What are the best open source headless CMS's?

Question

10

Options
Considered

117

User
Recs.

Feb 16, 2020

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

10 Options Considered

Best open source headless CMS's	Price	License	Multi Language Support
86 Strapi	-	MIT	Yes
-- Netlify CMS	-	-	-
-- Cockpit	-	-	-
-- Plone	Free	-	-
-- GraphCMS	-	-	-

See Full List

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score 53 · Answer 1

Strapi

Top Pro

Out-of-the-box administration panel

Easy way to manage your application. This panel allows you to add/edit/delete entries for your APIs, manage your users, groups and permissions. In the future, it will be such as WordPress-like administration panel dedicated to your application. See More

Top Con

Buggy, poor set of features

Buggy rich text editor Lack of WYSIWYG html (or at least raw html) editor Cannot change content type when production deploy See More

SociableEnyo's Experience

Quite buggy, after playing with it and trying to adjust to our needs, we have decided to drop it - is not stable and is not recommended for production. See More

Specs

License:MIT

Multi Language Support:Yes

Language:Node.js

Template Engine:All

See All Specs

Top Pro

Auto-generate REST APIs

Strapi comes with blueprints that let you create, read, update and delete your data. You also can paginate, sort and filter your results in a matter of seconds with simple but yet specific parameters. See More

Top Con

Still in BETA version

It's still v3.0.0-beta.13 See More

OpinionatedIusaaset's Experience

buggy af See More

Top Pro

Users, groups and permissions

Manage user settings, login, registration, groups and permissions on the fly. Strapi delivers all those essential features out-of-the-box. See More

Top Pro

Support GraphQL out of the box

And there is a good GraphQL documentation for 3.x.x. See More

See All

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score 7 · Answer 2

Netlify CMS

Top Pro

Experimental support for GitHub's GraphQL API

Experimental support for GitHub's GraphQL API is now available for the GitHub backend. Without mutation See More

Top Con

a lot of configuration

Example: a few plugins and some code are needed for gatsby-img or markdown to work See More

Top Pro

Easy Creating Custom Widgets option

The NetlifyCMS exposes a window.CMS global object that you can use to register custom widgets, previews, and editor plugins. The same object is also the default export if you import Netify CMS as an npm module. The available widget extension methods are: https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/custom-widgets/ See More

Top Pro

modern

Top Pro

open-source

Top Pro

Built in React.js

See All

score 13 · Answer 3

Cockpit

Top Pro

Open Source

Top Con

Small dev team supporting it

Russell Hutson's Experience

Used this for 3 years now in a corporate setting, for a variety of uses. Very flexible and does most things you need a headerless CMS to do. Call from PHP or JS, or anything which can do a GET. Plays nicely with IntercoolerJS See More

Top Pro

Cockpit Addons

Rich features addons like (GraphQL, ElasticSearch, Group Permissions) See More

Top Con

Built on slightly proprietary / little known framework

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Documentation not a strong as it could be

Top Pro

Simple concepts: Regions and Collections

Top Pro

Flexible API

Top Pro

Webhooks

Top Pro

Works well with IntercoolerJS

See All

score 4 · Answer 4

Plone

Top Pro

Can run on virtually anything

Plone runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebooks, RaspberryPi, servers, and cloud services. See More

Top Pro

Remarkable level of security

Plone has been around for almost two decades and to date less than 50 vulnerabilities were discovered in the platform. That's at least ten times less than any of the popular alternatives, including Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla. In fact, government agencies, such as NASA and FBI use Plone for its high level of security. See More

Top Pro

Multilingual UI and documentation

Plone platform along with all documentation is available in more than 40 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 5

GraphCMS

Top Con

Not open source

Top Pro

Webhooks

Webhooks enable you to trigger custom code as soon as your content changes. See More

Top Con

No content versioning

Top Pro

Image processing

On-the-fly image transformations, such as resizing or cropping just by adding parameters to your media´s URL. See More

