Start with the uncomfortable fact. Sitecore’s own guidance on moving to SitecoreAI is blunt: workflow states, personalization rules, analytics data and custom modules are not migrated, and should be rebuilt in SitecoreAI. If your XP estate carries years of personalization, none of it comes across on its own.
That sounds like bad news. In practice it is the best clean-up opportunity most Sitecore teams will get. In the XP estates we review, a handful of rules earn their keep, and the rest are experiments nobody remembers switching on. Here is what SitecoreAI gives you instead, when you need Sitecore Personalize on top, and a method for rebuilding only what pays.
How XP personalization works, and why it got heavy
XP personalization is built on the Rule Set Editor and conditional renderings: a piece of content is shown when a predefined condition is met. The conditions are deep, grouped into 19 categories including Campaign, Channel, Device, IP Geolocation, Marketing Automation, Venue, Visit, Visitor and xDB. On top sit profile cards and pattern cards, which score what a visitor is interested in, plus goals, events and engagement value points that accumulate across sessions. All of it runs on xDB through xConnect and reports through Experience Analytics.
It is powerful. It also needs a lot of infrastructure and discipline to run well, and over the years most estates lose track of which rules still matter. That is the debt you should not carry into a new platform.
What SitecoreAI gives you out of the box
SitecoreAI moves personalization into Page builder, the platform’s visual editor, which also shows real-time site and page analytics.
- Page variants by audience. You define an audience with conditions and give it its own version of a page. The conditions cover time, date, device, geography (country, region or state), visit, user interaction (the referrer or UTM that brought the visitor) and point of sale. Each page can have up to ten variants, and each audience up to five conditions.
- Component A/B/n testing. You compare at least two variants of a component and let the results decide.
- Custom conditions. Server-side JavaScript expressions that evaluate visitor profiles, for rules the standard list cannot express.
- Newer capabilities in phased rollout. Component personalization driven by decision tables, affinities (interest scores built from the pages a visitor views, kept for up to 30 days), headless personalization for experiences outside the website, and triggered personalization that fires email, SMS or push messages through a webhook.
Two details catch teams out. Editing a page variant inline also changes the default page, so build variants deliberately. And from 1 January 2027 Sitecore plans to deprecate Experience Editor in SitecoreAI, leaving Page builder as the supported editing experience, so train editors on Page builder from day one.
When you need Sitecore Personalize and CDP
SitecoreAI includes entry-level access to CDP and Personalize, alongside Search and Content Hub. The full products are a different class of tool:
- Decisioning. Sitecore Personalize manages complex decisions with business rules that return the next best action or offer, across web, interactive (server-side) and triggered experiences.
- Customer data. Sitecore CDP ingests data through stream, batch and REST APIs, so CRM, app and commerce signals can drive the experience.
- Fewer limits. Sitecore’s own guidance notes that full Personalize removes variant limits and enables highly specific personalization across user attributes.
Plan two things early if you go this way. Building custom conditions inside Personalize requires a standalone Personalize licence, and upgrading to Personalize or CDP does not backfill historical data. The day you switch it on is the day your history starts.
What has no direct equivalent
Our reading of the current documentation: SitecoreAI has no documented equivalent for pattern cards, engagement value points, Marketing Automation, Venue or Channel conditions, or city-level geography. The nearest substitutes are affinities, custom conditions and Personalize decision models. If a rule depends on one of these, decide early whether it is worth rebuilding in a new shape, or whether it is time to let it go.
Rebuild what earns money: a five-step method
- Inventory. List every personalized rendering, its rule, its owner and its purpose. Sitecore PowerShell Extensions can find renderings with conditions set, which turns a guessing game into a spreadsheet.
- Score. Keep rules tied to an outcome you measure (a lead, a booking, an application) on pages with enough traffic to matter. Retire the rest without guilt.
- Map. For each rule you keep, choose its new home: a page variant, a component test, a custom condition, or a Personalize decision model.
- Prove it. Start with an A/B test before making any personalization permanent. A rule that cannot beat the default page does not deserve a place on the new platform.
- Govern. Give every variant an owner, a review date and a naming convention, and cap the live variants per page. Personalization debt builds up quickly if nobody owns it.
