Webflow vs Sanity for AI search: why we moved our own site

In our experience, Sanity is the better foundation for a website that AI agents help run. We moved Aero’s site from Webflow to Sanity with a Next.js front end in September 2026 because Sanity keeps content as structured data behind an API, so every page, search engine and AI assistant reads the same facts.

Why did Aero move its own site off Webflow?

We wanted AI agents to help run the site, and that changed what the site needed underneath. Webflow served Aero well for years. It is a strong visual builder, and for a team that designs and edits pages by hand, it is a very good tool.

Our work changed. We now design products and websites for the agentic web, where AI assistants answer buyers’ questions and AI agents take on part of the upkeep. We wanted our own site to run the way we recommend clients run theirs: agents draft and check, and a person approves.

In our experience, that asks for two things. The content has to live as structured data that an agent can read and write through an API. The page code has to be in our own hands, so we decide exactly what every crawler receives. The domain switched to the new site on September 27, 2026.

What does a CMS need for the agentic web?

It needs to treat content as data, not as pages. That is the main reason Sanity is the CMS we recommend for the agentic web. In Sanity, a service, a project, a post and an FAQ are each a typed record with named fields. People edit those records in an editing studio built for them, and agents read and write the same records through the API. Both work from one source of truth.

Three qualities matter most to us:

• Structure. Every fact has one home, so there is one place to change it.
• Drafts. A change can wait as a draft until a person approves it, which is what makes agent help safe.
• Openness. The content is not tied to one front end, so the same facts can feed a web page, a search engine and an AI assistant.

How does structured content help AI search?

It keeps every copy of a fact identical. On our site, the same fields feed the visible page, the structured data that search engines read (JSON-LD), the sitemap and llms.txt, a plain-text summary of the site written for AI assistants. Because all four come from the same record, they cannot drift apart.

Drift is a quiet problem for AI search. When a page says one thing and its markup or summary says another, an answer engine has to guess which is true, and it may repeat the stale version. With one record behind every surface, a correction made once reaches all of them. Our llms.txt is live and generated from the CMS, so it changes when the content does.

Can AI crawlers read a site built on Sanity and Next.js?

Yes, when the pages are rendered on the server, as ours are. The full HTML is built before it leaves the server, so a crawler that does not run JavaScript still receives every heading, paragraph and answer on the page.

That matters because many crawlers, including some that feed AI assistants, read only the HTML they are sent. A page that assembles its text in the browser can look close to empty to them. Owning the front end means we choose what each page sends, rather than hoping a platform setting covers it.

How fast do search engines hear about a change?

Within minutes for Bing and the other engines that support IndexNow. When a change is published, the site notifies those engines through IndexNow, an open way of telling search engines that a page has changed, so they do not have to wait for their next crawl. For Google, the sitemap does the same job, and it updates from the same content.

Some AI assistants look up current pages through search engine indexes. A faster index means a shorter window in which an assistant repeats an old answer about you.

Who approves what the agents write?

A person, every time. On our site, AI agents draft and check, and a person approves each change before it goes live. Nothing publishes on its own. This article was drafted the same way and waited for approval like everything else.

That approval step is the part we care about most. An agent that publishes by itself is fast until the first wrong claim goes out under your name. An agent that asks about everything gets ignored. Sanity’s drafts give the approval step a natural home: the agent’s work waits as a draft, and a person decides. This is how we run our own site, and it is the basis of our agentic web management service.

Is Webflow still a good choice?

For many sites, yes. If your team builds and edits pages visually and no agent will touch the content, Webflow is a capable, well-made tool, and we used it happily for years. The case for Sanity grows with how much of the upkeep you want agents to share, and with how much it matters that every surface, from the page to the AI summary, states the same facts.

That was our situation, and we expect more teams to reach the same point as AI search becomes part of how buyers find them.

Could your site run this way?

If your website’s upkeep has outgrown your team, agentic web management sets up this model around your site: agents draft and check, and a named person on your team approves. If your site is not yet on a CMS that supports it, we design and build that as well. Book a 15-minute call and we will tell you honestly whether it fits.