--- title: Practical Considerations For Moving to Sitecore XM Cloud description: Why is now a good time to migrate to XM Cloud? What do you need to consider? Our advice is beneficial if you are moving from Sitecore XM or XP. publish date: 2023-02-08 author: Oshyn image: https://www-qa.oshyn.com/-/media/Oshyn/Insights/Blog/Should-You-Stick-With-XM-XP-or-Make-the-Composable-Jump/blog_hero_go-composable.jpg?rev=9c100c7853454490812082ff295c5163 url: http://www-qa.oshyn.com/blog/2023/02/stay-with-sitecore-xm-xp-or-go-composable --- # Practical Considerations For Moving to Sitecore XM Cloud ![Making the leap to composability](https://www-qa.oshyn.com/-/media/Oshyn/Insights/Blog/Should-You-Stick-With-XM-XP-or-Make-the-Composable-Jump/blog_hero_go-composable.jpg?rev=9c100c7853454490812082ff295c5163&hash=68B6E4498041576A757AC2C4BCAC2A55) For Sitecore XP customers, moving to XM Cloud has probably crossed their minds more than once. But when do you know the time is right to make the move, and what should you consider before doing so? In this post, we’ll explain why now is a good time to migrate to XM Cloud and provide some things you need to consider, especially if you are moving from another Sitecore system like Sitecore XM/XP.  ## Why XM Cloud? Sitecore XM Cloud is a modern SaaS CMS built on headless, cloud-native architecture. It enables enterprises to create, manage, and deliver personalized experiences to any channel. This means businesses can find similar functionality to other Sitecore solutions, such as Sitecore XP/XM, which include robust content management capabilities and features such as drag and drop functionality, WYSIWYG editing, and multilingual sites. XM Cloud also offers additional benefits since it is a cloud-native solution. This includes a lower total cost of ownership, no more manual upgrades, reduced maintenance costs, improved scalability, and robust security and reliability. However, before realizing these benefits, enterprises must carefully consider several factors to avoid surprises. ## Factors to Consider Before Migrating to XM Cloud Like any other composable solution, businesses need to be aware of certain factors. These factors are even more critical for Sitecore XP users considering XM Cloud. ### Defining Business Objections Before implementing a new and expensive marketing technology, businesses should clearly understand their reasons for doing so. For customers migrating from XM Cloud, these reasons will likely be to attain the benefits of moving to the cloud, such as reduced maintenance and a lower total cost of ownership. They could also be looking to migrate to get the performance benefits of a headless website, including improved Google Lighthouse scores and SEO rankings. ### Industry-Specific Compliance Requirements Businesses in highly regulated industries such as financial services or healthcare may be required to host their infrastructure on-premises or in a privately managed cloud. As such, they might not be in the best position to adopt Sitecore XM Cloud instead of Sitecore XP. ### The Costs of Going Headless Moving from a traditional website to a headless one often comes with increased costs that many customers must be aware of. The first cost is the need to rebuild the entire website in a headless manner, which is why many customers opt to perform an XM Cloud migration as part of a planned redesign. Additionally, businesses must launch a headless website using a rendering host such as Vercel or Netlify. These platforms offer caching and content delivery network (CDN) capabilities, which are critical for ensuring the website loads quickly for users regardless of location. ### The Need for Search Sitecore XP customers may have been accustomed to having built-in search capabilities as part of their digital experience platform (DXP). However, Search doesn’t come built-in with XM Cloud. Instead, customers must also purchase and integrate Sitecore Search to have site search functionality and predictive text recommendations. ### Developer Team Capabilities Although both XP and XM Cloud are Sitecore products, they have different development paradigms, requiring another set of skills from internal developers or external agencies currently working with XP. While Sitecore XP requires .NET, XM Cloud leverages advanced JavaScript. Consequently, developers must be ready to use JavaScript technologies or be prepared to conduct the necessary training to manage the new implementation. ### Adjusting to the New Feature Paradigm With the introduction of XM Cloud, the philosophy around finding the right functionality for a digital experience stack has changed. Previously, XP customers might have been used to having all features found in one system. However, not all features may have worked well or suited their needs. Although XM Cloud offers many of XP’s core features, its approach differs from that of Sitecore XP. With XM Cloud's composable philosophy, companies can add the best features and tools to fit their use cases by adding additional composable products. For instance, XM Cloud offers built-in personalization capabilities, such as the rule-editor-type approach, similar to how personalization is managed in XP. However, to achieve a complete personalization experience, they will need to implement Sitecore Personalize and possibly Sitecore CDP alongside XM Cloud. ## Should You Stick With Sitecore XM/XP? After considering everything that XM Cloud offers, you might be tempted to stay on Sitecore XM/XP and simply upgrade to the latest version as necessary. Here’s where that might make sense: - You are in a highly regulated industry and need total control over your customer data. - Your business is using all of the features that Sitecore XP offers. - The total cost of ownership of using Sitecore XP hasn’t become a burden. - Sitecore XP is deeply integrated with the rest of your tech stack, and making the move would be too complex.