Headless CMS vs. traditional CMS

In this article, we dive into the critical question: is it smarter, safer, and ultimately more successful to choose a headless content management system or a traditional content management system? Our informative and interesting journey covers:

• Headless CMS benefits
• Traditional CMS benefits
• CMS limitations — headless and traditional
• When to use a headless CMS and when to use a traditional CMS

We wrap things up by looking at some core factors to help you choose the right CMS for your organization’s current and future needs.

Headless CMS architecture decouples front-end functions (where content is designed, formatted and delivered) from back-end functions (where content is created, managed, and stored). The bridge that connects the two — and in a sense enables them to “talk” with each and carry out various tasks — is application programming interface (API) technology. Due to this central and crucial role of APIs, headless CMSs are sometimes referred to as “API-first” CMSs.

There are several significant benefits of a headless CMS, including:

Enhanced flexibility: As mentioned, the front-end in a headless CMS is decoupled from the back-end infrastructure. This gives developers and content creators the flexibility to deliver (marketing-crafted and curated) digital experiences to target audiences across a wide range of platforms and devices, like webpages, mobile apps, smartwatches, and more.

Integrations, integrations, and (yet more) integrations: A headless CMS equips developers with the power to enlarge and curate a best-of-breed suite of API-enabled integrations. This optimizes the customer experience and drives conversions (including all-important micro-conversions), while at the same time supports organizational agility and growth.

Ease-of-use for developers: A headless CMS empowers developers to use a growing roster of front-end JavaScript coding frameworks (e.g., Next.js, React.js), including those that are not in use at the moment, but could be introduced in the future.

Ease-of-use for marketers: In a headless CMS, digital content is stored in a standardized, structured, and reusable format. This makes it easy for marketers to reuse and repurpose content across various channels, platforms, and devices.

Drive scalability: Thanks to the decoupled nature of headless CMS architecture, changes to the back-end (e.g., maintenance, updates, fixes, etc.) can be made without disrupting the front-end. This makes scaling straightforward and sustainable, unlike with a traditional CMS where scalability is often excessively difficult and costly at best, or outright impossible at worst (we explore some of the limitations of a traditional CMS later in this article).

Drive extensibility: A headless CMS empowers developers to introduce custom features as desired or required. Developers can also augment the underlying data model to support extensibility, but without the added cost, complexity, or risk of changing back-end code.

Burstable bandwidth: A headless CMS that is cloud-native can leverage infrastructure resources and automatically scale as demand increases (e.g., traffic spikes on Black Friday, better-than-expected response to a promotional/advertising campaign, etc.).

Economies of scale: Another significant benefit of deploying a cloud-native headless CMS is that as transaction volumes increase, the underlying cloud-based infrastructure gets less expensive per unit.

Improved performance and SEO: Headless CMS platforms delivers new content directly to target audiences, instead of routing them through a server. This accelerates transfer and rendering speed, which leads to better customer experience for end users and can positively impact SEO (page-loading speed is a search engine ranking factor).

Stronger security: The decoupled nature of a headless CMS does makes it less vulnerable to attacks targeting the front-end presentation layer. For example, even if bad actors compromise the content database, they cannot access the content publishing platform and consequently take the website/app offline.

A traditional CMS uses a categorically different approach than a headless CMS. Instead of being decoupled, the front-end and back-end are intrinsically connected. Essentially, there is no front-end: all content, designs, digital assets, and customizable applications are managed and stored in the back-end. Due to this all-in-one architecture, traditional CMSs are often referred to as “monolithic” CMSs.

There are some meaningful advantages of a traditional CMS, including:

Fast, easy deployment: Traditional CMS platforms support out-of-the-box deployment. For this reason, many small businesses that do not have in-house developer expertise lean towards a traditional CMS (such as WordPress or Drupal). Of course, this simplicity comes at the cost of flexibility, scalability, customizations, and the other benefits of a headless CMS highlighted above. Still, this is a trade-off that some organizations are willing (or in some cases required) to make.

Lower cost: Since a traditional CMS deploys significantly faster than headless CMS, it costs less to get up and running. However, it is necessary to mention that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison. While a traditional CMS will be faster — and consequently cheaper — to procure and deploy, it will be significantly less capable than a headless CMS in several ways.

Plug-ins for expandability: Whereas headless CMSs use API-driven integrations to provide expandability, traditional CMSs use a growing inventory of plug-ins. Interestingly, this aspect is viewed by some developers and marketers as a liability rather than an advantage. This is because compared to the curated best-of-breed API-driven integrations that are central to headless CMS architecture, the plug-in functionality that traditional CMSs rely on are significantly less flexible and versatile, and they can also pose significant security risks. For example, research has found that nearly 30% of critical WordPress plugins failed to get a security patch.

Ease-of-use: When we looked at the advantages of a headless CMS, we highlighted the ease-of-use benefits for developers and marketers. Well, when it comes to a traditional CMS, business users are in the winner’s circle thanks to conveniences like standardized templates, WYSISYG editors, drag-and-drop editing, and live real-time editing. However, a growing number of organizations are taking a hybrid approach that provides the practical front-end tools and frameworks that are characteristic of a traditional CMS, while also supports APIs that enable functions that are unavailable in an off-the-shelf headless CMS (e.g., WYSIWYG user interface and in-line editing, personalization rules in real-time, analytics, and A/B testing).

