The CMS Migration Reality Check
With 55% of organizations changing website platforms, this white paper ranks the seven biggest migration challenges and includes a 9-point readiness checklist to help you plan your move with fewer surprises.
Introduction: A market in motion, held back by risk
More than half of organizations are in the middle of a website platform change. According to new research from Liferay, conducted with INFUSE, 29% of organizations migrated their website management solution in the past 18 months, and another 26% plan to migrate in the next 18.
That movement is not a sign of widespread excitement. Only 55% of respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with their current platform. Yet just 24% are actively evaluating new solutions. Many teams know their platform is holding them back, but the cost and risk of switching keep them where they are.
This paper looks at that tension from the inside. It draws on what organizations that have recently migrated, or are about to, say are the hardest parts of the process. The goal is simple: help you see where migrations go wrong before you start one, so the move you make is the last one you need for a long time.
Methodology
Liferay, in partnership with INFUSE, surveyed 100 IT and marketing leaders in the United States between January and March 2026 to understand how organizations choose, use and migrate website management systems. Respondents represent organizations across life sciences, technology, retail and consumer goods, public sector, nonprofit, financial and professional services, and manufacturing, with annual revenue ranging from under $100 million to more than $10 billion. Migration challenge rankings are based on the 55 respondents who had migrated in the past 18 months or planned to in the next 18.
Why organizations are moving
Migrations are driven by capability gaps, not just aging software. Respondents who were less than satisfied with their platform described the same problems again and again:
- Inability to achieve strategic goals
- Poor usability and a clunky user experience
- Lack of control or ownership over the platform
- Weak vendor support and inconsistent performance
- Outdated technology and cost
Even satisfied respondents often described their platform's reliability as "good enough" rather than a strength.
Meanwhile, what teams need from the website is changing. Asked which areas of their platform they most want to improve, respondents put integrating advanced analytics first (38%), followed by creating and managing content (36%) and content personalization (25%). The website is expected to measure and adapt, not just publish. Platforms built for publishing alone are where the gaps show up first.
The seven migration challenges, ranked by the people facing them
Content and data migration is the challenge organizations worry about most. We asked the 55 respondents who had migrated or were planning to rank seven common challenges from most to least important.
| Rank | Challenge |
|---|---|
| 1 | Content/data migration |
| 2 | Integration with ecosystem applications |
| 3 | User experience/training |
| 4 | Customization/custom code |
| 5 | SEO/analytics continuity |
| 6 | Culture/resistance to change |
| 7 | Unforeseen expenses |
The sections below group these challenges by what they put at risk.
Content and data: the heaviest lift
Content and data migration ranked first. It is easy to underestimate. Years of pages, assets, metadata and structured content rarely map cleanly to a new platform, and every gap becomes manual work.
How Liferay helps: Liferay starts with a map, not a move. It provides a defined path and tooling for migrating pages, templates, components, assets and metadata off a legacy CMS or portal. Not everything has to move, either. Headless APIs and micro-frontends let teams wrap a modern experience around a legacy backend, so they migrate only what's worth moving and retire the rest. Content can then move in phases rather than in one big-bang cutover, so a problem in phase two doesn't put phase one at risk.
Ecosystem integration: the new platform has to fit the stack
Integration with ecosystem applications ranked second. A website platform no longer stands alone. Respondents' organizations run on Microsoft Azure (51%), Amazon Web Services (43%) and Google Cloud Platform (30%), alongside CRM, analytics and identity systems. A migration that breaks those connections breaks the business processes that depend on them.
How Liferay helps: Liferay is built to work alongside the systems you already run. Its integration framework connects to external systems over SOAP, REST, GraphQL, RSS and proprietary APIs, and a REST API Builder lets teams create custom APIs for their own applications. Pre-built connectors cover common backends such as Salesforce, Google Drive, Office 365 and MuleSoft, with more on the Liferay Marketplace. Because legacy systems can keep serving data during the transition, they stay live as systems of record instead of going offline. Deployment is flexible too: SaaS, PaaS or self-hosted, so the platform fits your cloud strategy rather than dictating it. Manufacturer Putzmeister, for example, integrated Liferay with SAP Commerce, Salesforce, ServiceDesk and other systems and cut back-end effort by 60%.
People: training and resistance to change
User experience and training ranked third, and culture and resistance to change ranked sixth. Together they point to the same risk: a platform can launch on time and still fail if the people using it don't adopt it.
This matters because ease of use is the single biggest driver of satisfaction. 57% of respondents named ease of use and learning curve as a top factor in how satisfied users are with their platform, ahead of performance and stability (52%). Plan for training, and weigh authoring experience heavily when you evaluate options.
How Liferay helps: Liferay gives teams the resources to build confidence on the new platform before and after launch. Liferay Learn brings documentation, self-paced courses, role-based learning paths and official certifications together in one place, so editors, administrators and developers can each learn at their own pace. Courses such as Building Enterprise Websites with Liferay cover the skills teams need most, and a knowledge base of how-to guides and troubleshooting articles supports them long after go-live. For teams that want hands-on instruction, Liferay offers open classroom sessions and private classrooms, delivered on-site or at a location you choose and tailored to your use cases, for subscription customers and partners.
Technical debt: customization and custom code
Customization and custom code ranked fourth. Most organizations carry years of custom work on their current platform. Migration forces a decision for each piece: rebuild it, retire it, or replace it with standard configuration. Treat this as an opportunity to reduce future maintenance, not just a line item to port.
How Liferay helps: Much of what once required custom code can now be configured. With Liferay Objects, teams define the data their processes need, such as requests, registrations or service tickets, and map it to backend systems of record through headless APIs. Drag-and-drop Workflows handle multi-step approvals, and interfaces can be built without coding. Where custom development is still needed, Client Extensions keep it decoupled from the core platform, so teams can retire legacy components piece by piece and upgrade without rewriting everything.
