fits Lite's 20 users and 3 locales, or your contract (Contentful pricing, October 2026). Leave for Sanity when the next step is an Enterprise quote and a front-end rebuild is funded. Salesforce says it completed the purchase on 1 September 2026 (Salesforce, October 2026), so ask what changes before you sign.
- Salesforce deal
- Completed 1 September 2026, Salesforce saysAnnounced 1 June 2026; as of 24 October 2026 neither Salesforce nor Contentful has published new pricing or contract termsSources: Salesforce (Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Contentful, Form S-8 Registration Statement (Contentful equity plans)); Contentful (A New Chapter for Contentful: Scaling Our Vision with Salesforce)
- Contentful Lite
- $300 a month, flat, on its pricing page20 users, 3 roles, 3 locales; Contentful's pricing page lists one Lite Space at $850 a month more, and the next step is an Enterprise quoteSources: Contentful (Pricing); Contentful Help Center (Usage limits (January, 2026))
- Contentful Lite overage
- $5 per extra million API callsPlus $0.15 per extra GB of asset bandwidth, billed monthly, as of October 2026Sources: Contentful (Pricing); Contentful Help Center (Usage limits (January, 2026))
- Sanity Growth plan
- $15 per seat a month, billed monthlyUp to 50 seats and no minimum term; 25,000 documents with no document overage, or 50,000 with the $299 a month add-onSources: Sanity (Plans that scale with you, Sanity for Startups); Sanity Docs (Plans and payments, Extending the Growth plan with paid add-ons)
Deploi’s call
Decide at the renewal, from your own counts, not from the acquisition news. If you fit Lite or your Enterprise contract covers you, renew for the shortest term with price protection, because nothing Salesforce or Contentful has published changes your plan yet. Leave for Sanity when the next Contentful step is an Enterprise quote and you're rebuilding the front end anyway.
UpgradeRenew or renegotiate Contentful when
- Your users, locales and content types fit Lite as of October 2026, or a negotiated Enterprise contract already covers them, so moving buys you nothing you lack.
- You run Salesforce Customer 360 and want the native integration Salesforce says it will build.
- Your front end calls Contentful's GraphQL or Delivery application programming interfaces (APIs) throughout and no rebuild is funded, because, in Deploi's judgment, rewriting every query is the largest line in a move.
- Your renewal lands before you have counts and a tested export: renew for the shortest term you can get, with price protection.
SanityReplatform from Contentful to Sanity when
- Users, locales, content types or records push your next Contentful term to an Enterprise quote, whose price Contentful doesn't publish as of October 2026.
- Your content fits Sanity Growth's 25,000 documents, or 50,000 with the $299 a month add-on, as of October 2026, counting drafts and every dataset.
- Developers want the content model in code review, so a schema in your repository is a gain, not a cost.
- You're rebuilding the front end anyway, so rewriting Contentful queries in GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries) costs little extra.
- Nobody depends on Contentful Studio, Personalization or Marketplace apps you haven't rebuilt.
Is the Salesforce deal a reason to leave Contentful?
The Salesforce deal alone is not a reason to leave Contentful, because nothing either company has published changes Contentful's plans, prices or terms yet. Salesforce announced its agreement to buy Contentful on 1 June 2026 and says it completed the purchase on 1 September 2026 (Salesforce press release; Salesforce Form S-8, October 2026). Contentful's own post says "Contentful customers remain our top priority" (Contentful blog, October 2026), and Contentful's usage limits in force carry the version date 22 January 2026, before the deal was announced (Contentful usage limits, October 2026).
The deal bears on the decision in two cases:
- You run Salesforce Customer 360. Salesforce says Contentful "will be integrated natively across Customer 360" (Salesforce press release, October 2026), which is a reason to stay if you want that integration.
- You don't run Customer 360. The deal then changes what you ask at renewal, not whether you leave; what the Salesforce deal has and hasn't changed lists the questions to put to Contentful in writing.
What does staying on Contentful cost in October 2026?