Given the advantages we have looked at so far, it is not surprising that both headless and traditional CMSs are popular options: 64.2% of all websites that have a CMS use WordPress, and the size of the headless CMS marketplace is projected to climb from $750 million USD in 2022 to $5.5 billion (USD) in 2032, which represents a CAGR of 21.1% between 2022 and 2032.

However, both headless CMS and traditional CMS solutions have limitations. For instance, headless CMSs:

• Lack built-in presentation functionality
• Rely on complex vs. simplified templates
• Require developers who are familiar with mutiple codebases
• Require extra formatting steps to determine how content will appear on the front-end
• Rely on additional technologies to function as its “head” (front-end)
• Are relatively more expensive to purchase and maintain due to the fragmented tech stack
• Require close collaboration between developers and marketers (this is not necessarily a disadvantage since developers and marketers can certainly work together)
• Have limitations around inline live editing, personalization, analytics and A/B testing since content and delivery are disconnected (as mentioned, these limitations can be resolved by taking a hybrid approach)

On the other end of the spectrum, traditional CMSs:

• Lack modularity, which makes it difficult, complex, risky, costly — and in some cases, outright impossible — to reuse and maintain application code without disrupting application usage, or when attempting to embrace new business models and channels
• Require excessive testing to identify potential risks after updates or upgrades (and even still this does not eliminate the possibility something will go wrong)
• Lack agility, which slows down the DevOps cycle — this is especially problematic for ecommerce businesses, since it can cause them to fall out of sync with rapidly changing customer expectations and marketplace shifts
• Trigger business continuity risks, since the components in a traditional CMS are inherently interdependent — if one component has an issue, then the entire system can crash
• Support a limited number of content types and programming frameworks, which reduces the capacity to deliver desired presentation types and optimize user experience
• Are difficult to customize and adapt —marketers and business users can typically use an out-of-the-box traditional CMS without much hassle, but trying to change something beyond the limited built-in options can be a costly, time consuming, and tedious
• Do not support seamless reuse of the same content types for IoT or mobile applications (note: this may be resolved through plug-ins or APIs, but the process is often difficult)

Your organization may want to use a headless CMS rather than a traditional CMS if:

• Your marketing team is working across multiple CMS platforms and is managing content delivery for multiple channels at the same time (i.e., omnichannel publishing)
• Your goal is to deliver website experiences that are fast, interactive in real-time, and responsive across multiple devices
• Your marketing team wants to jump in right away and accelerate the content creation and publishing process vs. wait days, weeks, or sometimes even months for developers to finish doing their part
• You want to build and manage a large content repository, and avoid content duplication — this is relevant to all organizations, but is especially vital for ecommerce business needs as inconsistent messaging can lead to customer unhappiness and trigger complaints
• You want to enforce strong enterprise-level security by reducing the size of the attack surface (refer to the earlier discussion on how a headless CMS supports stronger security by decoupling the front-end and back-end)

Alternatively, using a traditional CMS likely makes the most sense if:

• You do not have the required in-house expertise to deal with ongoing web development requirements and issues, and hiring qualified contractors/consultants to fill the knowledge gap isn’t financially feasible or is prohibitive at this time
• You do not need to share content across other (non-web) digital channels such as IoT, VR, apps, and chatbots
• The primary focus of your website is usability, rather than customization and personalization
• Your goal is to get up-and-running as quickly as possible by leveraging out-of-the-box templates and built-in content management functionality
• You want to use open-source code and host and store content from the CMS on your servers vs. in the cloud

To help determine what kind of solution — headless, traditional, or hybrid headless — is right for your organization, below are five critical factors to consider when choosing a CMS:

• Customers are demanding personalized experiences. Your CMS should consolidate all customer interactions, and turn this raw data into actionable business intelligence that enables you to deliver the right content (and other assets), at the right time, on the right device and interface, to the right customer.
• Globalization is driving the need for content in multiple languages and countries. Your content management system should streamline workflows with translators, and easily offer content in a language and tone that connects with your customers at the local level.
• Technology is constantly changing and becoming more complicated. Your CMS should be flexible and capable enough to take advantage of advances in automation, personalization, artificial intelligence, and machine learning (think IoT, wearables, voice assistants, etc.).
• Understanding data is key to connecting with customers. Your CMS should provide comprehensive analytics to help you manage and make sense of data.

Choosing and implementing the right type of content management system is not just a major operational project. It is also a long-term strategic initiative that impacts and influences your ability to deliver exceptional, personalized customer experiences across all channels, while helping you future-proof your content budget and operations more efficiently and intelligently.

Granted, CMSs — even those with best-of-breed features and functionality — are not a “magic wand.” However, leading developers and marketers at the helm of some of the world’s best-known, admired, and profitable brands readily credit their CMS (and how their teams use it) as a major part of their success story, a key element of their competitive advantage, and a primary driver of their ongoing growth and evolution.

Sitecore XM Cloud is a cloud-native, SaaS-powered content management system that has changed the game in the industry. XM Cloud delivers speed and agility for marketers and developers through the best attributes of the hybrid headless CMS.