Key Takeaways
- A headless CMS is a backend-only CMS that provides a "Content Repository" that makes content accessible to any platform or digital channel via an API.
- Unlike a traditional CMS such as WordPress, a headless CMS does not dictate where or how content is shown.
- A headless CMS enables teams to deliver omnichannel experiences at scale, globally, without being restricted by templates or pre-defined technologies.
- A headless CMS enables developers to use their preferred tech stack or framework, including popular ones like React, Angular, and Vue.
- Headless CMSs generally provide better ROI since they are cloud-based, security and backups are handled by the vendor, and they are easily scalable, all while reducing time-to-market when delivering projects.
- Specific technical resources are required to migrate to a headless CMS.
What is a headless CMS?
A headless CMS is a type of content management system where the content repository backend is separated from the presentation layer frontend. It is essentially a backend-only CMS, as the term "headless" arises from that separation, where the backend, or the "body," is decoupled from the frontend or the "head."
Since the frontend and backend are decoupled, the content repository of a headless CMS makes content accessible via an API to any frontend, such as a website, mobile app, or other "head." This content is stored in a raw structured format, such as HTML or JSON, and isn't meant for human consumption until rendered on the end device.
Here is an illustration of how headless CMS works.
Here's a video for those who don't like words or prefer someone to explain what a headless CMS is.
Why headless CMS?
While headless architecture and headless CMSs have been around for a while, their popularity has grown exponentially. If we look at Google Trends over the last few years, we can see that searches for headless CMS is constantly growing.
What's the reason behind this growing interest?
"Headless" has become the popular approach to handling content due to the increasing diversity of platforms that need content, the improved developer experience it offers, among other benefits.
Earlier this year, we interviewed 10 CMS experts about the future of content and identified top 5 content trends:
- Hyper-personalization is becoming more feasible
- Omnichannel customers mandate consistent content
- AI catalyzes new content strategies
- Site security remains a top priority
- Data gets harmonized with a unified content layer
To succeed in any trend, teams must be flexible in creating, connecting, and delivering content. With a headless approach, you are not restricted to a specific tech stack, templates, or themes, and you can control exactly how and where content is delivered, therefore allowing you to publish content faster and iterate your digital presence with greater efficiency.
Headless CMS vs. Traditional CMS
To better understand the value proposition of a headless CMS, it's important to visualize how content is delivered using this approach and how that differs from traditional content management approaches.
API-driven CMS offers many advantages over traditional CMS paradigms. In the next chapter, learn why headless CMSs are better than traditional CMSs.
Why use a headless CMS, and do you need one?
Traditional CMS has the benefit of comfort - since we're all familiar with them. A CMS like WordPress is often a default solution when you want a simple website, don't have the technical resources to create a custom experience, and are ok with working on templates that resemble generic websites.
However, for organizations that depend on delivering experiences across multiple channels, especially on a global scale, a headless CMS grows in importance. Since you have complete control over how and where content is delivered, a headless CMS is usually preferred for forward-thinking teams, especially in fast-paced industries.
If you don't want to be restricted to a specific technology (PHP and MySQL in the case of WordPress), don't want to be constricted to pre-defined templates and themes, and need added functionality that lets you push content to multiple platforms, then investing in a headless CMS would be worth looking into.
You should use a headless CMS if
- You have diverse platforms and need a central content hub to pull the data from.
- You have frontend development resources available.
- You want to use your preferred languages and frameworks.
- You want to deliver projects on Jamstack principles and remain agile in your processes.
- A unique design is needed to display your content.
- Your project is multi-device and multilingual.
- Content is regularly added or updated.
You may not need a headless CMS if
- Your content doesn't need to be updated often.
- Your team doesn't have sufficient development resources internally.
- Speed and scalability are not important factors for your projects.
Benefits of a headless CMS
1. Frontend freedom
Bring content to any platform (native apps, VR, IoT, etc). You aren't restricted to just publishing content to a single website or mobile app. Hygraph, for example, allows you to develop with any technology for any platform making your product scalable when your users need you to be.
