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What are the best open source headless CMS's?

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Considered

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Here’s the Deal

15 Options Considered

Best open source headless CMS's	Price	Multi Language Support	Technology
85 Strapi	-	Yes	Node.js
-- Flextype	free	Yes	PHP
-- Plone	Free	-	Python
-- Cockpit	Free	-	PHP
-- Netlify CMS	Free	-	-

See Full List

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

Multi Language Support:Yes

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

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

Flextype

Top Pro

Flexible

Simple but powerful Core API's. See More

Top Con

Same cms repackaged

CaffeinatedAmurru's Experience

Easy to install and configure. Easy to teach/explain how to work with CMS to a new customer. Lightweight and fast CMS See More

Specs

Multi Language Support:Yes

Top Pro

No external DB required

ProudAbhartach's Experience

Flextype is lightweight, fast and modern. In my opinion the best self-hosted hybrid Content Management System on the market. Hybrid means it can be used as headless or traditional CMS best of both worlds. See More

Top Pro

Built-in REST API

Provides APIs organized around Representational State Transfer (REST) for working with content. See More

Awilum's Experience

The freedom of a headless CMS with the full functionality of a traditional CMS. See More

Top Pro

Free

MIT-licensed open source project and completely free to use. See More

Top Pro

Tokenized API

Top Pro

Dynamic Content Types

Define unlimited custom fields for any of your entries. See More

Top Pro

Super fast

Elegant architecture and built-in smart cache. See More

Top Pro

Version control

It is easy to version control all content in Flextype with GIT or any other Version Control System. See More

See All

Plone

Top Pro

Open source

Not only does this provides complete transparency to the user, it also enables a large base of developers to work simultaneously on solving any arising the issues and improving the platform. See More

IndependentMalingee's Experience

I have built portals, websites and intranets since a long time with Plone. I love it's flexible software architecture, outstanding security, content management concept and user friendliness. Meanwhile I'm a core developer. I worked with a lot of other platforms too, Django, Wordpress, Drupal, EZ, Liferay - all have their strengths and weaknesses but compared to Plone they fall short - in my opinion. However, Plone is a niche product, that is to be considered. See More

Specs

Technology:Python

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

Top Pro

Great for long term projects

It’s rare to get an issue using Plone. More fiddly than WP to manage media but given the security it’s a winner. See More

Top Pro

Can run on virtually anything

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

Top Pro

Extensible code architecture

Plone's functionality can be flexibly extended in various ways without touching any core components. Plone is built with Python and uses the Zope Component Architecture with the adapter software pattern at it's core. See More

See All

Cockpit

Top Pro

Open source

Top Con

Documentation not a strong as it could be

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

Specs

Technology:PHP

Platforms:Linux

Top Pro

Flexible API

Top Con

Small dev team supporting it

drfeld's Experience

Cockpit CMS has huge potential for a particular type of project, but is hampered by having limited documentation. See More

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Built on slightly proprietary / little known framework

Top Pro

Webhooks

Top Pro

Cockpit Addons

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

Top Pro

Simple concepts: Regions and Collections

Top Pro

Works well with IntercoolerJS

See All

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 listed here. See More

Top Pro

Modern

Top Pro

Open-source

Top Pro

Built in React.js

See All

Kentico Kontent

Add Video or Image

Superdesk

Top Pro

Visual

The interface is clean and well designed. You can tell someone with a UX background worked on it and not just software engineers. See More

Top Con

Sometimes buggy

Sometimes, when trying to publish a post I was getting errors which was a bit annoying. However, after we updated to the latest version the instance was running smoothly. See More

AwesomestPachamama's Experience

I have used Superdesk to publish articles and update other content on my company's website. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Putting together an article is straightforward: you type the text into the main fields and then use drag and drop to add photos. See More

Top Con

Not one-click publishing

At least in our company’s system you need to do a couple of extra steps to publish an article. See More

TallPluto's Experience

I spent some time doing some freelance work for Sourcefabric, and I had been using Superdesk quite often. It was pretty cool to be honest, had a lot of automation functions and a real user-friendly interface. It's super useful for editors, as it does a sound job managing content and workflow. See More

Top Pro

Publish to more than one website

You have the option of setting up publishing routes to choose where something gets published in case you have multiple websites. See More

DedicatedBarraiya's Experience

I have used Superdesk to publish articles for my company’s website. See More

Top Pro

Customizable

I like that you can set up a personal workspace and also add different widgets to your dashboard depending on what you’re interested in. See More

Top Pro

Newsroom automation

Superdesk can aggregate and automate multiple mundane newsroom jobs. See More

See All

ButterCMS

Add Video or Image

All

Pros

Top Pro

Integrate with any language/framework

Gentics Mesh

Add Video or Image

All

Specs

Multi Language Support:Yes

Technology:Java

License:Apache License 2.0

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

See All Specs

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

Cosmic

Add Video or Image

All

Specs

Multi Language Support:YES

GraphQL:YES

GraphQL API:YES

Price:Free to Enterprise

See All Specs

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15 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

Users, groups and permissions

Support GraphQL out of the box

My Recommendation for Flextype

My Recommendation for Flextype

Flexible

Same cms repackaged

No external DB required

Built-in REST API

Free

Tokenized API

Dynamic Content Types

Super fast

Version control

My Recommendation for Plone

My Recommendation for Plone

Open source

Remarkable level of security

Multilingual UI and documentation

Great for long term projects

Can run on virtually anything

Extensible code architecture

My Recommendation for Cockpit

My Recommendation for Cockpit

Open source

Documentation not a strong as it could be

Flexible API

Small dev team supporting it

Free

Built on slightly proprietary / little known framework

Webhooks

Cockpit Addons

Simple concepts: Regions and Collections

Works well with IntercoolerJS

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 Kentico Kontent

My Recommendation for Kentico Kontent

My Recommendation for Superdesk

My Recommendation for Superdesk

Visual

Sometimes buggy

Easy to use

Not one-click publishing

Publish to more than one website

Customizable

Newsroom automation

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 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

My Recommendation for Comfortable

My Recommendation for Comfortable

Easy and fast to start

Not open-source

Flexible API

Small team

REST and GraphQL