Top Pro

Roles and permissions

The roles and permissions feature allows you to assign your collaborators different roles, such as Developer, Editor and Collaborator. See More

Top Pro

Multi-project management

You can manage multiple projects and create up to 50 users per account to help manage those projects. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 6

Gentics Mesh

License:Apache License 2.0

Multi Language Support:Yes

GraphQL:Yes

score 3 · Answer 7

Squidex

Top Con

Un-debuggable Script Editors

You can't debug any of its in-built script editors See More

Top Pro

Open source

RespectfulFionnuala's Experience

For making reference screens / displaying invoices, user management and blog content, this tool was great for the team. However, when we tried to implement the more complex rules. its limitation shows compared to other established CMS already out there. See More

Top Con

Limited to SImple Content

Limited to simple displaying of contents but will struggle with complex business rules ie ones that require cascading drop-downs, complex nested documents, etc.. See More

Top Pro

Versioning

Top Con

References

It will allow you to delete references which are used by documents and when you come to open those documents, it will then perform its 'shake' logic to remove it (make it balnk') and will also disappear from history / versioning See More

Top Pro

Powerful rule engine for integrations

Top Con

UI can be messy to navigate for an editor

Top Pro

REST and GraphQL

Top Con

Small team

Top Pro

Slick UI

Top Pro

Generous free package

2 locales, 2 collaborators, many API calls See More

See All

score 3 · Answer 8

Comfortable

Top Pro

Easy and fast to start

Top Con

Not open-source

Top Pro

Flexible API

Top Con

Small team

Top Pro

REST and GraphQL

Top Pro

Image Processing

imgix integration for realtime image transformations, such as resizing, cropping, face detection, etc. See More

Top Pro

Powerful content collections

See All

score 2 · Answer 9

Prose.io

Top Pro

Open source

You have the ability to make amends to the source code that improve the platform. See More

Top Con

There is no support team

No support is currently offered for Prose, although you can report technical issues on GitHub. See More

score 2 · Answer 10

ButterCMS

Top Pro

Integrate with any language/framework

10 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Strapi

My Recommendation for Strapi

Out-of-the-box administration panel

Buggy, poor set of features

Auto-generate REST APIs

Still in BETA version

Users, groups and permissions

Support GraphQL out of the box

My Recommendation for Netlify CMS

My Recommendation for Netlify CMS

Experimental support for GitHub's GraphQL API

a lot of configuration

Easy Creating Custom Widgets option

modern

open-source

Built in React.js

My Recommendation for Cockpit

My Recommendation for Cockpit

Open Source

Small dev team supporting it

Cockpit Addons

Built on slightly proprietary / little known framework

Free

Documentation not a strong as it could be

Simple concepts: Regions and Collections

Flexible API

Webhooks

Works well with IntercoolerJS

My Recommendation for Plone

My Recommendation for Plone

Can run on virtually anything

Remarkable level of security

Multilingual UI and documentation

My Recommendation for GraphCMS

My Recommendation for GraphCMS

Not open source

Webhooks

No content versioning

Image processing

Roles and permissions

Multi-project management

My Recommendation for Gentics Mesh

My Recommendation for Gentics Mesh

My Recommendation for Squidex

My Recommendation for Squidex

Un-debuggable Script Editors

Open source

Limited to SImple Content

Versioning

References

Powerful rule engine for integrations

UI can be messy to navigate for an editor

REST and GraphQL

Small team

Slick UI

Generous free package

My Recommendation for Comfortable

My Recommendation for Comfortable

Easy and fast to start

Not open-source

Flexible API

Small team

REST and GraphQL

Image Processing

Powerful content collections

My Recommendation for Prose.io

My Recommendation for Prose.io

Open source

There is no support team

My Recommendation for ButterCMS

My Recommendation for ButterCMS

Integrate with any language/framework

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