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Switch from Contentful or stay? What the Salesforce acquisition means for you
You do not have to switch, but you should check
Salesforce completed its acquisition of Contentful on 1 September 2026. Do you have to switch because of that? Our assessment: as things stand, no. Contentful promised customers at the announcement on 1 June 2026 to deliver innovation, flexibility and support at the same level as before. The public terms of service name Contentful companies as the contracting party, and the list of sub-processors dated 8 October 2026 contains no Salesforce company. What is open is how exactly Contentful will be integrated into Salesforce and what that means for plans and pricing. That is why it pays to look before your next renewal.
Here you see what is settled, how to tell staying, checking or switching apart, what moves with you in a switch and what cost and duration depend on. As of 14 October 2026.
What is known so far: announcement, pledge, completion, plan
Four statements from Salesforce and Contentful, the dated ones first and the plan without a date last. The sources are in the section on sources and status.
What has been settled since the acquisition, what is announced and what remains open
What is settled
Salesforce reports that the acquisition was completed on 1 September 2026. As contracting party, the terms of service in the version of 15 September 2025 name Contentful GmbH in Berlin for customers in Europe. The list of sub-processors dated 8 October 2026 contains no Salesforce company. A new contracting entity cannot be read from the public documents so far.
Both documents carry a date. Read them again before a renewal, because a new date means a new version.
What is announced
Salesforce plans to integrate Contentful natively across Customer 360 and to preserve the composability that developers and digital teams expect from a modern headless platform. Salesforce's AI agents are also meant to be able to query, assemble and deliver content. Contentful promised customers on 1 June 2026 to deliver innovation, flexibility and support at the level they are used to, that is before completion. Both are statements of intent: Salesforce's announcement names neither a date nor a shipped feature.
What is open
The announcements from Salesforce and Contentful say nothing about plans and pricing. On data flows, Salesforce names only the goal of connecting customer data with content, but no details, dates or conditions. Ask your contact at Contentful in writing before the renewal about price commitments, bundled offers and data flow, and plan with the less favourable variant until then. Forecasts of rising prices or of a stalled roadmap are guesses so far.
Stay, check or switch: Six questions show the next step
Answer the questions in order. Most can be answered without technical knowledge, and for question 6 it helps to ask your IT team. Each comes with what a yes means for you. Several yes answers are normal, in which case the question that weighs most for you counts.
- Do you use Salesforce or plan to introduce it, and would your content benefit from a close connection? Then much speaks for staying. Secure the contract and your exit anyway.
- Is a renewal coming up, or does the contract end soon? Then check the seven questions further down beforehand and clarify alternatives and effort.
- Do procurement, strategy or data protection require a different vendor? Then prepare a switch, starting with a proof of concept. Changes of ownership happen in this industry, Payload has been part of Figma since June 2025. What matters is that you can exit.
- Does your editorial team work differently from what the system supports well, for example because it mainly wants to work in a visual editor or needs an interface built around your workflows? Then check a switch to Storyblok (visual editor) or Sanity (studio made to measure).
- Is a relaunch or frontend rebuild coming up anyway? Then it is a good moment: queries, components and preview get touched anyway, and in our assessment the extra effort is smaller.
- Do many apps, workflows, releases and webhooks hang on the system? Then the effort is high. Start with a proof of concept on the hardest part and decide afterwards.
Our assessment: for most, the next step is checking, not switching. Staying fits if setup and editorial work function and neither procurement nor data protection demands another vendor, even more so with Salesforce in your stack. Switching pays off with a concrete trigger, not out of worry.
To be fair: a switch to Sanity or Storyblok changes the vendor, not the dependence on a cloud service. Both run as cloud services, and even an open-source system such as Payload saves the licence fee at its core but not development, operations and upkeep.
The decision grid at a glance
Six questions, six answers. Next to each question it says what a yes means: staying, checking, preparing a switch, checking a switch, a good moment or a proof of concept first.
The diagram is in German. Its six rows correspond to the six questions in the section before.
Seven questions to ask before you renew
Put the questions in writing to your contact at Contentful and to your own team. The answers show whether staying, checking or switching fits you.
- Which contracting entity and which term are in your order form? The terms of service name Contentful GmbH in Berlin for Europe, so check whether that is what yours says.
- Which version of the terms of service and of the data processing agreement applies to you, and how does Contentful notify changes?
- Where does your data sit, is there an EU region, and who can access it from outside the EU? EU data residency is an add-on and, according to Contentful, does not restrict access to the EU.
- Which add-on products do you use, for example apps from the marketplace or AI features, and which sub-processors depend on them? For AI features, the list names, among others, OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock and Google Vertex AI.
