Traditional CMSs like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla have been around for so long that many teams are familiar with them and many websites are already be running on them.
A traditional CMS is responsible for both the backend management of content, and serving that content to end users. These things are tightly integrated. WordPress and Drupal now also support a decoupled mode which adds APIs on top to serve content.
Headless CMS is a API-first content management software that enables writers to produce and organize content, while providing developers with structured data that can be displayed using a separate system on the frontend of a website or app.
There are insane numbers of headless CMS out there with different quality and pricing, fully open-source and availalbe for self-hosted, or just a service on the cloud. This post only focuses on popular solutions.
| Name | GitHub | Known For |
|---|---|---|
| Strapi | 40k | fully customizable, developer-first |
| Ghost | 38.4k | excellent built-in SEO options |
| Netlify CMS | 14.5k | git-based content |
| Directus | 12.1k | wraps any SQL database with a real-time API |
| Tina | 6.6k | visual editing experience for content stored in Markdown and JSON |
| Sanity | 2.7k | collaborate in real-time on structured content |
| Contentful | N/A | most common headless CMS used with Gatsby |
| Prismic | N/A | integrates with every frontend frameworks |
| DatoCMS | N/A | friendly, secure and powerful platform |
| Hygraph | N/A | first-class GraphQL content APIs |
The headless CSS is also called as API-first CMS, content platform, content hubs, or even content-as-a-service. When you take a closer look, they all pretty much boil down to some database backend with a web-based user interface, and content made accessible through an API.
<Headless CMS> -------------> [Content API, Image API, Video API]
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[Developer, Marketer, Copywriter] [Website, Chatbot, Apps]Deciding to use a headless CMS is one thing. Itβs another thing to know how to choose the right one. There are several things to consider when choosing a headless CMS to work with:
Compared to the traditional approach, headless CMS is a relatively new technology. The CMS you plan to choose should be developed enough to have the essential features needed to meet your business needs.