Continuity: protecting SEO and analytics
SEO and analytics continuity ranked fifth. There is an irony here. Analytics integration is the top area organizations want to improve (38%), yet the migration itself can disrupt search rankings and break years of historical reporting. Map redirects, preserve URL structures where possible, and plan how tracking will carry over before cutover.
How Liferay helps: Liferay puts the tools for protecting search visibility in marketers' hands, so SEO continuity doesn't depend on developer tickets during cutover. Its Redirection tool handles 301, 302 and pattern-based redirects, and tracks 404 errors in the same place, so broken links from moved pages can be spotted and fixed quickly. XML sitemaps are generated and updated automatically, canonical tags help prevent duplicate-content issues, and hreflang is generated automatically for multilingual sites. A built-in Page Audit runs SEO and accessibility checks on each page inside the editor, and content performance metrics show traffic and views per asset, helping teams confirm that visibility carries over after launch.
Budget: unforeseen expenses
Unforeseen expenses ranked last among migration challenges. That does not mean cost is unimportant. Licensing costs were the second most important consideration in platform selection (39%), just behind security (40%). The lesson: organizations scrutinize the price tag closely but pay less attention to the full cost of the move. Build migration, integration and training effort into the total cost of ownership from the start.
Don't let compliance become challenge #8
Data protection is the security requirement buyers care about most, and migration is when data is most exposed. 62% of respondents named data protection and privacy compliance, such as GDPR and encryption at rest and in transit, as essential when selecting a platform. That is twice the share of any other security capability. Identity and access management came next at 31%.
During a migration, content and customer data move between systems, permissions are rebuilt, and integrations are reconnected. Each step is a point where compliance can slip. Organizations in regulated industries such as the public sector, financial services and manufacturing should treat compliance as a workstream in the migration plan, not a check at the end.
How Liferay helps: Liferay builds data protection into the platform rather than bolting it on. To support regulations such as GDPR, Liferay DXP can restrict access to personally identifiable information, delete or anonymize personal data out of the box, and prevent even administrators from identifying users whose data was erased. Identity carries over during a migration through SSO with any SAML 2.0 identity provider, LDAP, multi-factor authentication and fine-grained roles and permissions. Liferay holds ISO/IEC 27001, 27017 and 27018 certifications, among others.
Data residency alone is not the same as control. Liferay treats data sovereignty as a design principle, supporting self-hosted and private cloud, customer-managed Kubernetes, regional or sovereign cloud providers, and managed cloud services on the same core platform. Organizations can choose where data lives and change deployment models as regulations evolve, without changing capabilities, integrations or APIs.
Get the right people in the room early
A website platform decision is no longer IT's alone. Beyond the IT department, marketing and digital marketing are involved in 49% of purchase decisions, and executive leadership in 43%. Customer experience teams (21%) and content and communications teams (17%) often weigh in too. On average, 1.7 additional departments take part.
Each group cares about different migration risks, so involving them early prevents surprises late:
| Stakeholder | Migration risks they should own |
|---|---|
| IT | Ecosystem integration, custom code, security and compliance |
| Marketing / digital marketing | SEO and analytics continuity, authoring experience |
| Content and communications | Content migration, training |
| Customer experience | Continuity of the customer-facing experience |
| Executive leadership | Total cost of ownership, change management |
Bringing these teams in during planning, rather than at launch, turns hidden objections into requirements you can plan for.
Migration readiness checklist
Use this checklist to find the gaps in your plan before they become problems.
☐ We have inventoried our content, assets and metadata, and decided what to migrate, archive or retire.
☐ We have mapped every system the website connects to and confirmed how each integration will carry over.
☐ We have a training plan for editors and authors, and they have tested the new authoring experience.
☐ We have reviewed our custom code and decided what to rebuild, replace with configuration, or retire.
☐ We have a redirect map and a plan to preserve analytics tracking and historical data.
☐ We have a change management plan, with champions in each team that uses the website.
☐ Our budget covers migration, integration and training effort, not just licensing.
☐ Data protection and privacy requirements are part of the migration plan, with a named owner.
☐ Marketing, content, CX and executive stakeholders have agreed on requirements and success measures.
How Liferay approaches migration
Liferay's view is that migration should happen on your timeline, not all at once. Keep what works, wrap what doesn't, and migrate only what's worth moving. In practice that follows three steps:
- Map what you're migrating. Establish a baseline of pages, templates, assets, metadata and the undocumented integrations most legacy environments accumulate, then decide what to keep, wrap or retire.
- Phase the cutover. Move content in stages instead of a single big-bang switch, so a problem in one phase doesn't put the others at risk.
- Keep the business running. Legacy systems stay live as systems of record, and identity and access carry over, so users aren't disrupted while the platform changes underneath them.
The platform also addresses the challenges survey respondents ranked below the top three. For editors, Liferay offers pre-built templates, style books, site duplication and localization by country, language and currency, which shortens the learning curve behind ease of use. For continuity, on-page SEO tools, behavior and asset metrics, and automated A/B testing help teams rebuild visibility and measurement on the new site. For cost, Liferay cites industry data that legacy maintenance costs rise 15 to 25% a year, and notes that consolidating onto one platform has helped organizations cut operational costs by as much as 30%.
Proof point: Grants.gov consolidated 17 legacy sites into one on Liferay to reduce licensing and labor costs, and saw search use increase 98%.
Ready to plan your migration? Talk to Liferay about your migration plan, or compare your platform costs with the Liferay TCO calculator.
