Platform / Sanity
Sanity development for teams that want structured content, done right.
We build on Sanity when a hosted, real-time, highly structured content backend is the right call, with the front end pre-rendered so editor flexibility never costs you performance.
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How Sanity actually works
Sanity is a hosted headless CMS built around structured content: everything is data, including rich text, which it stores as Portable Text rather than HTML. That structure is its great strength: the same content renders correctly on a website, in an app, or in an email, because it was never tied to one presentation.
It offers real-time collaborative editing, a customisable Studio, and a query language (GROQ) that is genuinely pleasant to work with. For editorial teams that publish frequently and value flexibility, few backends are as comfortable.
The opportunity is a content backend your team enjoys using that still feeds a fast site. The discipline is that Sanity gives you no front end and no SEO defaults: Portable Text must be serialised carefully, and sitemaps, canonicals, and metadata are entirely your responsibility. Left to defaults, a Sanity site is flexible and invisible to search.
We build on Sanity with a pre-rendered front end and the SEO scaffolding it doesn't provide, so you get the editing experience without the performance or discoverability cost.
Challenges
Where Sanity builds go wrong
Portable Text serialization gaps
Rendering Portable Text without careful serializers produces broken markup, missing headings, and inaccessible content.
No SEO out of the box
Sanity generates no sitemap, canonicals, or metadata. Ship without adding them and the site simply doesn't rank.
Client-side rendering by default
Fetching Sanity content in the browser instead of at build time hands the visitor a slow, JS-dependent page.
Unconstrained schemas
A Studio with no validation or structure lets editors create content the front end can't render predictably.
What we build
Production Sanity, done properly
Robust Portable Text rendering
Serializers that turn structured rich text into clean, accessible, semantic HTML.
Complete SEO scaffolding
Sitemaps, canonicals, per-page metadata, and JSON-LD that Sanity doesn't ship.
Build-time rendering
Content fetched with GROQ at build time and pre-rendered, so pages are fast and crawlable.
Structured, validated schemas
A Studio configured with validation and sensible structure so editors can't break the front end.
Editor-friendly Studio
A customised Studio with preview and the exact fields your team needs, nothing they don't.
Fast, edge-served front end
An Astro or Next front end on the edge, decoupled from Sanity's API in the request path.
Our approach
How we ship a Sanity project
Design the schemas
Structured content types with validation, modelled around your editorial reality.
Configure the Studio
Preview, structure, and fields tuned so publishing is fast and safe.
Render at build time
GROQ queries feed a pre-rendered front end with proper Portable Text serialization.
Add the SEO layer
Sitemaps, metadata, and structured data that make the content discoverable.
FAQ
Sanity, questions we get asked
Is Sanity good for SEO? +
Sanity can be excellent for SEO, but only with work you must add yourself: it ships no sitemap, canonical tags, or metadata by default. Paired with a pre-rendered front end and proper SEO scaffolding, a Sanity site ranks well; left on defaults, it produces flexible content that search engines struggle to see.
What is Portable Text and why does it matter? +
Portable Text is Sanity's way of storing rich text as structured data rather than HTML. It matters because the same content can render correctly across a website, app, or email, but it also means rendering requires custom serializers: done poorly, that produces broken or inaccessible markup, which is why careful implementation matters.
Should we use Sanity or Payload? +
Choose Sanity when you want a hosted, real-time editing experience and are comfortable with SaaS pricing and your content living on their infrastructure. Choose Payload when you want to self-host, own your data, and avoid per-seat billing. Both are strong; the decision is about hosting and ownership, not features.
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Ready to build on Sanity?
A short conversation to understand your goals and determine if there's a fit. No sales pressure, no obligation.
Payload · Astro · Sanity · Next.js
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