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How risky will your CMS migration be?

This assessment measures the risk in your CMS migration across four areas: SEO, integrations, content and team readiness.

Use your results to see which risks need attention first, plan and budget for them early, and choose the right starting point before you commit to a vendor or timeline.

11 questions · About 3 minutes

Start the assessment

Question 1 What CMS are you migrating from?

Select all that apply if migrating multiple platforms.

AEM Sitecore Drupal Kentico Custom CMS / Other Arc XP

Question 2 How many sites are you migrating?

1 2–5 6–14 15+

Question 3 What is your total monthly traffic?

Across all sites if migrating multiple. An estimate is fine.

Under 100K 100K–1M 1M–10M 10M+

Question 4 How many third-party integrations does your site have?

Include CRM, DAM, marketing automation, analytics, payment systems, and any custom-built connections.

0–2 3–5 6–10 11+ Not sure

Question 5 Which of these does your site connect to?

Select the systems you counted in the previous question.

DAM e.g. Adobe DAM, Bynder CRM / Salesforce Marketing automation e.g. Marketo, HubSpot Ecommerce / payments Custom APIs or internal systems Analytics or tag management e.g. GA4, GTM None

Question 6 How many pages does your site have?

Total across all sites if migrating multiple.

Under 1K 1K–10K 10K–50K 50K+ Not sure

Question 7 How would you describe your content structure?

Simple Mostly standard pages and blog posts, minimal custom fields Moderate Some custom post types, taxonomies, or structured metadata Complex Multiple content types, extensive custom fields, structured data, or content relationships across pages

Question 8 How important is SEO to your business?

1 = less important, 5 = mission critical

1 2 3 4 5

Less important Mission critical

Question 9 How would you describe your team’s WordPress experience?

No experience Basic Intermediate Strong

Question 10 Who is leading this migration internally?

Dedicated owner Shared responsibility across teams External consultant Not decided yet

Question 11 What is driving this migration?

This doesn’t change your score.

End of support deadline License renewal Redesign or replatform Performance or cost Acquisition or merger Still exploring

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ContinueSee my results

Your Migration Risk Score

/ 100 pts

Your migration is on the simpler end of what we see. The risks are well-understood and manageable if you start with a pilot.

This is the most common risk level we see. Nothing here is a dealbreaker. Yet, a few decisions made early will determine whether this goes smoothly or sideways.

You have several risk factors running at the same time. The order you tackle them matters as much as the execution itself.

This is one of the most complex migrations we see. It’s doable, but it needs a different plan than most.

Key Insight

You have several risk areas running high at the same time. Sequence them rather than running them in parallel: start with whichever has the longest lead time, usually redirects or integrations.

Start with a full URL inventory and redirect map, before anyone touches the build. At this traffic level the redirect plan is the migration plan. Most things can be fixed after launch; rankings are the slowest to win back.

Map every connected system and name an owner for each one before the build starts. The integrations nobody can name today are the ones that break in week two.

Lock your taxonomy and custom field mapping before a single page moves. Content problems are cheap to fix in a spreadsheet and expensive to fix in production.

Name one accountable owner before you scope anything else. Every other decision gets faster once there is a single person who can make it.

Risk Breakdown

SEO Risk

Your SEO exposure is manageable. The traffic and content volume you’re working with is well within the range where a structured redirect mapping and metadata plan handles the risk cleanly.

SEO risk is worth taking seriously. Redirect mapping and metadata migration need to be planned before the work starts, and not figured out as you go.

SEO is your highest-stakes risk. At this traffic level, ranking loss from a poorly handled migration can take the better part of a year to recover from, if at all.

AEM’s URL structure and DAM setup make SEO migration harder than on any other platform. Before a single page moves, you need a plan for redirect mapping and metadata extraction. Otherwise, you’ll be untangling it post-launch.

Integration Risk

Your integration footprint is small enough to handle without much drama. Standard connections can be remapped cleanly without putting the timeline at risk.

Integrations are a considerable factor. Every connected system needs its own migration plan.

Your integrations are a serious risk. Every system connected to your site is another place something can break during the move, and most of those breaks surface only after launch.

AEM builds deep dependencies between content, assets, and connected systems. Those don’t go away when you switch platforms, but show up on the migration team’s plate. You should map every connection before the work starts.

Custom CMS integrations are where migrations bring surprises. Half of them were built by someone who’s no longer around, and nobody’s quite sure what’s connected to what. You’ll find out what you missed when something stops working after launch.

Content Risk

Your content scope is straightforward. The volume you’re working with is manageable and unlikely to cause surprises during migration.

At your volume, content migration is where things can go wrong. Taxonomy mapping and custom field handling need to be worked out before migration starts: these are the things that look fine at launch and cause headaches later.

Content migration is a real risk at this scale. The problems usually surface well after launch, when you find metadata missing, taxonomy off, or the media library in a mess.

Team Readiness

Your team is in good shape. Clear ownership and WordPress familiarity are the two things that keep migrations on track. You have both.

There are some gaps on the team side worth addressing before you start. Getting the right internal owner in place and filling WordPress knowledge gaps early will save you a lot of pain later.

Team readiness is a real risk here. Without a clear internal owner, migrations take on a life of their own: decisions pile up, scope grows, and nobody’s sure who’s supposed to be driving.

Recommended Starting Point

→ Start with a Pilot

Pick a lower-risk property and migrate that first. It lets you validate the architecture, the workflow, and how your team handles the process.

→ Start with an Audit

Map your SEO URLs, inventory your integrations, and get a clear picture of your content structure. It sounds like groundwork, and it is. But skip this step and you’ll be scoping the migration twice: once before you start, and once when something breaks.

→ Start with a Phased Strategy

At this complexity level, a big-bang migration is too risky. Break it into phases, with clear checkpoints for SEO, integrations, and content at each stage.

One more thing if you’re on Kentico Xperience 13: Kentico stopped shipping anything but security hotfixes for it some time ago, and all support ends on December 31, 2026. A hard deadline has a way of making your decisions for you if you don’t make them first.