For years, mid-market enterprises running Sitecore have felt trapped. Every contract renewal brings escalating licensing costs, often driven by aggressive pushes toward XM Cloud. When digital leaders reach out to big agencies for a way out, they are almost universally met with the same pitch: a $300,000+ full site rebuild that takes eight months to a year.
But what if your website design and content aren’t broken? What if the only problem you need to solve is Sitecore itself?
The High Cost of the “Big-Agency Replatform”
Traditional agencies thrive on massive scope. When you ask to migrate platforms, they view it as an opportunity to rethink your brand identity, restructure your entire information architecture, and rewrite all your copy. While a full rebuild is necessary when a site is obsolete, it forces companies to pay enterprise-level prices for services they didn’t ask for.
A standard full rebuild costs upwards of $175,000 to $300,000+ and drags on for 150 to 240 days. Meanwhile, marketing teams are stuck in staging limbo, unable to execute campaigns effectively while paying double licensing during the transition.
The Smarter Path: The “Lift & Shift” Approach
A Lift & Shift migration separates your content and design from your CMS platform. Instead of reinventing the wheel, the Lift & Shift methodology preserves what is already working:
- Design & UX: Rebuilt faithfully in Optimizely so your site visitors see zero friction or disruption.
- Content & Assets: Migrated programmatically, maintaining data structures, assets, and metadata intact.
- Integrations: Existing connections to CRM, analytics, and marketing automation tools are rewired into Optimizely.
Conclusion
If your current site design effectively converts leads and represents your brand well, you don’t need a total overhaul. By selecting an AI-accelerated Lift & Shift approach starting from $50k, you can drop Sitecore’s licensing burden and transition smoothly to Optimizely in under 90 days.