Arabic and English, done properly
Bilingual sites need two disciplines. First, treat language as content: an Arabic variant needs the same care as the English one, written and reviewed by native speakers, with right-to-left layouts tested in every variant. Second, keep audiences about behaviour and context: country and region, the campaign that brought someone in, the time of day. Date conditions are useful for Ramadan and national day campaigns, but Ramadan moves every year, so put a yearly review of those date ranges in the calendar.
Consent and privacy
SitecoreAI’s personalization service tracks engagement by storing first-party cookies in visitors’ browsers. Sitecore’s Cloud SDK sets no cookies by default, and Sitecore advises initializing it only after the visitor grants consent. Wire personalization into the same consent banner as your analytics, and have your privacy team map it to your obligations under the UAE, Saudi and Qatari data protection laws. Note the retention model too: SitecoreAI keeps identified profiles without a time limit, with the last 40 sessions within 90 days retained per profile.
For the tech lead: how it is delivered
In a Next.js head, a middleware step (renamed to proxy in Content SDK 2.0, which moved to Next.js 16) calls Experience Edge, Sitecore’s GraphQL delivery service on a CDN, to find out which variant to serve. Page variants can be statically generated and cached, so personalization does not have to cost speed. Component-level A/B/n tests cannot be statically generated yet, and if the personalization call times out the visitor simply sees the default page. Design for both.
XP, SitecoreAI and Personalize, side by side
| Sitecore XP | SitecoreAI (built in) | Sitecore Personalize and CDP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where you build it | Rule Set Editor | Page builder | Separate Personalize application |
| What changes | Conditional renderings | Page variants (up to 10 per page); component personalization in rollout | Web, interactive and triggered experiences |
| Conditions | 19 categories, including pattern cards and city geolocation | Time, date, device, country or region, visit, referrer or UTM, point of sale, custom conditions | Business rules and decision models on CDP data |
| Interest profiling | Profile cards and pattern cards | Affinities, kept up to 30 days (rollout) | CDP guest profiles |
| Testing | Content tests | Component A/B/n tests | Experiments |
| Data | xDB through xConnect | Identified profiles, last 40 sessions in 90 days | Stream, batch and REST ingestion; no backfill on upgrade |
| Licence | XP licence; 10.4 mainstream support ends December 2027 | Included, with entry-level CDP and Personalize | Standalone licence for the full products |
Frequently asked questions
Can our XP personalization rules be migrated automatically?
No. Sitecore’s migration guidance states that personalization rules are not migrated and should be rebuilt in SitecoreAI. Treat that as a chance to keep only the rules that earn their place.
Do we need to buy Sitecore Personalize?
Not to start. SitecoreAI includes page variants, component testing, custom conditions and entry-level access to CDP and Personalize. The full products make sense when you need decisioning across channels or real-time customer data from CRM and apps.
Will personalization slow our site down?
It does not have to. Page variants can be statically generated and cached at the edge, and if the personalization call times out, visitors see the default page. Component A/B tests are the exception to plan for.
We are on XP 10.4. Should we upgrade to 10.5 first?
XP 10.5 was released in August 2026, and Sitecore’s lifecycle table lists its mainstream support to the end of 2029. Upgrading buys time and keeps your rules running, but it is still an upgrade project, and the rebuild for SitecoreAI still lies ahead. Decide with both costs in front of you.
Want to know which of your rules are worth rebuilding? An inventory of your XP personalization is part of our free Sitecore health check, and Arcsen Ascend rebuilds the keepers on SitecoreAI.
Sources
- Sitecore: Move to SitecoreAI with Pathway
- Sitecore documentation: Personalize in SitecoreAI
- Sitecore documentation: Create a page variant
- Sitecore documentation: A/B/n testing
- Sitecore documentation: Custom conditions
- Sitecore documentation: XP personalization conditions
- Sitecore developers: SitecoreAI FAQ
- Sitecore documentation: Data privacy in SitecoreAI
- Sitecore documentation: Page personalization and component A/B/n testing
- Sitecore: Ongoing commitment to XP
- Fishtank: Personalization deep dive