Contentful's pricing page lists Lite at $300 a month, one Lite Space at $850 a month more, and Enterprise as custom; the usage limits page caps Lite Spaces at one (Contentful pricing; usage limits, October 2026). Lite covers 20 users, 3 roles, 3 locales and 1 million application programming interface (API) calls a month. Contentful's pricing page shows amounts in dollars with no currency code and states no contract term. Contentful's Free plan "may only be used to test and learn about Contentful's product" (Contentful usage limits, October 2026), so a live site starts on Lite.
| Item | Price as listed (dollars) | Contentful pages that state it |
|---|---|---|
| Lite plan | $300 a month, flat | Pricing page only |
| Lite Space add-on, one per Lite plan | $850 a month | Price on the pricing page; the one-Space limit on two pages |
| Extra API calls | $5 per million a month | Two pages |
| Extra asset bandwidth | $0.15 per GB a month | Two pages |
| Enterprise | Custom | Pricing page only |
| Contentful Studio and Personalization | Not published | Pricing page |
What forces the Contentful decision before your renewal?
Five events force the Contentful decision, and the first is the renewal date and notice window in your own order form. If your contract has a notice window, it ends before the renewal date, so mark that deadline before anything else.
- The renewal date and notice window in your order form or contract.
- A Lite ceiling. The 21st user or the 4th locale forces an Enterprise quote, because Lite sells no extra users or locales (Deploi's reading of Contentful pricing and usage limits, October 2026); the Contentful and Sanity pricing model lists every other ceiling.
- A front-end rebuild, which takes away the main reason to keep your Contentful queries.
- Salesforce Customer 360, if you run it and want the integration Salesforce describes.
- A legacy Contentful plan, because "legacy plans are subject to the legacy usage limit" (Contentful usage limits, October 2026).
When should you renew or renegotiate Contentful instead of leaving?
Renew or renegotiate Contentful when your users, locales and content types fit your plan and no front-end rebuild is funded, because moving then buys you nothing you lack. In Deploi's judgment, staying is often the right call. Salesforce says it completed the purchase on 1 September 2026 (Salesforce, October 2026), so renegotiate rather than sign as is: ask for price protection, a term length you choose, and data and exit terms in writing.
| Option | What you do | When it wins |
|---|---|---|
| Renew as is | Sign the same plan | You fit its limits and editors aren't blocked |
| Renegotiate | Ask for price protection, term and exit terms in writing | You'll stay, and Salesforce says it now owns Contentful |
| Renew short | Take the shortest term offered | The renewal lands before your counts and a test export exist |
| Replatform to Sanity | Move content and rewrite queries | A ceiling forces an Enterprise quote and a rebuild is approved |
| Replatform elsewhere | Move to another content management system | Sanity shares the reason you're leaving |
When does replatforming from Contentful to Sanity win?
Replatforming from Contentful to Sanity wins when the next Contentful step is an Enterprise quote and your content fits Sanity's Growth plan. Growth costs $15 per seat a month for up to 50 seats, billed monthly with no minimum term (Sanity pricing; Sanity for Startups, October 2026). It includes 25,000 documents with no document overage, and the $299 a month Increased quota add-on raises that to 50,000 (Sanity Docs, plans and payments; Sanity Docs, add-ons, October 2026). Sanity counts drafts and every dataset, so run the document count in the Contentful migration plan first.
Three conditions favor the move:
- Developers want the content model in code review, so a schema in your repository is a gain.
- You're rebuilding the front end, so rewriting Contentful GraphQL queries in GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries) costs little extra.
- Nobody depends on Contentful Studio, Personalization or Marketplace apps you haven't rebuilt.
When should you leave Contentful for something other than Sanity?
Leave Contentful for another content management system (CMS) when your reason for leaving applies to Sanity too. In Deploi's judgment, three reasons do:
- Marketers must build pages without developers. Sanity Studio is configured in code; Sanity's own course says a team coming from PHP "may need to up-skill with JavaScript to configure the Studio" (Sanity Learn, October 2026).
- Policy says you host the content database. Sanity's docs say Sanity Studio "always connects to a dataset in the hosted Content Lake, also when run locally", and "Your content is never stored locally" (Sanity Docs, Studio development, October 2026).
- A traditional CMS serves the site well, and nobody wants to own a separate front end, which every headless CMS needs.
Price alone rarely decides where you go; who changes the content model after launch usually does, so the reason you're leaving picks the destination. The Contentful alternatives page ranks destinations by that reason.
How do you compare the cost of staying on Contentful with the cost of moving?