2. Well-structured data
Working with clearly defined data lets your development team know where to pick up instantly. Headless content infrastructure clearly defines the operations (queries and mutations) supported by the API.
3. Future-proof content
A headless CMS allows for your content to be modified immediately and as needed by your content creators. Minimize the impact of redesigns, product changes, and migrations with a decoupled content solution. Additionally, you don't need to worry that a headless CMS won't be able to deliver content to another digital channel that emerges five years from now.
4. Security and scalability
With one point of connection, your headless CMS allows for only one access point of vulnerability. A headless CMS like Hygraph offers many robust features for protecting your endpoint, including permanent auth tokens, DDOS mitigation strategies, and more.
5. Team flexibility
You want to hire the most talented developers possible. There is no need to teach a prehistoric web template language just to manage your content. Instead, work with any modern language stack your team pleases.
6. Consolidated content repository
It's counterintuitive to copy, paste & recreate content for your app across different platforms. Consolidating your content within one API minimizes overhead costs, time, and development resources.
Types of headless CMS
Many terms are used to describe a headless CMS—commonly Content Hubs, Content Infrastructure, and Managed Content as a Service—all of which are valid since a headless CMS essentially offers a repository for storing content that's ready to be delivered.
Managed Content as a Service (MCaaS)
Managed Content as a Service or Content as a Service (CaaS) is the evolution of how content is managed, stored, and delivered. It is a service-oriented model where the "Service Provider" delivers the content on-demand to the "Service Consumer" via licensed cloud-based subscription services.
With a traditional CMS approach, content could be stored physically on a local, dedicated, or shared server and in the cloud. Furthermore, individual entities were responsible for the security upgrades and database backups to maintain their CMS.
With the emergence of global distribution, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), and caching, cloud-based solutions became the preferred security, reliability, and speed option.
A headless CMS offers content "as a service," allowing content to be created and stored within the CMS and then channeled to any platform via APIs. CaaS doesn't dictate that content is meant to be "for human consumption" directly. Instead, it provides raw content to other systems that further refine the content to be rendered on the end platform.
This way, your content is always hosted in a centralized "content repository" on the cloud - allowing you to create, manage, and edit your content whenever you wish and accordingly distribute it to any systems and channels as and when required.
Recommended reading
API-first CMS
An API-first CMS is built upon the concept that content is maintained within a content repository, while APIs (like REST and GraphQL) distribute the content to multiple frontends based on how and what content is requested.
An API-first CMS allows brands and companies to reach out to consumers on any device, which is especially important given that devices have drastically transformed how consumers interact and engage with brands.
A traditional CMS like WordPress would make it near impossible to natively power voice assistants when used as a CMS for Alexa or Google Home since the traditional platforms aren't built to deliver experiences to these kinds of devices. In contrast, an API-first CMS is capable of accomplishing this.
Moreover, an API-first CMS leverages APIs to integrate and share data with other systems in the MarTech stack much more easily. This allows organizations to build their technology stacks as they see fit.
Hybrid CMS
A hybrid CMS is a content management system that combines the flexibility of a headless CMS with the marketer-friendliness of a traditional CMS.
When headless CMSs were first introduced, they largely catered to developers, allowing them to build the frontend how they saw fit without being restricted by templates or specific frameworks. However, these pure headless CMS solutions didn't offer the support marketers enjoyed with traditional CMS platforms like WordPress.
Hybrid CMSs return that marketer support by offering what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editors, drag-and-drop tools, and other features similar to a traditional CMS. Meanwhile, engineering teams can still get the flexibility they need to build omnichannel experiences.
The Headless CMS Buyers Guide
Learn how to find the right Headless CMS for your organization.
Download NowChallenges of headless CMS
While a headless CMS offers numerous advantages, many organizations are skeptical about adopting one. That's because not every headless CMS offers the hybrid features that modern enterprises need. Some of the potential challenges include:
No frontend
A headless CMS doesn't come with a frontend. So, whether you want to create content for a website or another channel, you need frontend developers to build something from scratch. Without adequate developer resources, this can end up being time-consuming and expensive.
