The Future of Tech: Embracing Modular Commerce and AI-Driven Personalization
Why Contentstack believes the future is composable and how they’re reshaping digital experiences for a dynamic, adaptive future.
Legacy platforms formed the backbone of ecommerce and were groundbreaking in their era, but Contentstack is focused on the future. The headless CMS vendor believes those older systems no longer meet today’s needs. Instead, ecommerce now requires agility, dynamic experiences, and meaningful AI-driven personalization—all possible only with modern commerce solutions.
Composable.com recently sat down with Gurdeep Dhillon, CMO of Contentstack, to discuss why businesses need to equip themselves with the right tools to thrive in today’s digital landscape, how they’re helping businesses to pivot from outdated technology and embrace an adaptable future, and what their new "Retire the Legacy" initiative has to do with it all.
Moving from Legacy to a Composable Future
Contentstack’s vision for the future is rooted in MACH architecture, which enables modular, customizable digital ecosystems. According to Dhillon, legacy systems like Sitecore, WordPress, and Adobe were built for a different era— what he describes as “build-once and let it ride digital experiences.” These platforms were ideal for static, single-build websites, but they lack the agility and scalability needed to meet the modern demand for real-time personalization and cross-channel consistency.
“The problem is, when you want to do more dynamic, personalized experiences, the legacy stuff doesn't really work, not at scale,” says Dhillon.
By contrast, composable platforms enable brands to build ecosystems that can grow and shift with business needs. Rather than requiring an overhaul of an entire system to make adjustments, a modular setup allows for adaptable integration of various technologies— allowing businesses to be agile while preserving continuity and minimizing disruption.
“There is no doubt in the customer's mind now. They know that at some point they're going to need to modernize,” Dhillon explains.
The AI-Driven Shift in Customer Engagement
Contentstack’s focus goes beyond flexibility alone. The company sees AI as central to the future of digital experience management. “In the next 3-5 years, what if 80% of your web traffic is AI agents and not humans? And what if the job of the CMS is to personalize for humans and also optimize for AI? That's a totally different paradigm than where we're at today, and that's the future we're building for,” he says.
This means that content management systems must be able to serve two audiences simultaneously—human customers and AI agents—by optimizing for both personalization and machine-readability.
To achieve this, Contentstack has integrated brand-aware AI functionality directly into its platform. With AI-enabled personalization, brands can deliver tailored experiences across touchpoints and provide content optimized not just for SEO, but for new AI-driven search algorithms as well.
Dhillon points out that while some legacy solutions are now offering AI capabilities in their platforms, the AI has often been applied in bolted-on ways. “The legacies have AI solutions that they've built kind of on top of their existing stack, but they're not integrated into the CMS natively, and they're not as brand aware as companies need them to be to feel good about adopting them at scale,” he says.
Contentstack’s AI-powered Brand Kit, by contrast, built AI into the core of the product, which means it can incorporate a brand’s voice, messaging, and customer data directly into workflows, enabling organizations to deliver consistent, scalable content that maintains brand authenticity.
MACH and AI: The Cornerstones of Modern Digital Infrastructure
The modular nature of MACH architecture allows businesses to select and integrate best-in-class solutions that align with their goals, ensuring they can implement the latest advancements—like AI-driven personalization—without locking into a single provider. This flexibility, Dhillon explains, isn’t just about convenience; it’s about staying competitive in a market where customers demand more personalized, relevant experiences.
“The future of tech, as we see it, is applications that shift to the AI era,” he says, which allows businesses to experiment with components across different functionalities—from data analytics to customer engagement tools—integrating new technologies that meet changing consumer expectations. With MACH, companies are empowered to deploy, adapt, and evolve their tech stacks as new solutions emerge.
Supporting Businesses through Transformation
The transformation from a legacy system to a MACH approach can be challenging. Dhillon stresses that support for a move to a composable architecture doesn’t end at technology; vendors also need to help clients navigate organizational change and embrace a composable mindset.
“We have a technical solutions organization that are deep, deep experts in not only the migration path to Contentstack, but also the actual change management that goes with shifting to this modern commerce approach, because it affects people's jobs, it affects how you're structured,” notes Dhillon. ”[Change management] is arguably more important than the software itself.”
That means creating a comprehensive support ecosystem on the vendor side, training teams to help companies adjust and implement composable solutions successfully, and working closely with cloud, integration, and system partners to support clients throughout their journey and help companies leverage the expertise of the MACH ecosystem at each step of the process.
Why “Retire the Legacy” Matters in the Bigger Picture
All of these elements—the vision of the future rooted in modular commerce solutions with AI built into the core—have led to Contentstack’s “Retire the Legacy” initiative, which offers companies a 50% discount to switch from legacy platforms. Beyond the compelling financial incentive for prospects, as many companies remain locked into existing contracts and concerned about migration costs, it also speaks to Contentstack’s vision for the industry.
It’s a vision that goes beyond technology, empowering businesses to deliver lasting, relevant experiences in a world where adaptability and innovation are paramount and where personalization is not simply segmented by demographics or past behavior, but dynamically tailored to each individual.
Dhillon is confident in the trajectory they are setting for the industry. “We’re betting on ourselves and our technology,” he says, emphasizing that they believe the true value of the switch lies not in upfront cost savings but in the ability to build experiences that scale, adapt, and personalize for today’s and tomorrow’s digital consumers.
For Contentstack, “Retire the Legacy” is more than just the initial bridge to help businesses overcome the financial and logistical barriers to change. It also serves a greater purpose: to accelerate the move toward more flexible, future-ready systems.
Leigh Bryant
Editorial Director, Composable.com
Leigh Bryant is a seasoned content and brand strategist with over a decade of experience in digital storytelling. Starting in retail before shifting to the technology space, she has spent the past ten years crafting compelling narratives as a writer, editor, and strategist.