Sitecore to WordPress
Sitecore to WordPress: Cutting Licence Cost, Keeping Structure
Cut a Sitecore licence and land on WordPress without losing the site or the argument for doing it. These moves need the risk written down for people who did not choose the migration, so the plan names every content type, every URL and every integration before anything is touched. Send the address for a written transfer plan.
Roughly what will this cost?
An estimate from the three things that actually drive the price. A fixed quote follows a look at the site.
Get a fixed quote- A written migration plan a stakeholder can read and sign off
- Content types and taxonomy mapped, not flattened
- Every URL redirected, one hop, verified before the switch
- Licence and specialist hosting cost removed, with the numbers stated
What transfers, what gets rebuilt
| What | Comes across | Needs rebuilding |
|---|---|---|
| Content items | Yes | Mapped to post types with their fields |
| Templates and field structure | Yes, as post types and fields | The mapping, agreed in advance |
| Media library | Yes, at source resolution | Library organisation |
| URL structure | Partially | Redirects for item paths and any legacy .aspx addresses |
| Personalisation rules | No | Re-examined; most are not reproduced, deliberately |
| Integrations | No | Assessed individually and priced in the inventory |
| Users and roles | Yes, without passwords | Roles mapped to WordPress capabilities |
| Renderings and layouts | No | Rebuilt as theme templates |
The migration nobody can approve on a phone call
A Sitecore move is rarely a technical decision made by one person. It is a licence renewal, a budget line and a stakeholder who did not choose it and will be blamed if it goes wrong.
That changes what the deliverable is. The plan matters as much as the migration: every content type named, every URL accounted for, every integration listed with what happens to it, and the rollback stated. Not because the work is different, but because approval depends on someone being able to read it and see no unknowns.
The inventory produces that document before anything is quoted, and it is useful even if you decide not to proceed.
What to check before you commit
Two questions decide whether this move is right.
What Sitecore capability is genuinely in daily use? Personalisation, multi-variant testing and deep CRM integration are real features, and plenty of estates have them configured and unused. Where something on that list is actually earning, WordPress is the wrong destination and the honest answer is to stay.
What does a change cost you today? Licence, hosting and specialist development against the same work on WordPress. For content and marketing sites the gap is usually large enough that the migration pays for itself inside a year – and if it is not, that is worth knowing before the project starts.
Afterwards the site needs the ordinary things: WordPress maintenance, hardening and daily scanning, and a plan that fits the traffic it carries.
Getting it signed off
These migrations rarely stall on cost. They stall because nobody wants to own the risk, which is why the plan names every content type, URL and integration before anything moves – an unstated risk is what makes approving it career exposure.
Neighbouring moves with the same approval problem are Webflow to WordPress, where the objection is design control, and Squarespace to WordPress, where it is search equity. The method underneath all three is on WordPress Migration, and what the site costs to run once it lands is on WordPress price and package cover.
How the work runs
- Inventory the old siteEvery URL, every page, every product, every form. The export is checked against a crawl, because platform exports routinely omit what was never a page - landing URLs, redirects already in place, files linked directly.
- Build on WordPress firstContent types, templates and the theme are stood up and populated before anything points here. The old site keeps trading throughout.
- Map every URLOld address to new address, one hop, written down before the switch rather than discovered from 404s afterwards.
- Test what earns moneyForms, checkout, search, login. A migration that moves every page and breaks the enquiry route has failed at the only thing it was for.
- Switch, then watchDNS moves with the TTL already lowered. Real 404s are checked against the redirect map for a fortnight, and the old platform stays paid for until it is provably unnecessary.
The redirect plan
- Inventory every content item path from the live site rather than the content tree
- Map item URLs to the WordPress permalink structure agreed at the start
- Redirect legacy .aspx and any earlier-generation paths still answering
- Map media paths, which Sitecore serves from its own handler
- Publish as server-level 301s, verify one hop, no chains
- Monitor real 404s for a month and reconcile against the map
Plans that include this
- Starter$39/monthor $390 a year — two months freeBlogs, portfolios and brochure sites
- UpdatesMonthly
- BackupsWeekly, 30-day retention
- Uptime5-minute checks
- Malware removalNot included
- Most chosenProfessional$79/monthor $790 a year — two months freeSmall businesses and lead-generation sites
- UpdatesWeekly + PHP version management
- BackupsDaily, 60-day retention
- Uptime1-minute checks
- Malware removalIncluded
- Business$149/monthor $1490 a year — two months freeStores, membership sites, anywhere downtime costs money
- UpdatesWeekly, tested on staging first
- BackupsDaily, 90-day, multi-location
- Uptime1-minute + 2-hour restore
- Malware removalIncluded
The service that covers this
WordPress MigrationMove a WordPress site to new hosting without the outage everyone expects. The new install is built and tested while the old one keeps serving, DNS…
More in Migration
Questions people ask before calling
How do I justify this internally?
With the numbers and the risk in writing, which is what the transfer plan is for. Licence plus specialist hosting plus development rates against the WordPress equivalent, and a named plan for every content type and URL so nobody is asked to approve an unknown.
What about personalisation?
Most Sitecore personalisation in the wild is configured and then never revisited. Each rule is examined and the honest question asked: is this earning anything? What survives is reproduced; the rest is dropped on purpose rather than lost by accident.
Is WordPress enterprise-grade?
For content and marketing sites, yes, and it runs a large share of the web including plenty of organisations larger than yours. Where a genuine Sitecore capability is in daily use, moving is the wrong call and we will say so before you spend anything.
Who does the work afterwards?
Anyone. That is a substantial part of the value: the pool of people who can maintain a WordPress site is orders of magnitude larger than the pool who can maintain Sitecore.
How long does it take?
Scoped after the inventory. Sitecore estates vary more than any other source platform here, and a number given before seeing the content tree would be invented.