Two of the most common migration requests we get at Seahawk Media in 2026 are Sitecore to WordPress and Typo3 to WordPress. The reasons are remarkably consistent across every conversation.
Why teams are migrating off Sitecore and Typo3
Sitecore licensing costs have continued climbing. Marketing teams find themselves paying enterprise prices for capabilities they could get from WordPress plus a handful of well-chosen plugins. The talent pool of skilled Sitecore developers has shrunk. Hiring takes months. Maintenance contracts read like ransom notes.
Typo3 has a different problem. The platform is technically capable, but the developer community outside German-speaking markets is thin. Long-term maintenance becomes a single-vendor dependency, and the upgrade path between major versions is famously painful.
WordPress is not perfect. But it has scale, an active talent pool, and an ecosystem that keeps compounding.
What you actually save
For a typical mid-market migration we run, the numbers look like this:
- Sitecore licensing: 80,000 to 250,000 USD annually, gone
- Hosting cost: roughly 60 percent reduction
- Developer rates: roughly 40 percent reduction
- Time to publish: from days to minutes for routine updates
Total cost of ownership over three years usually drops by 50 to 70 percent. The savings are real, and they compound year over year because WordPress hosting and developer rates keep getting more competitive.
What does the migration itself cost?
A Sitecore to WordPress migration is a significant investment, typically 10,000 to 100,000 USD or more depending on the number of sites, content volume, integrations, and design complexity. Small marketing sites land near the bottom of that range. Multi-site enterprise estates with custom integrations land at the top. We have completed migrations at both ends.
The math still works. A 50,000 USD migration project that eliminates a 150,000 USD annual licensing line item pays for itself in four months and keeps paying for the next decade.
The migration playbook
A migration is not a lift and shift. It is a rebuild with content carryover. The playbook we follow at Seahawk:
1. Content audit
Inventory every page, asset, form, and integration. Identify what stays, what consolidates, and what gets retired. Most enterprise sites have 30 to 50 percent dead content. Migrating it is wasted budget.
2. Information architecture
Redesign the URL structure and navigation around current business goals. Sitecore and Typo3 sites tend to accumulate organizational debt — the IA reflects the org chart from five years ago.
3. Content modeling
Map Sitecore templates or Typo3 content elements to WordPress block patterns and custom post types. Get the structure right before you write a single line of migration code.
4. Migration scripts
Custom export from the source CMS, transform to WordPress import format, validate. For Sitecore we typically use Sitecore PowerShell Extensions plus WP-CLI for ingestion. Typo3 exports come out of the database directly.
5. Redirect map
This is where most migrations fail. Every old URL needs a 301 to its new home. Build the map during the content audit, not at launch. Lose this and you lose your SEO equity overnight. Most enterprise sites need 5,000 to 50,000 redirect rules.
6. Theme and design
Block themes for marketing teams that need autonomy. Custom themes for brand-heavy sites that need pixel control. Both can hit Core Web Vitals targets if built correctly. We default to block themes because they reduce long-term maintenance cost.
7. QA, soft launch, hard launch
Staging for stakeholder review. A two-week soft launch with traffic shaping at the CDN. Then full DNS cutover with monitoring on every redirected URL. We track redirect health for 30 days post-launch.
Why WordPress is the right destination in 2026
The WordPress 7 release coming this year is the biggest jump the platform has made in years. Faster admin, native server-side blocks, a much smaller default JavaScript footprint, and a rebuilt interactivity API. Combined with managed hosting providers that handle infrastructure end-to-end, WordPress now competes directly with enterprise CMS platforms on uptime, security, and performance.
The plugin ecosystem fills the gaps Sitecore and Typo3 do not. Advanced Custom Fields for content modeling. WPML or Polylang for multilingual. WooCommerce for transactions. WP Rocket and Cloudflare for performance. The pieces fit together because thousands of agencies have already run this play.
How Seahawk Media handles enterprise migrations
Seahawk Media has migrated more than 12,000 sites to WordPress since I co-founded the agency. We have a dedicated migration team that handles Sitecore, Typo3, Adobe Experience Manager, Drupal, and custom CMS sources. Average migration timeline for a 500-page enterprise site is 8 to 12 weeks, with zero-downtime cutover.
We handle the full stack: content migration, theme build, plugin selection, redirect mapping, QA, training, and post-launch support. If you are considering a move and want a no-pressure assessment, get in touch — we will pull a complimentary audit of your current site and map out what a migration would actually look like.
Related reading
→WordPress vs Next.js in 2026: my honest comparison
→Headless WordPress in 2026: the complete practical guide
→How to choose the best WordPress hosting in 2026
→WordPress Support and Maintenance: what to actually expect