Why brands are moving off Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe Experience Manager is a powerful enterprise content and experience platform, but it is also a heavyweight Java stack with a high cost of ownership, real implementation complexity, and a content layer that often sits awkwardly apart from the commerce engine. For brands whose priority is selling, maintaining AEM, and stitching it to a separate commerce platform, becomes more overhead than advantage. Consolidating content and commerce on Shopify is faster for the team and simpler to run.
AEM is a content platform, so what does migrating mean
Unlike a Magento or an ATG, AEM is primarily a DXP and CMS, not a checkout. Migrating off it is really a consolidation decision: bring the content and experience layer together with commerce on Shopify, rather than running and integrating two heavy platforms.
There are two clean patterns, and we choose based on how content-heavy the brand is: model content directly in Shopify using sections, metaobjects, and the theme; or pair Shopify with a modern headless CMS such as Sanity, Contentful, or Contentstack when editorial needs are extensive. Either way the result is a faster, far simpler stack.
Choosing the content model
For many brands, Shopify's native content tools plus metaobjects cover what AEM was doing, at a fraction of the complexity. For content-led brands with large editorial teams, a headless CMS gives structured authoring and reuse while Shopify owns commerce. We architect the content model so editors gain control rather than lose it. Explore the CMS options on our integrations practice.
Migrating content, assets, and SEO
AEM content fragments, experience fragments, and DAM assets are re-modeled into the new content structure rather than dumped, and templates become reusable components. As with any replatform, AEM's URL structures are mapped completely to the new URLs with 301 redirects, preserved canonicals, and a refreshed sitemap, so content equity built up over years is not lost.
Commerce, integrations, and proof
With content handled, the commerce build is standard enterprise Shopify work: catalog, checkout, and the ERP, PIM, and OMS integrations the business runs on, all re-wired through governed flows.
SDG migrated Mattel off Adobe Experience Manager onto Shopify, consolidating its content and commerce experience on a single, faster platform. See our migration service for how we approach it.