With the ubiquity of the internet, technical advancement, and freedom of speech, the content has become omnipresent and an important part of our lives. Whether it’s news, media, education, research and development, or medical, every sector creates an abundance of content every day, which is expected to increase even more with time.
Content plays a very important role in the customer-business relationship, helping you serve your customer effectively throughout his journey. Your content acts as a chord that connects you with your customer. Considering its importance, 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day; hence it needs to be managed effectively. This is where the Content Management System(CMS) proves to be useful.
What is a Content Management System (CMS)?
Content Management System is software that helps the users to create and manage their digital content efficiently over the network. The Content Management System was introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 to make website creation and content management easier and faster for both technical and non-technical professionals. There are various CMS available in the market, each with a unique set of features. Some come with a head attached with it, some without a head, and some give you the facility of both, i.e., Hybrid CMS.
So, what does the term ‘head’ stand for?
Head in the context of the Content Management System stands for the front-end of the website. The traditional CMS such as WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace comes with the head attached along with the back-end, handling both the front-end and the back-end of the website. It comes with a bundle of templates for the front end to choose from, liberating you from the stress of front-end designing of your website. In other words, this somehow restricts you to a set of template designs, limiting your creativity.
Headless CMS, on the flip side, does not come with the head attached with it, giving you the freedom to design your front end by yourself. There are more than legions of websites available in the market, hence to make your website stand out among the crowd, you need to be creative with the front end of your website. Headless CMS can be the best fit here, allowing you to customize your front-end as per the requirement and create a contemporary website for your business.
Why Choose Headless CMS?
There are numerous reasons to choose headless CMS for your website, some of the compelling ones are as follows.
- Headless CMS provides scalability to the website, allowing you to modify your content without affecting the entire website.
- With the headless CMS, you can create a customized design for your website.
- It gives you the flexibility to choose the desired technology for the front-end.
- It facilitates speedy content distribution over multiple platforms and devices.
- It does not restrict your website to a specific channel, instead allows you to distribute it to multiple channels like websites, kiosks or applications, of your choice.
- It doesn’t require a host, improving the workflow of your website.
Though there has been a wealth of Content Management Systems purpose-built for this digital era, trying out each of them is a difficult task. To help you pick the best, here is the list of top headless CMS which helps you strengthen your digital presence.
15 Most Popular Headless CMS to Consider for Your Business
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Directus
Directus, introduced in 2006, is one of the most popular open-source headless CMS that facilitates custom SQL databases wrapped with the dynamic API. Directus gives you the freedom to innovate, allowing you to select from the powerful libraries as well as tools as per your choice.
It allows you to create your custom SQL content, mirroring it exactly the way you created it, giving you absolute control over the architecture of your database. It does not bind you to the available Directus themes; you can create your own that reflects your brand identity.
With Directus, you can not only create websites for your business but also native applications, kiosks, or any sort of project that are driven by data. Directus allows you to create multilingual content, supporting over ten languages. Directus comes with 2 hosting options, which you can choose at your convenience. You can self-host your website, or if you want, you can go for the available Cloud Service provided by Directus. It has 5 service plans- Self-Hosted, Basic, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise.
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Prismic
Prismic is a super flexible content management system, released in 2003. Prismic allows you to choose everything you require for your website ranging from technology to the framework to hosting platform and the programming language, expanding your boundaries to considerable points.
Whether it is technologies like NodeJS, ReactJS, Gatsby, Vue-js, or hosting platforms such as Vercel, or any other, you are free to choose any of the options as per your requirement. Owing to its outstanding features and tremendous flexibility, Prismic is known by many names, such as headless CMS, content platform, API CMS, and (CaaS) content as a service platform.
It not only provides a customized approach to manage your content but also allows you to schedule and regulate the content releases. Prismic CMS supports multilingual content allowing you to translate your original content to any other languages as required. Prismic comes with three pricing plans- Community, Starter, and Small.
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Kentico Kontent
Kentico Kontent is a headless content management system that is known for the freedom it provides to developers in terms of content creation and deployment over various channels. Kentico Kontent facilitates simultaneous editing, hence, while the designers are working on the front end of the website, the editors can create and edit their content.
Much the same as Prismic, it additionally permits the developers to work with their customized tech stack. So if you want to migrate your legacy website, mobile application, online store, using different technologies like chatbots, voice assistants, or different programming languages like Vue JS or React JS, Kentico Kontent fits in everything and everywhere. Kentico Kotent takes care of your entire content production process from the initial phase to its marketing. It comes with 3 pricing plans- Business, Premium, and Enterprise.
