Just so that you know, when I build themes I generally don’t uses the ACF function in the theme and instead use get_post_meta() and get_option(). I do this so that if for some reason ACF gets deactivated then then theme will still work. So, it is completely possible to get all of the information and manipulate it without ACF running.
That being said, rebuilding that admin of a site that was using ACF to use something else… well, I wouldn’t build an admin without it. ACF saves many many hours of work that would be spend building custom meta boxes.