No drag-and-drop page building experience
With a headless CMS there is a paradigm shift from a drag-and-drop approach to building content components pre-built on the frontend. This may look intimidating at first, but brings a great deal of benefits on the long run. Hygraph empowers content creators and offers a rich editing experience, including versioning, previews, content staging, and more.
Developer dependencies
While pre-built frontend components work great for the ongoing work, at times when something new is required to be created it would have to be done by the frontend team.
Editor's Note
These observations are objectively true about headless CMSs, but companies can take different approaches to overcome them if the benefits outweigh the challenges.
Meanwhile, many myths about headless CMSs are not entirely true. We've recently written an article to debunk these myths. You might want to look at this if you are unsure about adopting a headless CMS.
The future of content management with a headless CMS
The headless CMS has already altered the content management landscape, enabling organizations to create and publish content to different channels and more easily manage international campaigns.
Now that content can be delivered to any device, it has created a new digital era and facilitated enhanced customer experiences. Headless CMSs have evolved into digital experience platforms (DXPs) that help businesses manage the entire digital experience throughout every stage of the customer journey.
DXPs integrate not just content management but also analytics, personalization, commerce, and other tools and features, giving teams exactly what they need to manage the complete customer journey.
Brands are also going a step further and embracing composability to break down bulky monoliths that offer these solutions in an all-in-one format and build their technology stacks with a modular approach that leverages best-of-breed technologies, all with the headless CMS as the centerpiece.
To get started with using Hygraph as your headless CMS, sign up for a free-forever developer account, or reach out to our team to discuss custom needs for your scaling business goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a headless CMS?
A headless CMS is a content management system that provides a way to create, edit, and deliver content to one or several frontends. Instead of having your content tightly coupled to a particular frontend (like a website or mobile app), it provides your content as data over an API to be served to any frontend.
What does headless mean?
Headless means that the application is running without a graphical user interface (GUI) and sometimes without a user interface at all. The frontend (head) is detached from the backend (body), allowing both to be developed independently.
What are some other terms for headless CMS?
Headless CMS may commonly be referred to as Content Database, Content Backend, Content Repository, or Content API. It is essentially a backend-only content management system that acts as a content repository, and makes content accessible via an API for display on any device, without controlling the presentation layer(s).
What is a headless Website?
A headless website is built using a headless CMS, where the content is served via API from a backend rather than a classical “web CMS.” When needed, the same content can be distributed to multiple websites, apps, and other digital platforms.
How do you use a headless CMS?
To use a headless CMS, you must build a frontend (website or an application) first, then use the CMS's API to query and serve your content. This is in contrast to “creating your content on the website” as in the case of page builders and classic Web CMS.
Is a headless CMS just an API?
The short answer is no. A headless CMS is more than just an API. While headless CMSs provide APIs to connect the frontend with the backend, they also provide user-friendly interfaces for content editors and content management features like content workflows, version control, role-based access control, and more.
Is a headless CMS just a database?
No, a headless CMS is not just a database. While it stores and retrieves content like a database, it also offers a user interface (UI) and content management features. Headless CMSs allow you to use a separate database of your choice if needed, but they also provide APIs to connect with various frontends.
Is a headless CMS a backend?
Headless CMS is part of the backend. However, it does not replace the entire backend infrastructure. While it handles content storage, management, and API-based delivery to various frontends, it typically works alongside other backend systems like Product Information Management (PIM), authentication services, and business logic layers to form a complete backend ecosystem.
Where to host a headless CMS?
The hosting options for a headless CMS depend on the type of CMS you choose. If you choose an open-source CMS like Strapi or Ghost, you will need to self-host it on a server, which can be a local setup or cloud-based on platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. When you use a SaaS solution like Hygraph or Contentful, the vendor manages the hosting, so you can focus on content and development. Some platforms also offer managed hosting.
Should I use a headless CMS?
If you are creating a simple corporate website or portfolio, perhaps not. If you have development resources and are building multiple or complex websites, applications, and other digital products, then it may be worth exploring Headless CMS. The same applies to whether you require stronger flexibility and performance with your digital projects.