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Bloomreach
Bloomreach is a powerful headless CMS launched in 2012, especially meant for commerce purposes. Its contemporary AI-powered solutions make it profoundly relevant as well as extremely desired CMS by the users. Supporting more than 30 languages, Bloomreach allows you to provide a more personalized experience to your users, providing the content in their native language.
The targeted approach, real-time search ability support through 1:1 personalization, optimized and advanced search engine, A/B testing, and a detailed dashboard are the features Bloomreach is admired for. Being the choice of companies like Bosch, CapitalOne, Puma, and Stables, Bloomreach powers approximately one-fourth of US & UK eCommerce Experiences.
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Magnolia
Founded in 1997, Magnolia has come a long way. Magnolia is a headless CMS that is written in Java and built over the JCR(Java Content Repository). Magnolia is easy to use as well as a highly scalable and flexible content management system that empowers you to create, store, and deploy content across multiple channels and in multiple languages.
Along with the channels and languages, Mongolia also gives you the freedom to work on your desired frameworks through the flawless integration provided through REST APIs used in it. Magnolia doesn't bind you to change your Single Page Applications(SPAs) just through the form, you can do this through the visual editor itself.
Packed with some amazing features like a reusable content hub, API-first architecture, lightweight connectors for integration, and smart personalization, Magnolia stands out in the market. With Magnolia, the authors need not depend on the developers to roll out the changes, they can do it by themselves.
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Netlify
Netlify is an open-source CMS built on Jamstack i.e. client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup. The Jamstack approach enables you to harness the power of static websites, while dynamically editing your content. This makes Netlify one of the most desired CMS among different accessible alternatives.
Netlify CMS is developed as a single-page React app with a user-friendly interface that makes the development process extremely simple. The app allows you to create custom-styled previews, real-time previews, and UI widgets. Netlify allows you to add the backends of your website to the Git platform, which can be accessed through the APIs.
Storing the content along with your code in the Git repository makes the content management process more effective and efficient, facilitating simpler versioning, content handling as well as deploying over multiple channels. Netlify accompanies with four pricing plans to choose from- Starter, Pro, Business, and Enterprise.
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Contentful
Contentful, found in 2013 in Germany, is an API-driven headless content management system. Contentful enables the users to create, manage, and deliver content in their preferred languages and framework through the RESTful APIs. The decoupled read and write APIs make the website future-proof and fault-tolerant.
Contentful facilitates you to integrate your website through various services like Dropbox, allowing you to edit your content through any smart device, anywhere, anytime, and on any digital device or channel. Contentful also leverages caching, and its integration with the external content delivery network optimizes the payload to the range of sub-100ms.
Contentful is considered a smart CMS that fits your budget, consequently ends up being a great choice for both small and medium-scale businesses. Contentful comes with three pricing plans-Free Plan, Premium Plan, and Enterprise Plan.
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Butter CMS
Butter CMS, a SaaS-based CMS, was released in 2014 in Chicago. Butter CMS works on the API first approach that offers flexible content modeling, history revisioning, content scheduling, and multi-site publishing. Butter CMS not only helps you in creating a new and exceptionally scalable website but also empowers you to transfer your content from your existing CMS to Butter CMS.
Based on SaaS, Butter CMS proves to be an extremely secure system to build your website without agonizing over the security patches. Also, you are not restricted to use a specific technology, language, or device configuration, instead, you can use any tech stack or language and work on any device of your choice.
Butter CMS also comes with an efficient blog engine that facilitates independent blogging to its users. The tool comes with four pricing plans to choose from – Blog Plan, Startup Plan, Small Business Plan, Agencies, and Enterprises Plan.
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CoreMedia
Being a cloud-first API-led Content Management System and powered by hybrid headless CMS, fully-integrated digital asset management, and multi-experience orchestration engine, CoreMedia supports all the business models ranging from B2C and B2B to B2E.
CoreMedia Content Cloud has been consistently in action since 1996, having served more than 200 global companies. The reason behind such popularity is its tremendous features like multilingual approach, preview facility, omnichannel, simplicity as well as drag and drop interface.
It also comes with pre-built integrations for some of the famous eCommerce platforms such as SAP, Salesforce, and Spryker, making it easier for marketers to blend their commerce with the content. CoreMedia comes with customized pricing for which you can request a demo from its website.
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Strapi
Strapi, an open-source, Javascript-based, developer-first headless CMS, is one of the most popular CMS that gives the developers the freedom to use the frameworks, tools, and technologies of their own choice. Not only for the developers, Strapi proves to be extremely useful for the editors as well, simplifying the creation, management, and distribution of the content.
Being self-hosted, fully customizable, updated, powerful yet easy to use, Strapi has become the choice of the tech mammoths like Walmart, NASA, and IBM. Strapi comes with 4 pricing plans to choose from- Community plan, Bronze plan, Silver plan, and Gold plan.