- What hangs on the system: apps, webhooks, workflows, releases, roles? An export does not carry much of that over by itself, more on that further down.
- What in frontend and editorial work depends on Contentful: queries, rich text, preview, languages?
- How do you get out again: have you tested an export once?
If you cannot find an answer to a question, that is a result in itself: then the first step lies in taking stock, not in changing vendor.
Contract, data protection, data sovereignty: What the documents say
Contracting party
For customers in Europe, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, the terms of service in the version of 15 September 2025 name Contentful GmbH in Berlin as the contracting party, and Contentful Inc. for the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. An order form that refers to the terms takes precedence over them in case of conflict, and Contentful may assign the contract without consent to a successor or an affiliate. Check in your order form or framework agreement which entity and which term are named there.
Changes to the terms
Contentful may change the terms at its own discretion, and continued use counts as acceptance. Anyone who objects in writing keeps the existing agreement, and Contentful may then terminate it with notice. The clause was already in the terms before the acquisition was announced. Contentful may also change linked documents such as the data processing agreement upon publication. That is why you read new versions of the terms and of the data processing agreement before a renewal.
Sub-processors and data location
The list of sub-processors dated 8 October 2026 names, among others, AWS for hosting in the USA, Ireland and Germany, Cloudflare, Fastly and Google Cloud, and for AI features OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock and Google Vertex AI. No Salesforce company appears in it.
EU data residency is an add-on for eligible plans: Contentful sets up a new organisation in the EU region for it. Access to it is not restricted to the EU, and according to Contentful, as with most SaaS providers, it cannot be guaranteed that data is processed only in the EU.
What this means for you
Read the current version of the data processing agreement and the list of sub-processors again before the renewal, and involve your data protection officer and, if needed, lawyers. This section summarises public documents and is not legal advice.
Four routes after the acquisition: stay, Sanity, Storyblok or something else
The four routes are not a ranking. Each tile says when the route fits or what to watch out for. We support switches to Sanity and Storyblok, and the fourth tile shows what to consider with other systems.
Sanity or Storyblok: How to make the choice
We tell you where our interest lies: we build websites with Sanity and Storyblok, our own website runs on Sanity, and we have worked with Contentful too. A switch or a proof of concept would be paid work for us. That is why this page also says when we ourselves advise staying: when setup and editorial work function and neither procurement nor data protection demands another vendor, even more so with Salesforce in your stack.
Sanity fits when data model, workflows and integrations are demanding and the studio should be built exactly around your processes. Storyblok fits when editors should mainly work in the visual editor and build pages independently with prepared components. Sanity and Contentful offer preview and visual editing too, with a different emphasis. Both are cloud services, and Storyblok GmbH is based in Linz according to its imprint, although the contracting party may be another company of the Storyblok Group.
We explain the choice between the two in the headless CMS comparison by situation instead of by ranking, and our services around headless websites are in the headless websites hub. If a renewal is coming up, do not decide by system but by the trigger from the six questions.
How a switch works: Six steps
The process applies to Sanity and Storyblok as the target. The tools come from the official guides: the Contentful CLI, the Sanity package and the Storyblok documentation.
- Taking stock: content types, entries, assets, languages, apps, webhooks, roles and everything in the frontend that accesses Contentful.
- Target model: do not carry the model over one to one. Sanity works with documents and Portable Text, Storyblok with components, and in Storyblok folders determine the URL paths.
- Export and conversion: the Contentful CLI exports content types, entries, assets and more. For Sanity, the official package creates schema and import file. For Storyblok you write a script using the Management API or use the CLI commands stories push and assets push, which map references between entries to the new IDs automatically. In Storyblok, rich text needs a conversion of its own.
- Trial run: start with a small slice, write scripts you can safely repeat, and expect rate limits on the interfaces. Only then is an estimate for everything worthwhile.
- Frontend and editorial work: rewrite the queries, set up preview and languages, and train the team.
- Launch: freeze content in the old system while you prepare the new one for go-live, redirect old addresses, for assets at least the heavily used ones, resubmit the sitemap and keep the old system ready for the first days.
Steps 4 and 6 follow the recommendations in the Storyblok documentation: starting with a simple content type or a few entries, content freeze in the old system, redirects and an old system that stays operational for the first days.
What the export delivers, what it does not and what you rebuild
The export carries content and model, not everything around it. According to Contentful's documentation, version history, scheduled releases, tasks, workflows, space memberships as well as custom apps and UI extensions are missing.