Compare staying on Contentful with moving over the term of the renewal you'd sign, with one-time and recurring costs apart. Only subscriptions are published; every other line comes from your own counts. In Deploi's judgment, moving means paying both platforms until cutover, and Sanity's course has you run the migration "against the most up-to-date version of your current platform's content" to keep the content freeze short (Sanity Learn, October 2026).
| Cost driver | Staying on Contentful | Moving to Sanity |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $300 a month on Lite, or a quote | $15 per seat a month on Growth, or a quote |
| Extra capacity | Lite Space $850 a month; usage overage | Quota add-on $299 a month; extra datasets $999 a month each |
| Content model | None | Content types rewritten as schema code |
| Rich Text and locales | None | Tables rebuilt; a localization model per type |
| Front end | Existing queries | Every Contentful query rewritten |
| Apps and extensions | Marketplace apps in place | Rebuilt as Studio plugins |
What has to happen before your Contentful renewal date?
Before your Contentful renewal date, you need your counts, a test export and a decision, all ahead of the notice deadline. Work backward from the notice deadline, so the decision comes before it passes.
Working back from a Contentful renewal
- Find the dates. Pull the renewal date, notice window and renewal terms from your order form.
- Count what you run. Users, locales, content types, records per environment, Marketplace apps, and every front-end query that calls Contentful.
- Run a test export. Export one environment with drafts and assets and check what came out; the Contentful exit checklist lists what stays behind.
- Decide. Match the counts to each option's ceilings: renew, renegotiate, renew short, Sanity or another content management system.
- Negotiate or give notice. Get price protection and exit terms in writing, or give notice inside the window. Where Contentful's EU Data Act Addendum applies, its maximum notice period for a switch is "two (2) months commencing from Contentful's receipt of a request" (Contentful EU Data Act Addendum, October 2026).
- Hand off to the exit plan. If you're leaving, the exit checklist runs the export, cutover and cancellation in order.
Deploi’s point of view
- Where we disagree
- Two claims about this deal mislead buyers. The first is that the Salesforce deal makes staying risky and leaving urgent: as of 24 October 2026 neither company has published a change to Contentful's plans, prices or terms, and its usage limits are still the January 2026 version. The second is that Sanity is the cheap way out. At 20 editors, Sanity Growth costs the same $300 a month that Contentful's pricing page lists for Lite (Deploi arithmetic). The savings come from Contentful's ceilings; in Deploi's judgment, the move itself, with every front-end query rewritten and two platforms paid during the parallel run, is the bigger cost.
- What we’ve seen
- The runbook for deploi.ca's own FAQ v2 release, on our own Sanity datasets, is how we would plan a cutover from Contentful. It exports the dataset first as the restore point, runs scripts that change nothing unless given an --apply flag, and sets expected counts for each step beforehand, starting from 256 live answers (the counts are the runbook's plan; we verified the live end state). Our Build vs. Buy content packs import new content as newline-delimited JSON (NDJSON) with drafts-prefixed IDs, so nothing publishes before review. Our view of Contentful rests on its documentation and public sources.
- What we'd tell you to do first
- Find the renewal date and the notice window in your order form, then count users, locales, content types, records per environment and the front-end queries that call Contentful. Those counts decide between the five options; the acquisition doesn't.
- What we refuse to promise
- We won't predict what Salesforce will do with Contentful's prices or plans, and we won't quote hours or a timeline for leaving Contentful from a call. Neither company has published terms, and hours depend on your own space: its content types, locales and records, and every front-end query that calls Contentful.
When this answer changes
- Salesforce or Contentful publishes new Contentful pricing, plan names or contract terms
- Contentful replaces its January 2026 usage limits or changes the Lite price, users, locales or Lite Space limits
- Contentful moves locale-based publishing below Enterprise
- Salesforce changes how Contentful is sold outside Customer 360
- Sanity changes the Growth seat price, the 25,000 document quota or the $299 Increased quota add-on
Follow-up questions
Sources
Every source opened and checked on 25 October 2026.
- Contentful, Pricing
- Contentful Help Center, Usage limits (January, 2026)
- Contentful, EU Data Act Addendum
- Contentful, A New Chapter for Contentful: Scaling Our Vision with Salesforce
- Salesforce, Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Contentful
- Salesforce, Form S-8 Registration Statement (Contentful equity plans)
- Sanity, Plans that scale with you
- Sanity Docs, Plans and payments
- Sanity Docs, Extending the Growth plan with paid add-ons
- Sanity Learn, Migrating without downtime
- Sanity Learn, Planning a re-platforming project
- Sanity, Sanity for Startups
- Sanity Docs, Studio development