CMS Modernization Report 2025

Let’s start with the good news: CMS platforms are still a top priority within the tech stacks of enterprise companies.

A strong majority of our survey respondents (89.7%) believed their companies will increase CMS spending over the next 12 months, including 92% of marketers. Only 3.3% of respondents predicted that their companies will decrease CMS spending in the coming year, although that percentage was highest among technical developers (6%).

More than half of enterprise companies juggle multiple CMSes

According to our research, it’s very common for enterprise companies to maintain more than one CMS system in their organization, as different departments buy different CMSes to support their needs. Just 23% of the executives we surveyed use only one CMS. A full 53% use two separate CMS systems, and 22% juggle three or more.

The IT department has massive influence in CMS decision-making

And who typically makes the CMS-purchasing decisions in their companies? At enterprise companies, that responsibility is rarely left to the team members who will actually be using the platform on a daily basis.

Our study found that the IT department is the lead decision-maker in CMS purchasing at 48% of companies. Marketing makes CMS purchasing decisions at just 10% of companies, and the CMS buying process is driven by Web Development/Design only 1% of the time.

When we asked our survey respondents if their CMS platform is living up to what was promised to them before implementation, their answers were generally positive, with more than half (56%) saying that their CMS is working as advertised.

39% had a more mixed response, saying that some parts of their CMS are working as promised while others are not. Only 5% claimed that they were fully unsatisfied with their CMS’s functionality.

Which missing features do CMS users want the most?

Even the most satisfied CMS users have a wish list of features and functionality that are missing from their current CMS platform, and these feature requests vary widely based on the respondent’s role. 

Among executives, personalization was the top feature on their CMS wish list, with 57% of those respondents noting that they wished their current CMS could provide personalized experiences for their buyers. Automation came in 2nd place at 50%, and brand-aware AI was third at 43% — both suggesting the leadership team’s desire for improving speed and efficiency in digital operations.

For marketing teams, the top CMS feature request was visual building (53%), a logical pick considering their need to create digital experiences independently and without developer-level technical knowledge. Personalization (52%) and automation (50%) came in second and third on the marketing team’s list, respectively.

And finally, the missing CMS features that developers want the most are visual building (62%) as well as front-end hosting (62%), which reflects their desire to serve digital experiences instantly and with as little downtime as possible. Automation (56%) was the third most common missing feature for developers.

Automation tops the feature wish list among CMS users

We also asked our survey respondents to tell us about the daily points of friction they encounter with their current CMS, aside from missing features. And while their responses once again differed by role, the two most commonly cited CMS challenges were the same for executives, marketers and developers: Speed of development and ability to innovate.

For the leadership team, speed of development was a frustration shared by 46% of respondents, followed by ability to innovate at 38% and time to market at 31%. 

It’s worth noting that a full 13% of the executive cohort claimed they didn’t have any struggles with their CMS at all — a much higher number than their counterparts in the marketing and dev teams, who tend to spend more time within the CMS platform.

Just like the C-suite, marketers also cited speed of development (51%) and ability to innovate (47%) as their top CMS challenges, although the struggle to innovate with their current CMS was felt more acutely with this group.

The ability to seamlessly integrate with other tech vendors (34%) was the third-most-common challenge for marketers, while just 5% claimed they had no struggles with their current CMS whatsoever.

It was a similar story overall for technical developers, although ability to innovate made the top of their list of CMS challenges, cited by a full 60% of the group. Speed of development was the second most common challenge for developers (51%), followed by the ability to seamlessly integrate with other tech vendors (48%). 

Only 1% of developers claimed they had no struggles with their current CMS whatsoever, suggesting that CMS friction for the web development team is a near-universal experience.

Speed and ability to innovate are the biggest CMS frustrations

Overall, our survey respondents’ most common struggles with their CMS were:

Speed of development (49%)


Ability to innovate (48%)


Ability to integrate with other tech vendors (37%)

Only 6.3% of total respondents claimed they don’t have any ongoing struggles with their CMS.

The usage of CMS systems is more widespread than ever, and thankfully, it’s a category that’s evolving for the future instead of fading away. Unfortunately, a few pesky challenges remain. 

Automation, visual building and personalization were the most commonly cited features missing from our respondents’ current CMS platforms, with front-end hosting and brand-aware AI not far behind. 

Meanwhile, just under half of our respondents claimed that they struggle with their CMS’s speed of development and ability to innovate, with tech integration being another common friction point that creates stress and inefficiency.

So what’s the solution? For many digital teams on the cutting edge, the answer has been investment in a modern, headless CMS, in which content presentation and content management are managed independently, linked by APIs.

• Real-time data activation and personalization, allowing teams to capture visitor data and process it in real-time to offer personalized experiences.
  Reusable, multi-step automations that drive efficiency and reduce manual and repetitive work.
• Visual building and live preview functionality that reduce content teams' reliance on engineering teams.
• Intelligent, turnkey integrations with the software and apps you use most, making your CMS your true content control center.
• Fast CDN delivery and front-end hosting, enabling fast, flicker-free personalization by serving content closer to the end user.
• Practical built-in AI tools, such as real-time translation, summaries and idea generation, enabling your digital team to work smarter, not harder

…all of which enable the innovation and speed of development that many enterprise companies are missing right now.

Modern CMSes serve as the foundation of a company’s digital agility, helping organizations deliver true 1-1 personalization by leveraging the power of scalable content with real-time activation of customer data. These agile, scalable solutions ensure that CMS users can quickly adapt to whatever market conditions and customer expectations emerge in the years to come.

Without the challenges of legacy CMS, everything is possible

Here’s what some of Contentstack’s customers have said about the impact of going from a legacy solution to a truly modern headless CMS:

Research for this report was powered by Sleeping Giant Labs’ BEI, and included 100 members each from the following personas:

• CMS Marketing Users
• CMS Technical Developers
• Executives

The survey respondents were evenly balanced between Enterprise (> $1B revenue) and Mid-Size ($100M - $1B) companies, and came from the following verticals: B2B, Finance, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, Manufacturing, Media/Entertainment, Retail, Software, Technology, & Travel/Tourism.

For more CMS industry research and benchmarks, visit contentstack.com/resources

Contentstack is on a mission to deliver the world’s best digital experiences with cutting-edge content management, customer data, personalization and AI technology. Iconic brands such as AirFrance KLM, ASICS, Burberry, Mattel, Mitsubishi and Walmart depend on the Contentstack EDGE platform to rise above the noise in today's crowded and competitive markets, constantly adapting to maintain their edge.

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Learn more at www.contentstack.com