28. January, 2024
Over the last couple of years headless CMS space has grown so much. There are a lot of really good headless CMS options out there now.
I’m gonna try to “rank” them, but the ranking is purely my thoughts and what I like. Which might be different for you and your projects.
1. Directus
Directus is my favorite CMS today. It does everything and more. It has a beautifully designed dashboard that is polished and visually appealing. What sets Directus apart from other CMSs is that once you start the Directus server, you're ready to go. There is no build time or dev mode required. All content collections and fields can be created through the admin panel and are immediately available.
Directus goes beyond being just a headless CMS. You can build almost anything with it.
It has offers a cloud option, but it is free if self-hosted. Additionally, in the three years that I have been using Directus, I have not encountered any bugs or experienced any breaking changes in updates, which is a significant advantage in today's landscape.
2. Payload CMS
Payload is my second favorite CMS.
This year is going to be big for Payload, especially for Next.js fans. They are working on an update that will improve integrations with Next.js and make it easier to deploy everything in one place. As a Next.js fan, I'm really excited about this. You can learn more about the update here.
3. Strapi
Keystatic is a "tool" that connects directly to your frontend and provides a content editor. It allows you to create content within the frontend repository in Markdown, JSON, or YAML format. This workflow is particularly beneficial for small to medium websites.
5. Tina CMS
Tina CMS is similar to Keystatic. It has been around for a while but only recently went fully open source. Before that, it was cloud-only. That's what I love about it. I wish they had made it open source earlier, as more people would have used it.
Let me know what’s your favorite CMS on X.
