Headless CMS vs traditional: Discover the best CMS for your business

Highlights

You learn about which CMS is right for you:

Traditional CMS:

• Monolithic architecture: Front-end and back-end are coupled with each other
• Ease of use: User-friendly interfaces but less flexible
• Scalability issues: Struggles with high traffic and content volume
• Vendor lock-in: Difficult to switch platforms

Headless CMS:

• Decoupled architecture: Separates front-end and back-end for flexibility
• API-driven: Delivers content through APIs for better performance
• Future-proof: Easily integrates with new technologies
• Enhanced user experience: Personalized and consistent across channels

Upgrade to a headless CMS for superior performance and scalability.

73 million websites use a content management system (CMS). Shocking statistics? 

With so many CMS out there, how do you choose one that suits your needs while meeting your customers' expectations? 

WordPress was a customer favorite, but its unique challenges made people seek other options. More businesses are showing a growing interest in headless CMS solutions. When there are many options in the market, each promising to give your users something special, how do you determine the CMS that best suits your needs?

Let’s discover headless CMS vs traditional CMS and understand why a headless CMS like Contentstack is the best choice.

What is a traditional CMS?

A traditional CMS is a content management system that helps you create, manage and modify website content. These CMSs are monolithic because the front end couples with the back end. This means content creation, management and presentation layers are different and handled within a single system. Coupling the front-end and back-end layers provides a content management environment where non-technical users can see how their content appears. Some popular traditional CMSs include WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

What is a headless CMS?

A headless content management system (CMS) is a CMS with a separate front end and back end. It delivers content through application programming interfaces (APIs). As the front end is separate from the back end, developers can use any technology to present the content to their customers. Due to APIs' central and critical role, a headless CMS is called an API-first CMS. A headless CMS is the first choice for any company that wants to deploy content to numerous digital channels. 

Contentstack is the most popular headless CMS. It allows developers to present your content in whatever way your audience requires using a preferred technology and framework. The tool makes your website more flexible and scalable, providing omnichannel experiences and delivery to websites, digital apps and internet-connected (IoT) devices.

Case study: How ICE Mortgage Technology enhanced efficiency with Contentstack?

ICE Mortgage Technology faced challenges with its traditional CMS, Kirby CMS, which required developer intervention for minor content updates. This led to developers spending excessive time managing content and resolving tickets. As ICE Mortgage Technology wanted an independent solution, ICE chose Contentstack, an API-based, headless CMS that allowed stakeholders to make updates without developer assistance. 

Key benefits included version control for easy rollback, an intuitive user interface for seamless onboarding, flexibility in development environments and the ability to schedule content publishing. As a result, content editing time was reduced from 30 minutes to just 30 seconds, freeing developers from content updates and cutting developer tickets by 40%.

After using Contentstack, Kevin Yang, Senior Manager of digital experience at ICE, said:

“We cut out 40% of our tickets by having a CMS where other users can make updates to the website. That 40% is so valuable for us, so we can focus on revenue-driving initiatives and find new ways to get users to engage with our web properties to get more leads in the pipeline for sales. It is a huge advantage for us!”

Read the complete case study here.

Key features of headless CMS and traditional CMS

Before digging deep into the headless CMS vs traditional, let’s explore the key features of both:

Features of traditional CMS

Content management

A traditional CMS makes content creation and management easy. They help you publish, edit and maintain digital content through WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. 

Monolithic architecture

Most traditional CMS platforms run on a monolithic architecture, where the front end (what users see) tightly links to the back end (where the data lives). While this can make development smoother, it makes your website less flexible and scalable.

Integration of back-end and front-end

Traditional CMS platforms provide a unified approach for managing your content and how it’s presented. This seamless connection helps you update content and maintain consistency. However, adopting new technologies or making design changes independently is challenging.

Features of headless CMS

Decoupled architecture

In a headless CMS, the content management and presentation layers are separate. The headless architecture creates, manages and displays your content as you like. Plus, your developers can tailor digital experiences without the constraints of traditional CMS platforms.

API-driven content delivery

A headless CMS delivers content through APIs, helping you integrate with different front-end technologies. APIs increase performance and allow developers to connect their applications to other services.

Flexibility in development

Developers can select any front-end framework or programming language when using a headless CMS. They can apply the latest trends and tools to create interfaces to attract your customers and meet the project objectives.

Limitations of traditional CMS

Scalability challenges

When your business grows, your content volume is bound to increase, crippling the monolithic architecture of a traditional CMS. But why does a traditional CMS face these issues? The built-in user interface elements and plugins might not be ideal for high traffic and handling large content volumes. As a result, you witness slower loading of websites, which eventually impacts your user experience.

Lacks modularity

A traditional CMS like WordPress lacks modularity, making it challenging or impossible to reuse and maintain application code. Because of this, application usage issues occur and it becomes challenging to embrace new features. 

