AEM Edge Delivery Services RFP Template

Before You Issue a AEM Edge Delivery Services RFP

Edge Delivery RFPs hinge on the authoring-model decision: document-based authoring, the Universal Editor, or a hybrid alongside existing AEM Sites. Each has real consequences for governance, developer workflow and which teams can publish. Require vendors to recommend one for your situation and defend it — a proposal that keeps the choice vague is deferring the hardest conversation until after signature.

Performance is the reason Edge Delivery exists, so make it contractual. Put explicit Core Web Vitals targets in the requirements — real-user metrics, not lab scores — and require the migration plan to preserve SEO equity: URL mapping, redirects, structured data and rendering parity for crawlers. A 100-point Lighthouse score on a site that lost half its organic traffic is a failed project.

What the AEM Edge Delivery Services Sections Cover

• Document-based or Universal Editor, settled before pricing
• Block count, and which ones come from the boilerplate
• Field Core Web Vitals figures written in as acceptance
• URL and redirect parity with the site being replaced
• How Edge Delivery coexists with pages still on AEM
• Instrumentation that survives the performance budget

Writing the AEM Edge Delivery Services Scope of Work

The scope has to name the content source before anything else, because it determines the entire authoring workflow. Document-based authoring in Google Drive or SharePoint, the Universal Editor over AEM content, or a hybrid where some sections are authored one way and some another are genuinely different projects with different permission models, different review processes and different failure modes. State which one you are buying and which teams will publish through it. If you are running Edge Delivery alongside an existing AEM Sites estate, say which URL paths each system owns and how the two are stitched at the edge.

Scope the work in blocks. A block is the unit of build in Edge Delivery, so the estimate should be built from a block inventory rather than a page count, with each block priced for its variants and its authoring model. Say how many blocks you expect, which are standard patterns that can be adapted, and which encode something specific to your business such as a product comparison or a locator. State explicitly whether the design system already exists and is stable, because building blocks against a moving visual specification is where these projects lose their speed advantage.

Define the migration scope in terms of URLs and their traffic, not pages. For each URL range, say whether it is migrating, redirecting, being rewritten or staying where it is. The scope should include the redirect map as a deliverable with an owner, plus the structured data, canonical and metadata handling for migrated pages. If any templated content is generated from a spreadsheet or a feed, name the source and the refresh expectation, since bulk content driven by data is common here and is often assumed rather than scoped.

Define done using field data, not a launch date. Reasonable acceptance criteria are that real-user Core Web Vitals hold at stated thresholds at a named percentile across mobile and desktop over a measured window after launch, that organic sessions and rankings on a named set of URLs stay within a stated tolerance, and that an author can create and publish a page from existing blocks unaided. Put third-party scripts explicitly in scope for the performance conversation, because consent tools, chat widgets and tag managers are the usual reason a fast site stops being fast.

Requirements That Actually Separate AEM Edge Delivery Services Proposals

• Block authoring contract — require each block to come with documentation of how authors express it in the document or editor, including what happens when an author supplies the wrong number of columns or an unexpected value.
• Third-party script budget — ask the vendor to state a loading strategy and a performance budget for tag managers, consent banners, chat and personalization, and to say which of your current scripts they would refuse to load eagerly.
• Coexistence architecture — if an AEM Sites estate remains, require a written description of how routing, shared navigation, shared assets and consistent analytics are maintained across two delivery systems.
• Redirect and canonical handling — require the migration plan to specify how the redirect map is generated, tested and deployed, and how canonicals and hreflang behave for pages that exist in both systems during the transition.
• Real-user monitoring — ask how they instrument and read field performance data after launch, and require a commitment to investigate regressions found in that data rather than only in pre-launch testing.
• personalization and experimentation approach — require a position on how testing and personalization are delivered without reintroducing the render-blocking behavior Edge Delivery exists to avoid.
• Author permissions and publishing controls — ask how approval is enforced when the content source is a document repository, since the familiar AEM workflow controls do not apply in the same way.

Common Mistakes in AEM Edge Delivery Services RFPs

• ✕ Leaving the document-based vs Universal Editor decision to the vendor's preference rather than your governance needs.
• ✕ Accepting lab Lighthouse scores as success criteria instead of field Core Web Vitals from real users.
• ✕ No SEO-preservation workstream — redirects and structured data discovered after rankings drop.
• ✕ Underestimating block development: the demo looks instant, your design system still has to be built.
• ✕ No decision on how Edge Delivery coexists with the existing AEM Sites estate and its authors.

• ✕ Assuming document-based authoring removes the need for governance, then discovering that anyone with document access can publish to production and nobody agreed who reviews what.
• ✕ Scoping the migration by template when Edge Delivery has no templates in the AEM sense, so the work is actually block design plus content restructuring and the estimate has no basis.
• ✕ Leaving forms out of the scope because the marketing site is mostly content, then finding that every campaign landing page needs a form with validation, routing and consent handling.
• ✕ Committing to a launch date before the design system is stable, which forces blocks to be built twice and erases the build-speed advantage that justified the platform choice.

Questions Worth Asking AEM Edge Delivery Services Vendors

1. Which authoring model do you recommend for our team structure, and what governance trade-offs come with it?
2. Show field Core Web Vitals data (not lab scores) from an Edge Delivery site you shipped.
3. How do you approach block development against an existing design system, and what does a block cost?
4. Walk through your SEO-preservation checklist for a migration — redirects, metadata, structured data, crawl parity.
5. How have you instrumented analytics and personalization on Edge Delivery given its performance-first constraints?

How to Weight the AEM Edge Delivery Services Evaluation

Weight the authoring model recommendation as a first-class evaluation criterion rather than a technical preference. The choice between document-based authoring and the Universal Editor determines who in your organization can publish, what review looks like and how much governance you retain, and it is very hard to reverse once content and habits have accumulated. A vendor who asks detailed questions about your team structure before recommending is worth more than one who recommends before asking.

Score SEO protection alongside performance rather than beneath it. Edge Delivery projects are unusual in that the technical outcome can be excellent while the commercial outcome is a loss, because traffic was lost in migration. Give the redirect strategy, structured data handling and crawl parity work meaningful weight, and treat any proposal that mentions performance repeatedly and search visibility only in passing as incomplete.

Be sceptical of speed claims that rest on the platform rather than on the vendor. The delivery architecture is fast by default, so a fast demonstration proves little. What differentiates proposals is block engineering quality, the discipline applied to third-party scripts, and whether the vendor has kept a site fast six months after launch when marketing has added tools to it. Weight evidence of sustained performance over launch-day numbers.