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Contentstack
Contentstack is a modern CMS that works on modern technology, devices, and approaches. Contentstack offers omnichannel content delivery, making the content suitable for all smart devices. To extend the capabilities of your website, it enables you to integrate any of the marketing technologies like Salesforce into your website seamlessly.
Contentstack collaborates business and technology together to manage and publish the content efficiently. It also allows you to preview your content before publishing or deploying the changes. The features like versioning, rollback, custom fields, DAM, automated publishing, multi-language, and modular block makes the content management with Contentstack super smooth. Contentstack comes with 3 unique pricing plans- Start Plan, Grow Plan, and Scale Plan.
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Cockpit CMS
Cockpit CMS is an open-source headless content management system that offers a flexible content structure, separating the content management and consumption processes. Cockpit claims itself as a content provider, instead of a website builder that allows you to store and consume the content. It only takes care of the backend work that is only the content management; the content display is not its concern.
Cockpit CMS provides an intuitive content management user interface that enables you to manage and model your content yourself. It is a self-hosted and API-driven CMS that allows you to create and manage your using any technology of your choice. Once you create your content on it, you are ready to distribute it wherever you want. The best thing about Cockpit CMS is that you get all these amazing facilities free of cost.
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Core dna
Core dna is an all-in-one solution that allows you to manage an unlimited number of websites, applications, teams as well as landing pages in a single dashboard. It is a proprietary headless CMS that proves to be a complete solution that assists you through your marketing journey ranging from content creation, content preview, SEO, content scheduling to customer journey mapping.
Having decoupled architecture, Core dna allows you to create content that can be delivered to any channel regardless of its type. As Code dna supports almost all the front-end technology, you can develop your front end in any of the technology that you want.
Core dna comes with 80 integrated applications, all of which are ready to use. Hence, you do not have to worry about their installation and compatibility with your device. It offers a basic pricing plan for a single website, to extend it further, you can request pricing through the website.
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Zesty.io
Zesty.io, a powerful headless content management system that empowers companies to take care of the entire lifecycle of their web properties, from its creation and deployment to optimization and maintenance. Zesty.io CMS follows a collaborative approach, helpful for both marketers as well as developers, allowing them to manage all of their related web properties from one portal.
Zesty.io comes with numerous features like the pre-built page templates, search engine optimization tools, workflow management module, do-it-yourself launching option, which empowers the marketers to manage their website without depending on the developers. On the flip side, with the technical features like custom endpoint building, content modeling, as well as numerous APIs and SDKs, the work of the developer also becomes simpler.
It is a SaaS cloud-based CMS that uses the Google cloud, hence does not need any software or hardware resources, liberating you from the pain of updates and upgrades as well. With Zesty.io, you can manage your content for multiple sites, brands, and channels from a single place. There are 4 pricing plans based on content management instances that come with Zesty.io CMS- Small Project Plan, Business Plan, Midsize Enterprise Plan, Enterprise plan.
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Sitecore
Sitecore, a solution that started just like a headless CMS, separating the creation and management of the content, has now expanded its boundaries. Sitecore has brought multiple products like- Sitecore Experience Platform, Sitecore Experience Manager, Sitecore Experience Commerce, Sitecore Content hub, all under the same name Sitecore Experience Cloud.
Sitecore Experience Cloud products individually provide a separate set of features like WYSIWYG(What you see is what you get) editor, drag-and-drop website production, headless content delivery, multi-site, multilingual content, customer journey database, analytics dashboard, account, and email management, etc.
Along with this, the content hub manages the entire content lifecycle starting from the planning, creating, delivering to marketing. The pricing plan depends upon the package and the add ons you choose, which can be requested through their website.
Are You Ready to Unleash the Power of Content into Your Business?
Content is the King that can make you rule your customer’s heart. Content creation and management are extremely critical for a business, responsible for the impression of your brand on your customer. Hence, it is imperative to deliver the right content to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right format. And all this can be done through an appropriate Headless Content Management System.
Headless CMS is the new black in the CMS world!
Web development is a time-consuming activity. The best web developers understand that a simple, content-driven website can be maintained very well if it is developed using the right CMS package. Specific CMS also offer complex features and functionality to meet your varied requirements.
This was the list of some of the most potential headless CMSs in the market, you can use to create a website and manage your content. Whether you’re a developer looking to create a trendsetter website or you’re a marketer looking to promote your business, you will certainly find the best headless CMS that suits your needs.
A Headless Content Management System can be a game-changer in your business, bringing in some tremendous opportunities to know your customer well and grow your business in parallel, however, only if chosen right. So, if you are ready to incorporate the headless CMS into your business, here is the list to help you select the best!
