Contentful's roadmap doesn't answer to its customers anymore. 

When Salesforce announced its acquisition of the company in June 2026, it also confirmed where Contentful's engineering hours are headed next: toward Agentforce integration, not the content management and developer experience gaps that have been driving enterprise teams away for years.

The deal isn't expected to close until Q3 FY27 (as late as October 2026), and Contentful's own leadership has already signaled the shift. In the announcement, Contentful’s CEO said the platform's "API-first architecture and deep domain expertise fit perfectly into the Salesforce stack." 

Not any stack. The Salesforce stack. For the nine to 12 months before close, and most likely years after, feature investment for teams outside that ecosystem takes a back seat.

That's worth knowing, because the gaps enterprise teams already report with Contentful aren't small. Here are three that come up again and again in reviews, analyst research and the words of teams that have switched to Contentstack, and why they're unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

1. Heavy reliance on developers slows teams down and limits what editors can do

Contentful markets itself as flexible, but that flexibility still runs through engineering. Its Studio doesn't offer true visual editing, and a rigid content model means editors often need a developer just to change how a page looks. "Content authoring UX is painful for non-technical users," one senior web engineer wrote in a G2 review. 

Contentstack closes that gap with modular blocks, global fields and Visual Editor, giving editors real control over layout and content without waiting on engineering for every change. A marketer can rearrange a landing page, swap out a hero image or launch a new regional variant directly in a live preview, and a developer never has to touch it. 

That shift changes what a content team can ship in a week, and it changes what a developer team gets to spend their time on instead.

The results show up in the numbers. A global cybersecurity training and certification provider moved to Contentstack specifically so its designers could build a more personalized experience on their own, and an iconic global toy company saw a 200% jump in developer velocity once its team stopped spending cycles on routine content edits.

Freeletics documented a similar result in its own case study. The fitness app, used by 48 million people across 175 countries in 10 languages, logged a 58% increase in developer productivity after leaving Contentful for Contentstack.

2. Governance and workflow gaps create real operational risk

Speed isn't the only weakness cited by Contentful users. Contentful's collaboration tools are thin enough that multiple authors can overwrite each other's work without warning. "There are frankly no collaboration features to speak of," one senior web engineer wrote in a G2 review. "It's too easy for multiple authors to accidentally overwrite each other's changes."

For enterprises publishing across regions, languages and channels, that gap creates real operational risk. A missed rollback, an overwritten localization or a page pushed live before legal review can happen whenever workflow and permissions are treated as an afterthought rather than core infrastructure, with localization and safer publishing controls sitting behind paid apps instead of built into the platform.

A global apparel company felt it directly. After moving to Contentstack, it cut its launch timeline from 12 weeks to 2-3 weeks while scaling content into 14 languages across 20 countries.

A multilingual platform that connects immigrants to essential local services made the switch for a related reason. It needed a secure, SOC 2 Type 2 certified headless CMS with APIs robust enough to support multilingual sites safely, something its previous Contentful setup couldn't guarantee.

Read more: Contentful's hidden costs and governance gaps are slowing enterprise teams down

3. Total cost of ownership is unpredictable and often far higher than expected

Contentful's sticker price looks approachable, right up until usage, localization or basic governance push a team into paid add-on territory. 

"Pricing model is complex to the point that the reason we chose Contentful was no longer valid, as price escalates quickly for multiple spaces and usage," one digital consultant wrote in a G2 review. "We actually moved to a more enterprise and transparent offering with Contentstack."

The math is straightforward once you add it up. A base subscription is only the starting line, and localization, automation and governance controls are frequently sold as separate line items. Each renewal cycle tends to price in usage growth the original contract never accounted for, so enterprises end up paying for the same operational risk described above and paying again to patch it with add-ons.

That pattern repeats across the brands that made the switch. For the cybersecurity training and certification provider mentioned above, overall total cost of ownership was a determining factor in leaving Contentful.

The toy company deployed on Contentstack six months ahead of schedule and grew e-commerce revenue by 50% year over year in the first half of 2021. Freeletics cut content publishing time by 80%, freeing up budget and headcount that had gone toward routine publishing work.

The apparel company grew its e-commerce business by 29%, to $4.5 billion in revenue, a result that a predictable, scalable content operation helped make possible.

Why these gaps probably aren't closing anytime soon

None of this is new information to Contentful's product team. What's new is who decides whether to fix it.

Salesforce's acquisition announcement was explicit about where Contentful belongs going forward: as the native content layer for Agentforce, alongside Informatica's data layer. Non-Salesforce use cases aren't the stated audience for their roadmap.

History offers a preview of what that tends to mean. When SAP acquired the marketing platform Emarsys in November 2020, it promised customers the product would stay independent and composable.

Five years later, in February 2026, Emarsys was fully rebranded as SAP Engagement Cloud, rebuilt around SAP's integration priorities rather than its original customer base. Contentful customers hoping their editor experience, governance tools or pricing improve during a multi-year Salesforce integration are asking a question the SAP and Emarsys precedent already answered.

Contentful still has more than 4,800 enterprise customers and a well-regarded engineering team, and none of that changes overnight. What changes is who those engineers report to and which roadmap items get prioritized when Salesforce's integration needs conflict with a non-Salesforce customer's request.

Gartner already placed Contentful as a Niche Player in its February 2025 Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms, citing declining product innovation before the acquisition was even announced. (Contentstack was named a “Visionary” in that same Gartner DXP report.) A multi-year integration cycle isn't likely to reverse that trend.

The bottom line

For digital leaders weighing a CMS decision today, the real question is whether Contentful's roadmap will still be built for you three years from now, not just whether the platform is capable today.

The teams above moved because developer-dependent authoring, thin governance and unpredictable costs were slowing them down, and because there's now less reason than ever to expect Salesforce's integration roadmap to fix any of it.

None of this requires you to take Contentstack's word for it. Read the reviews, study the analyst research and talk to a team that has already made the move. If your organization is watching Contentful's product priorities disappear into a Salesforce integration queue, explore how other enterprises made the switch to Contentstack and see what a content platform built to answer only to its customers can do.

Are you a current Contentful customer? See if you qualify for our migration offer.

Contentstack vs. Contentful at a glance

Both platforms check the “enterprise headless CMS” box, but they optimize for different operating models: Contentstack for marketing-led, governance-heavy organizations, Contentful for developer-led teams that prioritize ecosystem breadth.

Want the full feature-by-feature breakdown instead of just the highlights? See our complete Contentstack vs. Contentful comparison.