Popular Headless CMS systems
Digital Natives has been implementing various headless content management systems for clients for years. We are happy to assist in selecting and setting up a new CMS for your organization.
What is a Headless CMS?
A headless CMS is a content management system where the content is strictly separated from the presentation. The term headless comes from separating the head (the front-end) and the CMS. An editor can create content within a predefined structure in the CMS, where the content is not intertwined with templates but is directly available via an API.
Advantages of a Headless CMS
Using a headless CMS provides a flexible technical architecture that allows you to easily move in different directions in the future. The advantages at a glance:
| Traditional CMS | Headless CMS | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform independent It is easy to connect different systems to the CMS, such as a website and an app | ❌ | ✅ |
| Flexible technical architecture Technical components are easy to replace or add | ❌ | ✅ |
| Strict separation between data and presentation | ❌ | ✅ |
| Cloud native The CMS is hosted as software as a service in the cloud | ❌ | Varies per CMS |
| API First All content is available via an API | Custom | Out of the box |
What Headless CMS systems are there?
In recent years, many content management systems have emerged thanks to the headless trend. Digital Natives has extensive experience with the implementation of the following systems:
Craft CMS
Craft CMS is a rapidly growing CMS that can be used both headless and traditionally. Different types of content can be quickly set up thanks to the flexible data model. Craft CMS has a user-friendly interface with many out-of-the-box content management features.
Because Craft CMS is built from the ground up as a CMS, our experience is that it is technically much more solid compared to, for example, Wordpress. It uses solid coding principles, which also makes our developers happy.
Maintenance & hosting of Craft CMS can be provided by Digital Natives, and because the source code is open, custom modules can be developed. For example, we developed a custom content workflow within the CMS for a healthcare client.
These websites have been realized by Digital Natives with Craft CMS
Contentful
Contentful is a headless CMS offered as software as a service. This has the advantage that the hosting and maintenance of the CMS are covered within the package's licensing costs. Out of the box, Contentful is an extensive system, there is also a marketplace with Contentful plugins, and it is possible to develop custom modules within Contentful. This makes Contentful very flexible.
Digital Natives has implemented Contentful for Greenhome
Prismic
Prismic, like Contentful, is a software as a service headless CMS. The pricing is much more attractive than Contentful and there is a lot of potential. The CMS can be quickly customized using the visual custom type builder. Additionally, relationships can be easily established between different content types. Prismic is user-friendly for the end user and contains many handy tools for developers, including an Image Optimizer.
Prismic does not have a plugin ecosystem, so you are limited to the features that are in the CMS. However, it is possible to develop custom apps via the API. For many use cases, the CMS offers sufficient flexibility.
Feature matrix
| Craft CMS | Contentful | Prismic | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $ 299 / project $ 59 / year after one year | Free up to 5 users From $ 489 / month for more users and/or features | From $ 3 / month for 3 users |
| Uptime | 99.9% via Digital Natives | Enterprise plan (custom) | 99.90% (Platinum) 99.99% (Enterprise) |
| Hosting | On premise | SAAS | SAAS |
| Multilingual | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multisite | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Revision history | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Form builder | Via plugin | Custom | Custom |
| Custom fields + content types | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Plugin ecosystem | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Asset management | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| JSON API | Via plugin | ✅ | ✅ |
| Graphql API | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
