Alternatives to Contentful: What is your ideal Headless CMS for your website?

Contentful stands out in the market for its decoupled architecture and powerful REST and GraphQL API capabilities that are both native and multi-device. Structuring content as data independent of its presentation allows us, through this platform, to achieve truly efficient omnichannel delivery with great flexibility and scalability. Additionally, competitors in the headless CMS sector offer a wide variety of features and possibilities, which broadens the options to meet different creation and publishing needs across various channels.

If we look for other options, we have a considerable list of candidates: Strapi, an open-source and flexible platform that often stands out for its customizable features; Storyblok, with a visual and collaborative editor as well as ease of use; Sanity.io, which offers structured content in real time and a broad range of integrations; DatoCMS, for highly optimized and high-performance content management; and Ghost, a minimalist and very fast publishing platform often chosen for its simplicity. But... which one to choose?

In today's article, we will talk about all of this. And these alternatives to Contentful offer a variety of digital experiences, allowing users to create personalized environments adapted to different devices and channels.

Why look for alternatives to Contentful?

We have to start by recognizing that Contentful offers us many truly outstanding advantages, although it is also true that some companies find limitations. The plans can be prohibitive for certain budgets while the pricing model based on API calls and users scales very quickly with demand.

The learning curve associated with managing structured content is another point to consider, as it sometimes complicates daily editorial work. The less technical editors may find the whole process unintuitive while balancing data structures, content design, and internal operations. More complete customization usually requires extra integrations and developments that increase the cost of the solution and extend the implementation time.

Alternatives to Contentful: Quick Comparison

So, it's time to look at alternatives. Let's start with a quick comparison table featuring the five most prominent options, each with its focus, content relationship, advantages, disadvantages, and price. These alternatives differ in content type management, structure, and product catalog, allowing customization and organization according to the needs of each project. With this, at a glance, we can begin to see which alternative best suits our projects and teams.

Strapi: Ideal for Developers and Customization

Strapi is an open-source CMS that we can self-host or use in the cloud if we prefer a solution that doesn't require us to think about maintenance. Especially in the first scenario, it offers us full control over presentation-independent data. Its Node.js-based architecture makes it easy to create custom REST or GraphQL API solutions tailored to our needs.

In its community, we can find plugins and add-ons that extend its functionalities. This allows us to tailor each project exactly to our requirements. It also includes a very well-designed admin panel with support for fully customizable roles and permissions.

Regarding its technical support, Strapi stands out for its level of customer service, providing prompt help to solve any issues that could jeopardize a project's viability.

Strapi is ideal for users with technical experience and very specific customization needs. Teams with technical knowledge who need full control of data and prefer self-hosting without API call limitations.

Key Features of Strapi

• Self-hosting or cloud service, always scalable
• Automatically generated REST and GraphQL APIs
• Admin panel with customizable roles and permissions
• Plugin ecosystem to extend functionalities
• Full customization of content schemas and workflows

Pros and Cons of Strapi

Strapi gives us great freedom and a highly modular environment. However, it requires development resources and ongoing maintenance and the community version lacks an integrated WYSIWYG editor that other alternatives do offer. On the other hand, it provides virtually unlimited integration options at no extra cost.

Contentful Plans and Pricing

Strapi offers a free community edition and cloud plans. The Cloud Developer plan starts at 15 euros per project and the Cloud Pro at 99 euros per month with annual billing.

Storyblok: Ideal for visual editing and collaboration

Storyblok offers us a CMS that, while being headless, features an excellently designed visual editor with real-time previews. Creating and designing pages is very easy thanks to its drag-and-drop interface that integrates via GraphQL or REST API with the rest of the system. Additionally, Storyblok allows the creation of personalized experiences for users, adapting to different needs and devices.

Content teams can drag blocks and receive immediate feedback on their actions. It also includes workflows for approvals and roles with very detailed permissions. Frequent updates and a plugin marketplace give us access to extensions for SEO, internationalization, and data analysis without depending on custom developments.

We recommend Storyblok for marketing teams that value visual editing and collaboration between designers and developers. Its real-time preview and collaboration potential take productivity to a new level.

Key features of Storyblok

• Visual editor with real-time preview
• Content management based on reusable components
• GraphQL and REST API with automatic caching
• Approval workflows and notifications
• Marketplace with plugins for SEO and internationalization

Pros and cons of Storyblok

Storyblok combines ease of use for non-technical users and power for developers. It requires a premium subscription to access advanced features and some large projects exceed the limits of the free version, but team collaboration and editing capacity and ease are well worth the investment.

Storyblok Plans and Pricing

Storyblok offers a free starter plan and two paid tiers: Growth from 99 euros per month for five editors and Enterprise with custom pricing based on users and capacity.

Sanity.io: Ideal for collaborative workflows and structured data

Sanity.io presents itself as a headless CMS focused on content as data and offers real-time collaboration with simultaneous editing. The custom studio allows us to define schemas and views tailored to each project, while its API is powerful and instantly responds to GraphQL queries. It also includes asset management and AI tools to streamline content creation.

Sanity is highly recommended for teams that need simultaneous editing and complex content structures. High collaboration and real-time changes distinguish this platform when API reliability is truly necessary.

Key features of Sanity.io

• Simultaneous editing and live collaboration
• Fully customizable content schemas
• Powerful GraphQL and REST API with real-time caching
• Multimedia asset management with transformations in the API
• Integration with AI tools and other plugins

Pros and cons of Sanity.io

Collaborative editing is exceptional, but the tool itself requires knowledge of JavaScript and custom schemas to fully leverage its potential. Costs can rise with users and API consumption, but even so, flexibility and performance justify the investment for more demanding projects.

