Storyblok vs. Contentful - Which Offers the Better Editing Experience?

Contentful Modernization & Gatsby -> Next.js Migration

Visier partnered with 9thCO to re-architect their headless website environment. Struggling with a fragmented codebase and inefficient content management workflows, Visier engaged 9thCO to modernize their Contentful instance, transition their frontend architecture from Gatsby to Next.js and establish a scalable foundation for future growth.

The Challenge

Engineering Bottlenecks: Visier's marketing team was heavily reliant on developer resources to publish routine content due to an inflexible Contentful configuration.
Gatsby Limitations: The existing front-end framework was causing memory-intensive builds that exceeded CI/CD resource limits on Netlify and getting worse as the site's content grew.
Fragmented Ecosystem: Visier's digital footprint was spread across multiple disparate third-party tools, creating a disjointed website architecture. Portions of the website existed as hard-coded pages within the codebase due to custom requirements, and therefore were uneditable within Contentful.
Performance & Accessibility: The site required baseline web accessibility improvements to align closer to WCAG standards, as well as performance optimizations to resolve rendering and memory issues.

The Solution

Next.js Migration: 9thCO transitioned the frontend architecture from Gatsby to Next.js 16, utilizing the App Router and React Server Components to reduce client-side JavaScript and improve performance.
Self-Serve CMS: Contentful was re-engineered using a dual-model approach: a slottable page builder for marketing flexibility and fixed templates for consistent content types such as articles and press releases.
Live Preview: To ensure content editors could preview changes without forcing client-side rendering or relying on third-party Draft Mode cookies, 9thCO built a custom server-rendered Live Preview environment.
On-Demand Revalidation: Instead of time-based or full-site rebuilds, 9thCO implemented tag-based on-demand revalidation, using a webhook to update only the specific pages affected by a content change.
Algolia Integration: Site search was upgraded to Algolia, powered by a custom route handler that automatically synchronizes published Contentful entries directly into the search index.