How To Choose The Right Headless CMS?

We have seen a major shift in CMS(Content management system) in recent years. Lots of companies are through digital transformation so they are looking for ways to become more agile and deliver modern digital experiences. They want to adapt new technologies and methodologies, like cloud, microservices, front-end frameworks, or DevOps. Eventually, they realize their legacy content management solutions hold them back. If you’re also facing the same issue, then this blog is for you. Here we’ll discuss how to choose the right headless CMS.

How To Choose The Right Headless CMS?

1. Know The Headless Architecture-

If you’re well known about traditional CMSs, it is important to understand how they’re different from headless. Let’s see the difference in architecture-

Monolithc Vs. Microservices Architecture-

Monolith Vs. Microservices Architecture

Traditional CMSs combined content management and its presentation in a single coupled solution. They control the content presented on the website, using proprietary templating engines. They tend to add various extra marketing or commerce capabilities. The result is a big monolith where CMS plays a central role.

Headless CMS manage content and provide it through API. Meaning that, the content can be delivered to any digital channel including mobile, online store, website, chatbot etc. This is a popular approach among programmers who want to use progressive front-end frameworks and build mobile apps. Headless CMSs fit the microservices architecture perfectly and in this model, you build digital product by connecting specialized services from various vendors through APIs.

In microservices architecture, you build a digital experience stack around a digital product instead of building a product around a particular CMS. Meaning that, you don’t need to throw your digital product when you decide to switch to another CMS.

Web First And Content First Approach-

Traditional CMSs were for the web. They’re built around web-specific concepts like sitemap, website and pages. They focussed on providing high control over design to business users that may be empowering, but huge control may lead to inconsistency of brand.

Whereas, headless CMSs are designed for the content-first approach and this  starts with content modeling that helps you to define content structure so that it can be reused across various devices. It provides more flexibility and needs a change in how you think about and work with content.

2. Pinpoint Your Business Concerns-

Sorting business requirements is an important factor in choosing a Headless CMS because it is all about getting your requirements fulfilled. Here are some of the business cases and requirements to choose headless CMS-

• For implementation of modern technology for digital experience
• To get higher agility, productivity and consistency of brand
• For personalized omnichannel experience
• To increase the efficiency of content operations
• For making business future-proof

3. Identify Requirements Of Key Stakeholders-

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10 Best Headless Content Management System (CMS) In 2021

 

These days, content is most popular thing on the internet. Creation and distribution of great content can generate iconic digital experience, but a poor one can be a huge obstacle to perform an effective digital journey for your customers. So, it is important to manage and deliver content of best quality to lead the market race. A new type of Content Management System(CMS) is on the rise to serve the content, headless content management system. Traditional CMS tool were not able to address the user needs in various ways like, delivering the content to an existing channel, providing the required flexibility, integrating new delivery formats etc. Publishing high content quality was made easier with the advent of headless content management system. Let us see the details of what is headless CMS?

What Is Headless Content Management System?

Term “Headless” refers to the lack of a frontend. A Headless CMS contains an API and backend system where the content is stored and delivered. Publishing content to a web service through an API that is capable of delivering to any device(smartphone, smartwatch, laptop), fulfills the lack of frontend. Headless CMS uses API calls to execute content into a webpage. This is most preferable option than building relationships between content (frontend) and backend similar to other CMS do like WordPress. Also, there is no need for any hosts. So, maintaining headless CMS is easy than non-headless CMS. It results in the improvement of workflow and collaboration, with digital asset management and access controls ebing just some of the features of headless CMS. Let us see features of headless CMS.

Features Of Headless Content Management System –

• Multi-language
• Advanced image management
• Digital asset management
• Improving workflow and collaboration
• Access controls
• Organizing content repositories
• Modeling, creating and authorizing content

Why Headless CMS?

Here are some of the reasons of choosing headless CMS:

• Scalable- Content publishing environment is not accessible from the database so using this will prevent malware attacks.
• Compatible- You can publish the content to any smart device while the backend can be controlled from one device
• Scalable- Front end and backend are separated so there is no separate time need for maintenance. It allows you to customize your website anytime without compromising the performance.
• Control- It doesn’t have any rules and gives the developer complete control. Developer can integrate with any codebase and use any preferred language of their choice.
• Flexibility- Transitional CMS is limited. Use of headless CMS will allow you to design your front end. Also, it comes with a well-defined API, so allocating more time to create content instead of managing it. 

Let us see best headless CMS of 2021.

