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To help you navigate the key considerations, decisions, and steps ahead.
Updated: February 2026
Adobe released AEM as a Cloud Service (also known as AEMaaCS, or simply AEM Cloud) in 2020. Today, it continues to reduce time to market and improve core capabilities from security and scalability to analytics. It’s no wonder then that many industry leaders are ditching traditional self-hosted/on-premise or Adobe Managed Services configurations (“AEM Classic”) for a new and promising life in the Cloud.
If you’re switching from another Digital Experience Platform to AEM, you’re likely going straight for the Cloud. And if you’re still riding your trusty AEM ‘Classic’ steed, AEM Cloud promises a much smoother trail opening up ahead.
This article will give you a few mile markers along that journey.
Time To Rethink Your Strategy
AEM Cloud represents a marked departure from the traditional model for companies using AEM. With AEM Classic, your website was built on a common platform shared with everyone else, but very much a one-of-a-kind product. For better or worse, your dev team had to constantly invent, even build their own architecture.
AEMaaCS turns your website into a customized configuration or custom interface of a common service. Your devs will adapt bits and pieces, adjust the platform itself, and massively reuse ready-made technologies.
This will probably require less time and effort and even save you money. But it’s definitely a shift in how you think about the platform, demanding new competencies and a new mode of work.
Why Switching Now Makes Sense
For many AEM customers, AEM Cloud offers a more cost-efficient operating model. There are other advantages too:
Automatic Scaling & Security
AEM Cloud infrastructure automatically scales to match traffic demands, ensuring robust performance. Security is enhanced with frequent updates, automated vulnerability scans, and a quality gate for project code, keeping digital assets secure.
Optimized Content & Delivery
AEM Cloud integrates with Adobe’s advanced content delivery network (CDN) and DynamicMedia, improving content delivery and storage efficiency for end users. New tools like the Universal Editor and Edge Delivery Services accelerate content-to-market cycles, supporting a continuous, integrated media presence.
Seamless DX Integration & Modern Development
The platform reduces time to value by tighter integration with Adobe Digital Experience (DX) solutions, such as Analytics, Target, and Data Platforms. AEM Cloud also offers a more modern development environment, retiring outdated technologies for streamlined, contemporary solutions that enhance functionality and ease of use.
Full-Fledged AI Empowerment
AEM Cloud harnesses the power of Adobe's own artificial intelligence and machine learning framework, to automate tasks and deliver personalized experiences. This includes features like smart tagging of assets, automated image cropping, creating content variations, and providing personalized content recommendations. The AI engagement grows with every update. Adobe has also introduced an embedded MCP server to support agentic content workflows.
…But Read This First
Switching to the Cloud is no walk in the park. There are many legitimate reasons why some of our customers have decided to stay with AEM Classic or explore the less “revolutionary” option of switching to AEM 6.5 LTS (also known as AEM 6.6).
Legacy Code & Deployment Changes
AEMaaCS may require cleanup or rewriting of legacy code, as some features might no longer work and will need replacement. Additionally, the shift to a different deployment process limits options for emergency code patching or extra feature releases, which may require adjusting your release cadence.
Rolling Updates & Compatibility
The shift from infrequently scheduled updates to regular rolling updates requires more vigilance about occasional compatibility issues. The upside is that updates are now less developer- and QA-intensive.
Cloud-Only Hosting
With AEMaaCS, previous on-premise or private data center hosting options are no longer supported, as all data now reside in Adobe’s Cloud environment.
Enhanced Access Restrictions
AEMaaCS introduces stricter access controls, potentially requiring a review of team policies on content and code access, role distribution, and processes. Although AEMaaCS is more intrusion-proof, its access restrictions can sometimes hinder daily workflows in unexpected ways.
Outcomes of Total Optimization
AEMaaCS is generally a cheaper option, but cost savings come at…a cost. The basic infrastructure that Adobe Cloud provides is less performant until additional horizontal scaling is applied. The read-write operations over the data storage can be slower. There are certain limitations regarding the complexity of pages and assets. You will be encouraged to revise the frequency and scale of operations (even such usual ones as rollouts or page activations), the use of content indexes, as well as tools and libraries your team have been sticking to for years.
You Cannot Truly “Domesticate” the Cloud
The content team, especially the developers, will have to get used to cloud-native AEM instances behaving differently to any “local” environment used for development and experimentation. Even different flavors of instances inside the same cloud diverge. For example, you will be prompted to use the “rapid development environment” extensively. However, it runs on different storage and embeds different versions of back-end libraries as compared to a production environment. So, you will have to think “cloud-first” in all your planning, coding, testing and reviewing.
Your Essential Migration Checklist
See How ”Best” Your Practices Really Are
To get started, we recommend that our customers generate a Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) report offered by Adobe—these are free, by the way. This will clearly lay out the issues that need to be addressed before migrating to the Cloud. Mitigating these issues is a good step forward in AEM Classic, regardless of your Cloud plans, as you can immediately benefit from the security boost it provides.
Compile with an Archetype
All Cloud-ready projects need to comply with a modern build-up (the so-called “archetype”). These projects have to be able to be built with Java 21 which is the current baseline, follow the separation of mutable and immutable content, be free of obsolete dependencies and building plugins, and use best coding practices.
