The tipping point came in May 2025. While we'd been implementing Sanity CMS for select clients since 2022, something fundamental shifted this year. What was once our specialized solution for complex content operations became our default recommendation across the board.
The reason? Sanity stopped being just a headless CMS and became a complete Content Operating System. More importantly, it delivered enterprise-grade capabilities we'd previously only seen in six-figure platforms like Adobe Experience Manager and Sitecore, but at a fraction of the cost.
For the first time, our mid-market clients could access the sophisticated content management features they needed without the enterprise price tag that made CFOs nervous.
The Transformation: From Headless CMS to Content Operating System
Sanity's Spring Release 2025 represented the most significant platform evolution we've witnessed in the CMS space. Backed by an $85 million Series C funding round, Sanity delivered seven transformative capabilities that fundamentally changed what's possible at accessible price points.
The Dashboard: Your Content Operations Command Center
Enterprise platforms have always offered centralized oversight across multiple properties and teams. AEM provides this through its extensive interface, but at costs starting around $60,000 annually for Sites alone. Sanity's new Dashboard delivers similar centralized control for organizations on Growth plans starting at $15 per user monthly.
The Dashboard provides unified access to Studios, Canvas, Media Library, and custom apps, with the ability to favorite frequently accessed resources and track content trends across your entire organization. For our clients managing multiple brands or regional sites, this single pane of glass replaces the fragmented tooling they'd cobbled together from various point solutions.
Canvas: AI-Powered Content Creation That Actually Works
Traditional CMSs force writers to work directly in structured fields, which breaks creative flow. Enterprise platforms offer rich authoring environments, but again at premium costs.
Canvas provides an AI-assisted, context-aware authoring environment that lets content teams draft freely and then automatically structure that content for your CMS. It's like having Notion's writing experience with Grammarly's AI assistance, but it outputs directly to your structured content model. Writers collaborate in real time, organize contextual notes alongside drafts, and let AI help transform free-form content into properly structured documents.
This bridges the gap between what writers want (freedom to create) and what developers need (structured, reusable content). We've seen content production timelines compress by 30-40% once teams adopt Canvas workflows.
Media Library: Enterprise DAM Without the Enterprise Cost
Digital Asset Management has traditionally been the domain of expensive specialized platforms. Adobe Experience Manager Assets starts around $30,000 annually for basic DAM capabilities, with enterprise editions requiring substantially more investment.
Sanity's Media Library introduces structured asset management across teams and datasets with role-based access, versioning, and automation. The breakthrough feature is Aspects, which allows custom metadata schemas applied to assets, making media programmable and AI-ready within your content architecture.
Media Library+ adds unlimited aspects per asset, role-based access control, private assets, and version history. Organizations get enterprise DAM capabilities integrated directly into their content workflow, without the separate licensing and integration costs of traditional DAM solutions.
App SDK: Build Custom Content Applications
This is where Sanity truly breaks from traditional CMS thinking. The App SDK provides React hooks and tools to build custom content applications and workflows that integrate seamlessly with your content operations.
Need a custom interface for field teams to upload event photos? Build it. Want a specialized approval workflow for legal content? Create it. Require a custom dashboard showing content performance metrics? Done.
These apps can run within Sanity Studio or as standalone applications. For our enterprise clients who previously required $100,000+ in custom AEM development for specialized workflows, the App SDK delivers similar capabilities at development costs 60-70% lower.
Functions: Serverless Content Automation
Previously, content automation required managing external infrastructure, webhook handlers, and integration platforms. Sanity Functions brings serverless compute directly into your content platform.
Trigger workflows on any content change. Sync data with external systems. Enrich content automatically. Validate submissions. Invalidate frontend caches. All without managing servers or paying for external automation platforms.
We're seeing clients eliminate Zapier subscriptions, AWS Lambda complexity, and third-party integration services by consolidating logic into Sanity Functions. The simplification in architecture alone justifies the platform.
Agent Actions: AI-Powered Content Operations
Content Operations Agent (currently in private beta) represents the next evolution of content management. It audits documents systematically, identifies gaps, drafts updates, and organizes changes into manageable releases.
