Sanity developer who actually writes Sanity Studio customisation, not just GROQ queries

Sanity is the headless CMS where the editorial UX is the actual product. Sanity Studio is a fully customisable React-based editor that engineering teams can extend with custom input components, custom workflows, and bespoke previews. The data layer is real-time and queried with GROQ (a JSON-shaped query language). Pricing is generous at the free tier, scales with API requests and document count.

• Brand-led marketing sites where the content team is the primary user and the editorial experience drives adoption
• Multi-channel publishers (web + app + newsletter + social) where the same content needs to render to multiple frontends
• Multi-language content operations — Sanity's localisation patterns scale meaningfully to 10+ languages
• Teams who want to invest in editorial customisation as a competitive advantage (custom Studio components, in-context previews)

GROQ is great but is not standard SQL or GraphQL

Engineering teams new to GROQ spend the first 2-3 weeks building intuition. The flexibility is worth it long-term but the learning curve is real.

Pricing scales with API requests, not just document count

Sanity free tier covers small sites; once you cross into 100k+ monthly requests, the bill grows. Plan for caching and ISR strategies that minimise re-fetching.

Studio customisation is engineering work, not a config tweak

Custom input components, custom workflows, and bespoke preview surfaces require real React + Sanity-internals knowledge. Most agencies stop at the default schema; a real Sanity engagement extends Studio.

One senior on every engagement

I am the senior on the call, the senior on the architecture review, and the senior who answers when something breaks at 11pm. The build is delivered with senior engineers from Seahawk Media under my direction; the kickoff and the handover are with me directly.

Real Sanity experience, not "we read the docs once"

The Sanity space is full of agencies that bolted the platform onto a generic offer. The questions a senior Sanity developer answers — content modelling, schema migration, performance, observability, multi-environment workflows — are the questions you actually need answered, and that is where the engagement earns its fee.

Modern stack pairing

Most Sanity engagements pair the platform with Next.js, Astro, or a modern frontend stack. I have shipped both sides of that pairing across 50+ projects. The integration patterns, the deployment topology, the SEO transport on migrations — all of it has been done before, and you get the lessons rather than paying for them in your project.

I take on a small number of Sanity engagements at any given time. Two shapes that fit best:

Project — 4 to 12 weeks, fixed-price. Clear scope (a content migration, a Studio customisation, a performance audit, a build from scratch). Discovery week first, then a fixed-price quote. Most projects land in the 12,000-60,000 USD range.

Retainer — 8 hours per week, monthly. Ongoing Sanity engineering support after launch. Schema evolution, new feature work, integration help with adjacent stacks. Typical retainer 6,400-12,800 USD/month depending on complexity.

Booking sequence: 30-minute call, you describe the brief, I tell you which shape fits and the price range. No sales deck, no qualification screen. If I am not the right person, I will tell you on the call.

• Sanity in the headless CMS directory Sanity vs Contentful vs Storyblok — the editorial experience comparison.
• Migrating WordPress content to Sanity Pattern for moving a WordPress editorial workflow to Sanity + Next.js.

Book a 30-minute call. By the end of it you will know whether Sanity is the right pick for your brief, what the realistic scope is, and a price range that fits your budget. If Sanity is not the right answer, I will tell you and recommend the alternative.