What Sitecore is in October 2026
Sitecore is a commercial enterprise platform, and the product names have shifted. Sitecore now markets its cloud platform as SitecoreAI, a SaaS, hybrid headless DXP that Sitecore hosts and updates. The documentation and product menu still list Experience Manager (XM) and Experience Platform (XP), the older self-hosted line. Many buyers still say XM Cloud for the cloud product, so expect both names in contracts and docs.
Content published from the cloud platform goes to Experience Edge, a hosted GraphQL service that delivers layout and content through a CDN. Editors build pages in the Page builder, a visual editor that shows changes live. Developers pick an SDK for the front end.
For JavaScript front ends, Sitecore recommends its open source Content SDK, which comes with a Next.js starter app. JSS and the Sitecore Cloud SDK still appear in the docs for existing Next.js and Angular apps. Sitecore also offers an ASP.NET Core SDK. Any stack that can read the JSON layout data and run a GraphQL client can work.
Who should stay on Sitecore
Stay if personalisation, testing and customer data are part of the contract and in use. If your marketing team runs real experiments, and the licence already covers the tools, ripping them out means rebuilding that capability somewhere else.
Stay also if your team is .NET based and the site is stable. A well kept XP site that earns revenue does not need a replatform because the vendor has a new cloud name.
Licence pressure: the real reason for most calls we get
Most Sitecore enquiries start with a renewal. Sitecore licences depend on products, seats, environments and usage, and the official pricing is provided on request. We do not quote vendor prices. What we see is the pattern: a team on self-hosted XP faces a renewal, a push toward the cloud product, and a re-implementation of the front end.
That is the moment to compare three paths:
| Path | What it means | Fits when |
|---|---|---|
| Modernise XP | Upgrade, containerise, move the front end to Next.js against the existing back end | The site works and the licence is acceptable |
| Move to the cloud platform | Re-implement components with the Content SDK and Edge | You use personalisation and want Sitecore to run the infrastructure |
| Replatform | Leave Sitecore for a headless CMS plus separate tools | Licence cost is hard to defend against actual use |
When we would move off Sitecore
We suggest leaving when the team uses the CMS but not the suite. A site that needs pages, components and locales, with no live personalisation, pays for capability it does not run. A headless CMS such as Contentful, Sanity or Payload covers that need, and A/B testing and personalisation can come from tools you pick separately. Read Contentful and Sanity for the hosted options and Payload for a self-hosted one.
If your real alternative is another enterprise suite, see our comparison of AEM and headless CMS.
What we build for Sitecore teams
- A Next.js front end on the Content SDK, with components mapped to Sitecore placeholders and a preview that works inside Page builder.
- GraphQL queries against Experience Edge, shaped so pages do not over-fetch.
- Integrations with commerce, search and analytics around the DXP.
- Content migration out of Sitecore or into it: item trees, media library, language versions and redirect maps, checked against the live site before cutover.
We have not published a Sitecore case study. For a migration of comparable size, read the Drupal replatform for a healthtech organization, which covers multilingual content and URL parity. Our migration services page lists the other source platforms.
What Sitecore costs to own
- The licence, which depends on the contract and is not public.
- Specialist developers, since Sitecore skills are narrower than general React or .NET skills.
- Infrastructure, if you stay on self-hosted XP: servers, Solr or equivalent search, and patching.
- Upgrade cycles between versions, and the cost of rebuilding components when the SDK changes.
- The front end itself, which most teams underestimate.
We estimate after an audit of your solution, not from a price sheet. You can hire Sitecore developers for a single project or as a dedicated team. See also the CMS migration checklist for the steps we follow on any move.