This isn't chatbot nonsense. It's schema-aware AI that understands your content model and can perform structured operations while maintaining governance. For teams managing hundreds or thousands of content pieces, having an AI assistant that can identify inconsistencies, suggest improvements, and prepare batch updates is transformative.
Content Releases: Enterprise Governance Made Accessible
Content releases allow teams to coordinate multi-layered updates into scheduled releases, preview aggregate changes before publication, and roll back confidently if needed. This level of release management was previously the exclusive domain of enterprise CMSs.
For organizations with complex approval workflows, legal review requirements, or coordinated launch schedules, content releases eliminate the chaos of tracking changes across spreadsheets and Slack channels.
The WordPress Reality Check
WordPress remains incredibly popular, and we still build WordPress sites. But we've become acutely aware of its hidden costs and limitations at scale.
The "Free" Platform That Isn't
WordPress.org is technically free, but that's where the illusion ends. A professional WordPress implementation requires:
Hosting Reality: Shared hosting at $5-10 monthly works for hobby sites. Professional WordPress needs managed hosting at $50-100+ monthly. High-traffic enterprise WordPress can run $500-2,000+ monthly for VIP hosting or dedicated infrastructure.
Plugin Ecosystem Tax: While 60,000+ plugins exist, professional sites need premium versions. Essential plugins like advanced forms, SEO tools, security suites, and performance optimization each carry $20-200 annual licenses. A typical professional WordPress site carries $500-1,500 in annual plugin subscriptions.
Theme Investment: Free themes lack professional polish. Premium themes run $60-200. Custom WordPress themes start at $5,000-10,000 for professional development, with enterprise themes exceeding $30,000.
Ongoing Maintenance: WordPress, themes, and plugins all require regular updates. Security patches, compatibility testing, and backup management demand consistent attention. Many organizations spend $500-2,000 monthly on WordPress maintenance alone.
The Performance Ceiling: WordPress was built for blogs. Making it performant for high-traffic, content-heavy applications requires extensive optimization, caching layers, CDN configuration, and often headless architecture that negates WordPress's ease-of-use advantage.
According to a March 2025 analysis, even "free" WordPress setups realistically cost organizations $660-2,000+ annually once you account for hosting increases, theme renewals, plugin subscriptions, and basic security. Enterprise WordPress installations easily exceed $25,000 annually in platform costs alone, before accounting for development and maintenance.
What WordPress Can't Do
More importantly, WordPress fundamentally lacks capabilities our clients need:
Structured Content: WordPress treats everything as posts or pages with custom fields bolted on. True structured content modeling requires extensive custom development or expensive plugins that create maintenance headaches.
Omnichannel Distribution: WordPress was designed for websites. Feeding content to mobile apps, digital signage, voice assistants, or other channels requires custom API development and constant maintenance.
Real-Time Collaboration: WordPress's collaboration model is primitive. Multiple editors create conflicts. Revision tracking is basic. True collaborative workflows require enterprise plugins at premium prices.
Content Governance: WordPress lacks sophisticated workflow, approval processes, and release management without extensive customization.
The AEM Comparison: Enterprise Features at 10% of the Cost
Adobe Experience Manager represents the gold standard of enterprise CMS capabilities. It's also prohibitively expensive for most organizations.
AEM's Cost Reality
AEM licensing alone starts at $30,000 annually, with Sites reaching $60,000-80,000 per year and Forms around $80,000 annually. But licensing is just the beginning:
Implementation Costs: AEM implementations typically require $100,000-500,000 in professional services for initial setup and customization.
Support Fees: Annual support runs 15-25% of license costs, adding another $15,000-20,000+ yearly.
Training Requirements: AEM's complexity demands substantial training investment. Adobe's certification programs and ongoing education can cost $10,000-30,000 annually for enterprise teams.
Infrastructure: Whether on-premises or cloud-based, AEM requires robust infrastructure. Cloud deployments scale with usage, but high-traffic implementations can cost $5,000+ monthly just for hosting.
Total Cost of Ownership: Organizations implementing AEM should budget $150,000-300,000 annually at minimum, with many enterprise deployments exceeding $500,000 yearly once all costs are factored.