Best Headless CMS Of 2021-

1. Sanity.io-

It is a content platform and an industry-driving headless CMS which is used by popular companies like National Geographic, Nike, Sonos, Cloudflare, Netlify, Eurostar and Invision. It has customization at its center and gives a way of constant scaling on secure and consistent cloud foundation. Flexibility and adaptability are the main structures of Sanity. Programmers can redo the editing environment by using Javascript and React and effectively coordinate the backend with APIs and rich data displaying capabilities. It accompanies constant cooperation and support scaling with your organization’s requirements on a secure and agreeable cloud framework. Sanity.io includes WYSIWYG rich content manager through which you can install editable information in running text and defer markup to deliver time. Also, it accompanies a Sweet Query API which allows you to reserve multiple questions on a single request.

2. Prismic-

Prismic was launched in 2013, and it is a SaaS headless CMS trusted by many organizations like Netflix, Google and Deliveroo. This tool allows you to select the technology, language, framework and hence can easily manage and deliver the content. It also supports native integrations with eCommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento. As you can use various frameworks with Prsmic, task arrangement with this tool is important to progress. Every structure has its own properties and favorable circumstances, SEO, simplicity of arrangement, quick delivering, progressive improvement etc.

3. Magnolia-

It is one of the oldest and best headless CMS. It is older than Prismic and was founded in 1997. Magnolia has great features to offer such as management, creation and delivering content across many known channels. Personalization and in-context editing are the strongest points of Magnolia. It is a professional headless CMS which is known to be a smart investment for serious business because it allows authors and editors to streamline their work without the need of developers to change the content. Magnolia allows developers to blend with front end platforms like Vue, Angular or React for more profound user experience.   

4. Contentful-

Germany-based contentful founded in 2013 and offers an API-driven headless CMS.  It’s RESTful API gives developers complete programmatic control of content, digital assets and translations. This platform also takes advantage of caching techniques and external CDN integrations to enable the delivery of API payloads in the sub-100ms range. It can display JSON snippets,a rich-text editor, and content modelling features that allows marketers to arrange individual fields and content modules like text, images and calendars.

5. Mura-

Mura is a decoupled open-source CMS that comes with great features for IT professionals and marketers. For marketers, there are customizable WYSIWYG editors, multi-device content previews and also built-in analytics dashboard. Because of appealing and natural administration panel, the no-code arrangement, Mura offers a simple to deploy UI. Developers can take an advantage from APIs, Docker support, CSS framework support and also support for javascript frameworks like React.js, Vue.js and Ember.js.

6. Netlify-

It is an open-source content management system used with any static generator for flexible web project. It is created as a single-page React app. Using Netlify, content is stored in Git repository with your code for easy versioning, multi-channel publishing and option to handle content updates directly in Git. Some of the best features of Netlify are- editor friendly user interface, intuitive workflow for content teams and instant access without GitHub account. Flexport, Google, TriNet, LiveChat are some of the popular companies using Netlify.

7. Directus-

It is a headless CMS used for modified data set projects. Main stage is made up of backbone.js and REST is liable for API. It stores all framework information independently. This allows clients to control whole mapping and can oversee existing data sets freely. Whereas, information tracking nd potential rollbacks, help to prevent loss of information. 

Directus manages custom-schema SQL databases directly. Developers can create custom databases based on project requirements without learning a framework or being forced to build using specific technologies. Once the database is ready, Directus’ API or SDK can be connected, which  results in a customizable interface that business users can use to manage database content for their apps and websites.

8. Bloomreach-

It offers mainly three solutions- Bloomreach Experience (brX), Bloomreach Search and Merchandising(brSM) and Bloomreach experience manager(brXM). To create, manage and deliver content, Bloomreach experience is the best solution. brSM is used to optimize and personalize each visitor’s search, browse and landing page experiences. brXM allows to integrate content and with the systems very quickly. Many popular companies like Puma, Deutsche Telekom and Bosch uses Bloomreach

9. DatoCMS-

This headless content as a service(CaaS) platform supports various languages. DatoCMS allows brands to organize digital assets in folders, locate media files quickly by using AI-powered tagging or sophisticated search capabilities, and publish them wherever they need it. 

10. Solodev-

It lets individuals and organizations to work together on their digital transformation in the cloud. Solodev is powered by AWS(Amazon web services) and provides enterprise-grade security, scalability and redundancy. Users can select from a pre-built theme like inspiring LunarXP design template, or go custom and start from scratch.