Sanity CMS: what it is and when to use it

Sanity is a headless CMS: your content lives in Sanity’s hosted database, your team edits it in Sanity Studio, an editing app built from your own content model, and your website fetches it through an API. It suits marketing teams who update structured content often, such as posts, events or team profiles. The free plan covers 20 seats, and Growth is US$15 per seat a month (Sanity). We use it on client sites built with Astro: Mark Espedido, our developer, set up Sanity for Generate and for G Plus.

What Sanity is made of

Part	What it does
Content Lake	Sanity’s hosted, real-time database, where the content lives
Sanity Studio	The editing app your team uses, generated from your content model and customisable (Sanity)
GROQ	Sanity’s query language, which your site uses to fetch exactly the content each page needs
Portable Text	Rich text stored as structured data, so a post’s body takes on the website’s own design
Visual editing	Live previews and click-to-edit on the page, for sites set up for it

Studio is open source. Developers describe each type of content and its fields, and Studio turns that into forms your team fills in. It also has comments, tasks and content releases for scheduling several changes together (Sanity).

The website is separate. Sanity doesn’t host pages or choose a design: a front end, such as an Astro site, fetches the content and turns it into pages. That split is what “headless” means.

What Sanity costs

As of 28 October 2026 (Sanity):

	Free	Growth	Enterprise
Price	US$0	US$15 per seat a month	Custom
Seats	Up to 20	Up to 50	Custom
Roles	2: Administrator, Viewer	5, adding Editor, Developer and Contributor	Custom roles
Datasets	2, public only	2, private or public	Custom
Documents	10,000	25,000	Custom
Also includes	Visual editing tools	Comments and tasks, scheduled drafts, AI Assist	Single sign-on, support and uptime SLA

Growth can add more documents (US$299 a month for 50,000) or extra datasets (US$999 a month each). Hosting the website itself is a separate cost, paid to your host.

A public dataset is fine for most marketing content, which ends up on the website anyway. The roles are the usual reason to move up: on Growth, a Contributor can write but not publish, which suits a review step before content goes live (Sanity).

How we set up a blog in Sanity

Generate is a B2B marketing community in Australia and New Zealand. On its new Astro site, the blog and the Summit’s speakers live in Sanity. The content model is small on purpose:

• Posts: a title, address, excerpt, main image, body, published date and SEO title, plus a category, an author, and a “featured” switch that puts a post in the featured spot at the top of the blog.
• Authors: a name, role and photo, entered once and linked from each post, so an author’s details update everywhere at once.
• Categories: three, Community, Practical ideas and Events, which become the blog’s filters. Each has an order field, so the team controls the filter order.
• Speakers: a name, role, company, photo and bio, a group (keynote, panel or MC) and the Summits they speak at, from 2025 to 2027. One speaker record can appear across several years.

Generate’s blog on its new Astro site. The categories, authors and photos all come from Sanity.

Not everything goes in. The Summit landing page stays as code, where design changes are quicker and safer than in a form.

Beyond the blog

G Plus is a site we’re building now, also Astro with Sanity. Its model covers programs, locations, events, staff, testimonials and FAQs. Two details show why structured content helps:

• Locations link to programs. Each location picks the programs it runs from one list, instead of typing them out again.
• FAQs are tagged by page. Each question says where it belongs, such as the home page or the programs page, so one list of FAQs feeds several pages without copies.

That’s the rule we follow: model what the content is, not where it appears. The setup itself is in how to use Sanity with Astro.

Sanity vs WordPress

	Sanity	WordPress
What it is	A headless CMS: content and editing only	A CMS that also runs the website, with themes and plugins
Editing	Forms built from your content model	A page editor plus custom fields, often through plugins
The website	Any front end, such as Astro	Usually WordPress itself, or headless with another front end
Hosting and upkeep	Sanity hosts the content; your host serves the site	You host and update WordPress, its theme and its plugins
Best for	Structured content a team updates often	Teams who want one system, or need its plugin library

Sanity suits a marketing site where content is structured and the site needs to be fast and custom-designed. WordPress suits teams who want editing, design and hosting in one system. If you’re moving, see our WordPress to Astro migration guide.

Sanity vs Contentful

Both are headless CMSs with hosted content and APIs. The practical differences are in editing and price. Sanity Studio is open source and shaped in code around your content, while Contentful’s editing app is a hosted web app. On price, Sanity’s free plan covers 20 seats; Contentful’s free plan is for testing and learning, not commercial use, and its paid plans started at US$300 a month for Lite when we checked on 11 October 2026 (Contentful, Contentful).

For a marketing site of typical size, Sanity is usually the cheaper start. We compare more options in Astro CMS: the best options.

When you don’t need Sanity

• The content rarely changes. A site with a handful of pages updated twice a year doesn’t need a second system.
• Developers or an AI assistant make the changes. Content can live as Markdown files in the site itself. Our own site works this way: we trialled Sanity and Keystatic and went back to files.
• Your team wants to design whole pages itself. A visual platform may suit you better; see Webflow vs Astro.

Questions we get asked

What is Sanity CMS?

Sanity is a headless CMS. Content is stored in its hosted database, the Content Lake, and edited in Sanity Studio, an open-source editing app built from your content model. Websites and apps fetch the content through an API, so Sanity works with any front end, such as Astro.

Is Sanity free?

It has a free plan: up to 20 seats, two public datasets and 10,000 documents, as of October 2026. The Growth plan is US$15 per seat a month and adds roles such as Editor and Contributor, private datasets, comments and scheduled drafts. Enterprise pricing is custom.

Is Sanity better than WordPress?

For a structured marketing site built with a modern front end, often yes: there are no themes or plugins to keep updated, and editors fill in clear fields. WordPress suits teams who want editing, design and hosting in one system, or who rely on its plugins.

What is Sanity used for?

Content a team updates often and reuses across pages: blog posts, events, speakers, team profiles, locations and FAQs. On Generate’s new site, it holds the blog and the Summit’s speakers. Pages that rarely change, or need design work each time, are often better kept in code.

Does Sanity host my website?

No. Sanity hosts your content and, if you like, Sanity Studio. The website itself is built by a front end such as Astro and served by a host such as Vercel, which can rebuild the site whenever someone publishes in Sanity.

If you’d like a site built with Sanity, see our Webflow and custom development service, or tell us about your project.

Sources

• Sanity, Pricing
• Sanity, Studio
• Sanity, Roles
• Contentful, Pricing and usage limits
• Generate case study
• How to use Sanity with Astro