How Long Does a CMS Migration Take?
BeginnerQuick Answer
TL;DR
Small sites (under 500 pages) typically take 2–6 weeks. Mid-size sites (500–5,000 pages) take 6–16 weeks. Enterprise migrations with complex integrations, large content volumes, or regulatory requirements can take 3–12 months. The biggest variables are content volume, content complexity, number of integrations, and team availability — not the CMS platforms themselves.
Key Takeaways
- Content volume is the most predictable factor: budget roughly 1–2 hours of migration work per 100 pages for simple content
- Integrations (e-commerce, personalization, DAM, CRM) add weeks, not days, to a migration timeline
- Discovery and content modeling phases are consistently underestimated — they often take as long as the technical migration itself
- A rushed migration costs more to fix than a properly scoped one