Sanity.io Plans and Pricing

Sanity.io offers a free plan with basic limits and a Growth plan starting at 15 euros per user per month. The Business plans include higher API usage volume, optimized hosting, and technical support.

DatoCMS: Ideal for agile development & media optimization

DatoCMS makes complete management of websites and applications easy through a truly intuitive panel and a very well-optimized GraphQL API. Media is automatically served optimized with on-the-fly transformations and through its integrated CDN. 

The system offers version control, record comments, and a very efficient content editor. Additionally, we can perform integrations with various frameworks and webhooks to automate continuous deployments. The modular fields system allows us to create very specific content models that we can then fill quickly and comfortably.

DatoCMS is among our top recommendations for projects that require automatic image optimization and allow agile content editing. Highly recommended when media management is a priority, as we can accelerate deployments without sacrificing quality.

Key features of DatoCMS

• Intuitive and flexible administration panel
• GraphQL API with caching and auto-scaling
• Image transformations and automatic optimization
• Version control and organized comments
• Framework integrations and built-in webhooks

Pros and cons of DatoCMS

The learning curve is low and the editorial experience very smooth. Plans have storage and user limits that need careful consideration in large projects, but its performance stands out and the media tools justify its choice.

DatoCMS Plans and Pricing

Offers a limited free plan and a Pro plan starting at 149 euros per month with 100 GB of monthly bandwidth and expanded API and user limits.

Ghost: Ideal for Simplified Blog Publishing

Ghost is a headless CMS focused on content creation and blog publishing with a very clean and efficient Markdown editor. It includes a membership system, newsletters, and integrated marketing campaign management to monetize audiences directly from the platform. Additionally, it allows automation of sending and marketing processes, facilitating efficient campaign management and improving the customization of digital strategies. Its architecture, lightweight and well optimized, offers great loading speed and ease of content migration. It is ideal for launching sites with well-optimized SEO and top-level performance.

Key Features of Ghost

• Markdown editor with live preview
• Built-in subscription and membership system
• Newsletter sending and email statistics
• JSON API for integration with any frontend
• Customizable themes and dynamic routes

Pros and Cons of Ghost

Ghost simplifies publishing and monetization, but for complex applications or those requiring immersive visualization it can fall a bit short. It lacks a full WYSIWYG visual editor and requires theme knowledge for customization, but its performance and focus on pure content make it a very outstanding option.

Ghost Plans and Pricing

Ghost is open source and free if self-hosted. Ghost(Pro) starts at 9 euros per month for 500 members and includes managed hosting and SSL.

Ideal Use Case

Content creators, journalists, and small media outlets who prioritize lightweight publishing for blogs, newsletters, and memberships where speed is key and there is a focus on text.

Comparison by Categories

With the detailed information in hand, let's talk about how each tool performs in the main analysis categories. Let's look at the alternatives from the perspective of security, implementation, price, or scalability, among other variables.

Security and Compliance

If we choose to self-host Strapi or Ghost, we get full control over data and privacy by managing our own servers. With Storyblok, Sanity.io and DatoCMS in the cloud, security is based on SSL certificates, at-rest encryption, and the access policies we define.

Ease of Implementation

For quick implementations, Ghost and DatoCMS offer us very intuitive dashboards with practically no configuration: basically we just have to log in and get started. Storyblok has templates and a visual interface that speeds up the editorial flow, while Sanity.io and Strapi require us to properly define schemas and adapt the environments, local or cloud, to start.

Customization and Integrations

Strapi and Sanity.io allow us to modify logic and content schemas without any limits through code and/or plugins. Storyblok adds native integration with its marketplace. Meanwhile, DatoCMS and Ghost offer us webhooks and APIs that are very easy to configure. 

In almost all tools, integration with SEO, analytics, and authentication is done through standardized REST or GraphQL connections, which facilitates more efficient workflows. We can connect user management systems, ecommerce, and traditional CMS like WordPress through simple plugins.

Hosting (Self-managed vs SaaS)

Strapi and Ghost allow us to choose between self-hosting the solution on our own servers or on cloud platforms of our choice. With Sanity.io, Storyblok, and DatoCMS we access managed hosting with automatic scalability and centralized updates. 

Scalability

Storyblok and Sanity.io automatically manage scalability based on traffic and the number of API calls. DatoCMS and Ghost limit free plans according to bandwidth or number of members. With Strapi, we can size servers as needed and leverage Kubernetes or other platforms to support the project.

Price

Ghost and Strapi are the most economical solutions if self-hosted. The basic plans of Sanity.io and Storyblok also offer free options. Meanwhile, DatoCMS has an average cost of 149 euros per month.

Among the alternatives to Contentful, which one to choose?

According to our priorities, we can lean towards one solution or another. The decision is very personal and depends on our budget, scalability, and editorial experience, but in general terms we can outline the following:

• Teams with limited budget: Ghost or Strapi for self-hosting and minimizing costs.
• Large companies: Storyblok or DatoCMS for collaborative workflows and an integrated CDN.
• Users who prioritize privacy: Strapi self-hosting to avoid depending on third parties.
• Distributed or remote teams: Sanity.io or Storyblok with real-time editing and version control.

Verdict: What is your ideal Headless CMS for your website?

After thoroughly analyzing the five best alternatives to Contentful, we find that each tool offers strengths in editing, performance, and cost, so we can choose according to the profile of our project. The best option depends on the workflow and needs we have.

Therefore, the best thing is to try the free versions or demos of each platform to make a decision. With the information in hand and monitoring the results obtained, we will know which of the five options to choose. Once this is done, we will be one step closer to a much more efficient and easy content management.