Complete guide to migrating your Adobe AEM website to Hugo. Leave Adobe AEM's most expensive cms on the market ($250k+/year) behind and get blazing fast builds. Free migration tool included.
You can migrate from Adobe AEM to Hugo for free using LeaveWP. Enter your site URL, choose Hugo as the destination, and download your content — posts, pages, and media — in minutes. No API keys, passwords, or CLI tools required. Difficulty: Advanced. Estimated time: 1-3 hours.
Official docs: Hugo Documentation
Adobe's enterprise content management platform. Global enterprises in the Adobe ecosystem needing DAM integration, but these limitations push teams toward modern alternatives.
Most expensive CMS on the market ($250K+/year)
This is the most common reason teams migrate away from Adobe AEM. Hugo eliminates this issue entirely.
Requires specialized AEM developers (Java/OSGi expertise)
With Hugo, blazing fast builds — renders 10,000 pages in seconds.
Extremely complex architecture and steep learning curve
Modern architectures like Hugo are designed to avoid this from the ground up.
Over-engineered for anything below Fortune 1000 scale
After migrating, you'll no longer need to worry about this — Hugo takes a fundamentally different approach.
Fastest static site generator, written in Go. Built with Go (Go templates), it's documentation sites and blogs where build speed and simplicity matter most.
Blazing fast builds — renders 10,000 pages in seconds
Single binary with zero dependencies
Built-in image processing, taxonomies, and i18n
Huge theme library for quick starts
Hugo is open-source and free to use. You own your code and data with no vendor lock-in. Deploy to any host that supports Go, or use managed platforms like Vercel and Netlify for zero-config deployments.
Side-by-side comparison based on real platform characteristics
| Metric | Adobe AEM | Hugo |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | ⭐⭐ 2/5 | ⭐⭐⭐ 3/5 |
| Performance | ⭐⭐⭐ 3/5 | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5/5 |
| Flexibility | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5 | ⭐⭐⭐ 3/5 |
| Cost | ⭐ 1/5 | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5/5 |
| Scalability | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5/5 | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5/5 |
| Ecosystem | ⭐⭐⭐ 3/5 | ⭐⭐⭐ 3/5 |
| Language | Java (OSGi) | Go (Go templates) |
| Pricing | Paid ($250K+/year) | Free (open-source) |
| Open Source | No | Yes |
Ratings are based on publicly available data, documentation, and community consensus as of 2026. Individual experience may vary.
A detailed breakdown of how your Adobe AEM content maps to Hugo
What may need manual attention
Custom server-side logic, third-party integrations, and platform-specific plugins will need equivalent solutions in Hugo. The core content (text, images, metadata) transfers cleanly.
Migrate your content in three simple steps
Enter your Adobe AEM site URL — LeaveWP connects automatically.
Select Hugo as destination and choose content options.
Download your migrated content or preview it in your browser.
Migrating from Adobe AEM to Hugo makes the most sense if you're experiencing most expensive cms on the market ($250k+/year) or outgrowing Adobe AEM's architecture. Hugo is best for documentation sites and blogs where build speed and simplicity matter most.
You should migrate if: your Adobe AEM site is slow, your hosting costs are climbing, you need developer flexibility, or you want to adopt a modern JAMstack architecture.
You might want to stay if: your Adobe AEM site benefits from deep integration with the entire adobe creative cloud suite and you don't have Go developers on your team.
The migration itself is straightforward with LeaveWP — enter your Adobe AEM URL, select Hugo, and download your content. The more important question is whether Hugo's architecture fits your team's skills and your project's long-term needs.
Explore more migration paths from Adobe AEM or to Hugo
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