As one G2 reviewer noted, "AEM might be a bit expensive for small scale companies," with another stating they're "exploring Sanity as a solution to move away from a monolithic CMS (Adobe Experience Manager), which has been slow, rigid, and difficult to maintain."
What You Get With AEM
To be fair, AEM delivers powerful capabilities:
- Sophisticated personalization engines
- Complex workflow automation
- Multi-site management
- Advanced DAM with AI tagging
- Integrated analytics and optimization
- Enterprise-grade security and compliance
The problem? Most organizations need these capabilities but can't justify AEM's price tag.
The Sanity Value Proposition
Sanity delivers comparable enterprise capabilities at dramatically different economics:
Growth Plan: $15 per user monthly provides scheduling, collaboration features, AI Assist, and embeddings. A 20-person content team runs $300 monthly, or $3,600 annually.
Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing typically ranges $10,000-40,000 annually depending on scale, providing SSO, advanced security, custom roles, dedicated support, and unlimited scalability.
Even with substantial Enterprise pricing, Sanity costs 80-90% less than AEM while providing:
- More flexible content modeling
- Faster implementation timelines
- Real-time collaboration
- Modern developer experience
- Serverless infrastructure
- Extensible App SDK
- AI-powered workflows
Real Client Impact
One of our retail clients was quoted $175,000 for an AEM implementation to manage content across their 12 regional websites. We implemented Sanity with custom apps for their specific workflows at $38,000 total project cost, with annual platform costs of $15,000 (Enterprise plan).
Year one savings: $122,000. Ongoing annual savings: $60,000+ compared to AEM's licensing and support costs.
More importantly, their content team was publishing updates in three weeks versus the three-month timeline their AEM proof-of-concept required.
Why 2025 Was the Inflection Point
We've been Sanity advocates since 2022, but this year fundamentally changed the conversation with clients.
Previously, Sanity was our technical solution for complex content problems. It required developer-heavy implementations and client commitment to a more sophisticated approach. We positioned it for clients who understood they needed structured content and were willing to invest in the foundation.
The 2025 Content Operating System release changed that dynamic. Now we can offer:
Enterprise DAM through Media Library instead of recommending $30,000 Bynder or Cloudinary implementations.
Custom Content Applications through App SDK instead of $75,000 custom development projects on WordPress or AEM.
AI-Powered Workflows through Agent Actions and Canvas instead of telling clients "that's not possible without significant investment."
Advanced Collaboration through Canvas and improved Studio features instead of implementing complex WordPress plugins or expensive collaboration platforms.
Sophisticated Release Management through Content Releases instead of building custom workflows or forcing clients into enterprise platforms.
The platform matured from a developer-first CMS into a complete content operations solution that marketing teams understand and finance departments approve.
What We Tell Clients Now
When clients come to us evaluating CMS options, our framework is straightforward:
For Simple Marketing Sites: WordPress still works. If you need 10-15 pages, minimal content updates, and don't anticipate significant growth, WordPress's ecosystem provides quick wins.
For Growing Organizations: Sanity makes sense when you're managing 50+ content pieces, need structured content for multiple channels, have multiple content contributors, or anticipate scaling your digital properties. The Growth plan at $15 per user monthly provides capabilities that would cost thousands monthly to replicate with WordPress plugins and custom development.
For Enterprise Organizations: Sanity delivers AEM-class capabilities at 10-20% of the cost. If you were considering AEM, Sitecore, or similar platforms, Sanity deserves serious evaluation. You'll implement faster, develop cheaper, and operate with more flexibility.
Looking Forward
Sanity's evolution continues. Their roadmap includes enhanced AI capabilities, deeper analytics integration, and expanded App SDK functionality. The platform that delivered transformative updates in 2025 shows no signs of slowing.
For HT Blue, Sanity has become our default enterprise CMS recommendation. It delivers the sophisticated content management our clients need without the budget conversations that killed projects in the past.
We're not abandoning WordPress entirely. But for clients who need true content operations capabilities, structured omnichannel content, collaborative workflows, or extensible custom applications, Sanity provides the answer.
Enterprise features. WordPress budgets. That's the promise Sanity delivered in 2025, and why it became our most adopted CMS.
