CMS

Manage content without redeploying your app.

A CMS lets non-technical content changes, like blog posts or marketing copy, happen without a code deploy. Headless CMS options give you the content as an API and leave the frontend entirely up to you; traditional ones bundle a frontend too. Pick based on who's actually going to be editing content and how tightly it needs to match your existing frontend.

Contentful

The headless CMS most enterprise content teams already have opinions about, probably overkill for a solo project unless you're integrating with an existing content team's workflow.

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Directus

Wraps your existing SQL database with instant REST/GraphQL APIs and an admin UI instead of owning the schema itself, so you can drop it later without losing your data.

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Ghost

A clean, fast, open-source publishing platform built for blogs and newsletters, with built-in Stripe-powered memberships that take 0% cut.

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Payload CMS

TypeScript-native, code-first CMS that lives inside your own Next.js repo. Figma acquired it in 2025 and paused new sign-ups for the managed Payload Cloud, so plan on self-hosting it.

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Sanity

The developer-experience pick among headless CMSs. GROQ query language and a fully customizable Studio make it flexible if you're willing to invest a bit in setup.

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Storyblok

The headless CMS built around a real visual editor, so non-technical editors get drag-and-drop page building while you keep an API-first content model underneath.

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Strapi

The most popular open-source, self-hosted headless CMS. A pragmatic choice if you want to avoid vendor lock-in and don't mind running it on your own VPS.

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