Altering the project’s structure poses the risk of “losing” an important feature or dependency, as well as letting a conflicting dependency slip in. To deal with this kind of issue, it is important to introduce changes in limited portions and establish regression testing. There are automation tools that help to trace changes in project artifacts (.jar or .zip files) as well as in rendered web pages so that you are able to stop and rewind if an unexpected change appears.
We developed an open-source tool specifically for AEM (EToolbox AnyDiff), and you’re welcome to use it.
At this point, we recommend consulting Adobe’s list of “Deprecated and Removed Features and APIs”. If your project uses these kinds of features, you’ll need a plan for refactoring—or you might consider discontinuing some of them altogether. For example, you might be using a custom logging pattern that is not compatible with AEM Cloud. In that case, you may want to design a log forwarding scheme that involves services such as Splunk or Elasticsearch, and set up a sandbox for that before the actual migration.
Schedule the Switch to Cloud Manager
If you currently run an on-premise AEM installation with a custom deployment scheme, you’ll need to schedule a switch to Cloud Manager as an interim step before migrating to AEMaaCS. Cloud Manager, despite its name, is not yet a “full-scale” AEM Cloud installation. The coding framework remains the same, but the integration/deployment strategy changes.
Switching to Cloud Manager is your dress rehearsal for the Cloud, complete with a modern project structure and code quality standards.
Your Essential Migration Toolkit
Most of our customers’ AEM projects contain three main parts: authoring tools, back-end implementation, and front-end implementation. These parts can be combined with different types of integrations.
All these parts should be tested and will likely need to be adjusted to the new AEMaaCS environment. That can be challenging, but using the right tools can significantly accelerate the process and make it safer.
If the authoring part of your project uses an older interface called “Classic UI,” it’ll have to be migrated to the modern “Touch UI.” Because this involves many routine tasks, we recommend using an AEMaaCS-compatible instrument for better authoring. A good example is the Exadel Authoring Kit for AEM. It’s 100% free and open source.
Many of our customers use third-party add-ons on their websites, like translation engines, form providers, or product catalogs. Unsurprisingly, many of these add-ons have separate branches for AEM Classic and AEM Cloud. Double-check if the version you’re currently using is cloud-compatible, and don’t be surprised if you need to switch.
Some tools and integrations do not a direct analog in Cloud. E.g., if your content team relies on CRX/DE, there is no way using in in AEMaaCS publish. You may consider switching to Apache Composum instead. If you have been using Groovy Console, you might want to take a look at the AECU tool.
No migration process should be initiated without a QA automation tool like Selenium. This can save you a lot of hassle and cover many backend and frontend integrations.
Review how you deliver digital assets, such as images, videos, and PDFs. There are good reasons to plan a transition to Dynamic Media if you do not use it. Dynamic Media offers great on-the-fly asset optimization and supports cutting-edge formats.
Performance metrics tools like Lighthouse help to highlight accessibility issues and clean up coding mistakes.
Before migrating to AEM Cloud, It is important to provide a proper code-checking process. Do you use SonarQube or a similar service with a dedicated AEM ruleset? How much of the code is covered by unit tests? AEM Cloud establishes a demanding quality gate, so even finely maintained code may have trouble passing through on the first attempt. That’s why we try to clean up as many code smells as possible and align them with the test coverage threshold to avoid emergencies.
AEM relies on Lucene indexes to facilitate content searches. However, maintaining large indexes is performance-costly, and some of those you were using in AEM Classic out of the box will not make it to AEM Cloud. You need to review your index usage and optimize it thoroughly before the migration
Multi-language content is one particularly strong feature of AEM, and almost every AEM website out there serves content for different locales. There might however be locales that you don’t actually need or don’t update quite often. Think about cutting them because every extra portion of content in AEM Cloud has an impact on storage, processing timings, and rollouts. Additionally you should review the use of i18n. If standard i18n dictionaries participate in rendering web pages for visitors, there might be issues updating them between releases because they are by default stored in the “immutable” part of AEM Cloud.
Lastly, you will need to rethink your code fixing and/or content migration strategy. AEM Cloud limits the ways in which you can alter your website between deployments. Massively changing page content might also be an issue. So, you would probably want to design an upgraded code delivery scheme.
AEM Cloud’s Powerful New Tools
It is no accident that AEM Cloud introduces a fundamentally new approach to content management. The Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem provides numerous powerful tools that streamline day-to-day activities and were simply unavailable before.
Key among these is Adobe I/O Runtime, an extremely flexible framework designed for setting up seamless interaction between AEM and other elements of your marketing and client relationship infrastructure. This includes tools like Adobe Workfront, Marketo, Adobe Dynamic Media, and even extends to content creation aids and social messaging platforms. Another powerful addition is Edge Delivery Services, which enables prompt content publishing and updating directly from a familiar cloud-based document processor.
While these tools are fascinating, they represent a significant departure from previous technologies. An investment of time and effort will be required for your team to master and fully leverage their potential.
An Ideal Opportunity to Modernize
Rip off the band-aid or slow and steady wins the race—it doesn’t matter what strategic metaphor you use, you’re probably going to move to the Cloud at some point. Yes, it’s a lot of work. And yes—it’ll require a complete rethink of your site, your team, your tech, and your practice. But, the positive downstream effects are tremendous.
This major shake-up will permanently rid you of outdated code and content practices that you probably should have dealt with years ago. With the right planning, attention to the expertise of the AEM community, and best practices, you’ll be living your best AEM life in the Cloud before you know it.