Vendor lock-in

Your developers must learn the programming language or framework tied to the CMS platform. Switching from one vendor to another consumes much time and is costly. For instance, Drupal uses PHP and Shopify uses Liquid programming language. Traditional CMS solutions work with proprietary plugins, themes and additional services exclusive to the platform, challenging the shift to another platform. 

Inflexible architecture

Components like add-ons, templates, and workflows are rigid and hard to customize. Because traditional CMS lacks RESTful APIs, you cannot integrate your existing systems with others. While plug-ins are a great option, they fail to provide flexibility. 

Benefits of headless CMS

Higher performance and faster load time

A headless CMS overcomes the shortfall of a traditional CMS by giving you control over your HTML pages. How? The headless architecture serves content via the APIs, helping your developers create lightweight and optimized websites that are easy to load and offer superior performance.

Better user experience

When you provide personalized and consistent experiences at every interaction, you keep your users engaged. Tailoring your communications to match individual preferences and behaviors creates a smoother journey that improves satisfaction and builds loyalty. This approach meets your users' expectations, strengthens your relationship and encourages repeat visits and lasting engagement.

Future-proofing

A headless CMS adapts to future technologies and user behavior. Because of this, you can integrate it with new platforms without a complete overhaul of your existing CMS infrastructure. Such an adaptable nature allows you to stay ahead of trends and ensure you use the latest technologies to deliver content.

Enhanced omnichannel content delivery

APIs make content distribution smoother and more efficient. How? They share information across various channels from one source, helping you offer a consistent and engaging experience. Using APIs simplifies your workflows, saves time in content management and ensures your messages reach the right people at the right moment.

Differences between a headless and traditional CMS

Architectural differences

Traditional CMSes have a single, unified architecture, while headless CMSes employ a more versatile approach. A standard CMS couples back and front ends, while a headless CMS optimizes them as independent systems.

Content management and delivery

A monolithic platform manages and delivers content through a unified platform, which can limit flexibility. On the other hand, a headless CMS centralizes your content management and delivers it through APIs to any front end, helping you customize and scale your operations.

Flexibility and customization

With headless CMS, you can design user interfaces and showcase content. It also offers extensive customization possibilities, while a traditional CMS can feel more restricted.

Suitability

Small to medium-sized companies prefer a traditional CMS, whereas large enterprises prefer a headless CMS for numerous reasons.

How to choose the right CMS for your needs

Know your business requirements

Evaluate how you are going to use your CMS. Find answers to these questions:

• Do you want your existing technology dependencies to persist, or will they evolve with a new CMS?
• Will your new CMS work or integrate with your company’s existing tech stack?
• Are you planning to scale your operations or website?
• What features do you require in the future?
• Can your CMS adapt to the latest technologies or upcoming trends?
• Are you looking for omni-channel publishing?

When you know the answer to these questions, comparing different CMS options available in the market becomes easier. 

Assess your technical resources

When choosing the right CMS, assess your technical resources to ensure everything goes smoothly. Start by checking out your team's skills and expertise. If your team has experience in certain programming languages or frameworks, a headless CMS might be a great fit to use those skills. 

Next, consider your company’s infrastructure. Take stock of the hardware and software you’re currently using and the bandwidth and server capacity you need to support your chosen CMS. A headless CMS typically demands a stronger infrastructure for managing API interactions effectively, while traditional CMS platforms can run on simpler systems thanks to their integrated design.

Ease of use

What’s the point of using a CMS that requires developers' help to create, update and publish content? Choose a CMS non-technical users can use without any coding knowledge. Most modern-day CMSes prioritize user experience by providing an intuitive interface and an easy-to-use platform. 

Cost of the CMS

You need to know the cost of the CMS. Factor in licensing costs, updates, upgrades, implementation costs and optimization costs. The CMS you choose becomes the backbone of your business. Avoiding some cost-cutting may hamper your business. So, never make pricing your only criterion when making a selection. CMS pricing ranges from free to six figures in annual licensing. 

Weigh all your options, but remember that higher costs are not always worth it. You need to know your business requirements before selecting the right CMS.

FAQs

What is the difference between traditional CMS and headless CMS?

A traditional CMS tightly binds the front-end and back-end together, while a headless CMS separates them. This makes a headless architecture more scalable and flexible.

What is the difference between headless and Full CMS?

A full CMS or a traditional CMS couples the front-end and back-end. However, a headless CMS focuses on content management, leaving front-end development to other technologies.

Why is headless CMS better?

Headless CMS makes your website more scalable and flexible and helps you deliver omnichannel content, making it ideal for businesses with complex content needs.

When to use a traditional CMS?

Traditional CMS is suitable for small to medium-sized websites with straightforward content management requirements and limited need for customization.

Learn more

Choosing and implementing the right CMS is no longer a matter of just an operational overhaul. It’s a strategic initiative that delivers consistent customer experiences for years. That’s why embracing a headless CMS like Contentstack is transformative. Apart from making life easier for your customers, a headless CMS improves your developer experiences. 

To change your content management and front-end development process, it’s time to switch to a headless platform. Talk to us today to learn more.