What makes up frontend and editorial work you largely rebuild in the target system: queries, preview, language model, roles and training, and in Storyblok the rich text conversion too. The Sanity package converts rich text to Portable Text itself and skips tables in the process.
The diagram is in German. Its three columns correspond to this text and to the section on pitfalls.
Eight pitfalls that make switches expensive
Many of these points are named by the Storyblok tutorial on migrating from Contentful, the Storyblok documentation on CMS migration and by Contentful's own export documentation. Read them before you commit to a schedule.
- Rich text: in Storyblok the format cannot be carried over directly, so plan a conversion of your own. With the Sanity package you check the result, because tables are skipped.
- Links between entries: in Storyblok you import linked entries in the order of their dependencies, and references need a mapping from old to new IDs.
- Languages: clarify early how the target system models multilingual content. Storyblok offers fields, folders and multiple spaces for it.
- Environments: Contentful has environments, while Storyblok offers environments only since August 2026 and only as sandbox spaces on certain plans, not for live sites. Otherwise you create a separate space for development and testing.
- Custom apps and extensions: they cannot be exported and have to be rebuilt or replaced in the target system.
- Asset URLs: addresses of images and files change, so redirect at least the heavily used ones and adjust embedded addresses. Alternatives are CDN rules or a custom asset domain.
- Scripts: write them so that you can safely run them several times, and expect rate limits on the interfaces.
- Training: the editorial team then works in a new interface, so plan onboarding and documentation.
What makes a switch laborious: Six drivers instead of one number
A reliable number is not possible without a look at your setup, so we name none. What the effort depends on can be named, though.
- Size and nesting of the content model
- Dependencies: apps, workflows, preview, webhooks and languages
- Share of frontend: how much code accesses Contentful directly?
- Editorial work: roles, approvals and training
- SEO safeguards: redirects, asset URLs and sitemap
- Parallel operation: how long does Contentful run alongside the new system until the contract ends?
When estimating, look at the dependencies first, only then at the number of entries. Storyblok advises clarifying the model first with a proof of concept and starting the migration run with a simple content type or a few entries. We go one step further: a proof of concept on the hardest part, and only then schedule and budget.
We do not quote Contentful prices because they change. Ask your contact for the current offer and for the terms of termination.
Websites on Contentful, Storyblok and Sanity
Three projects, three systems: the Bundesliga Rookie Award was built with Contentful, b_smart with Storyblok and PROTOS with Sanity.
Bundesliga
Rookie Award
b_smart hotel group
Bundesliga
Rookie Award
Discover all cases
b_smart hotel group
What we need for a first assessment
Send us these five details and we can judge whether a proof of concept makes sense. You do not need to prepare anything you do not know anyway.
- Your Contentful plan and the contract end date
- Number of content types and languages
- Apps and webhooks in use
- Your frontend stack
- A planned relaunch, if there is one
What we do for you with Sanity and Storyblok
If you switch, you choose a target system. Here are our services for Sanity and Storyblok and the comparison of both systems.
Let's check together whether you stay with Contentful or switch
Your questions about Contentful after the acquisition
Sources and status
Last checked: October 2026. All sources were retrieved on 14 October 2026. Statements about Contentful rely on documents from Contentful and Salesforce, those about Sanity and Storyblok on their own pages, and those about Payload on Figma's blog. Dated are the announcement on 1 June 2026, the completion on 1 September 2026, the terms of service in the version of 15 September 2025 and the list of sub-processors of 8 October 2026. Contracts, lists and plans change, so check critical points at the linked source before you decide. We do not quote Contentful prices. This text is not legal advice.
- Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Contentful, Salesforce Newsroom, 1 June 2026, with a note on completion on 1 September 2026.
- A New Chapter for Contentful: Scaling Our Vision with Salesforce, Contentful blog, 1 June 2026.
- Contentful, Terms of Service, version of 15 September 2025.
- Contentful Sub-processors and Affiliates, as of 8 October 2026.
- Contentful Help Center, EU data residency, no date, retrieved on 14 October 2026.
- Contentful Developers, Import and export content with the Contentful CLI, no date, retrieved on 14 October 2026.
- contentful-to-sanity and GitHub repository, Sanity, version 5.0.0 of 13 March 2026.
- Storyblok, CMS Migration and Storyblok, Internationalization, documentation, each last updated on 13 October 2026, and Storyblok, Environments, manual, last updated on 6 October 2026.
- Migrating a Blog Site from Contentful to Storyblok, Storyblok, 30 June 2025.
- Storyblok, Legal Notice (imprint), retrieved on 14 October 2026.
- Welcoming Payload to the Figma team, Figma blog, 17 June 2025.