Top 19 Headless CMS for Modern Publishers - 2018
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-17-headless-cms-platforms-available-2018-review-varghese/
Published on May 17, 2018
Table of Contents
LIST OF HEADLESS CMS PLATFORMS
It’s harder than ever to choose the right CMS, we have so many options and what may not be a perfect CMS as a whole, maybe perfect for your requirements.
LIST OF HEADLESS CMS PLATFORMS
With Brands wanting the freedom to deliver content to any existing channel, and the flexibility of being ready for any channel that’s yet to emerge, we can see that the demand for headless CMS spiking.
What is headless CMS?
A Headless CMS is a back-end only content management system (CMS) built from the ground up as a content repository that makes content accessible via a RESTful API for display on any device. - Wikipedia
1. Contentstack
Contentstack – the pioneer in API-first, headless CMS technology – accelerates and simplifies content management across today's and tomorrow's digital channels, including web, mobile and IoT. From desktops to smart phones, from kiosks to smart watches, from billboards to jumbotrons, from dashboards to VR headsets – content is delivered with the push of a button and optimized for every screen, device and channel.
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA Employees: 51-200 employees
Specialties: Content Management System, Headless CMS, API-First CMS, Digital Transformation Platform, SaaS, Cloud, Mobile CMS, Multi-Environment CMS, Backend, PaaS, CaaS, and CMS
Contact: https://www.contentstack.com/company/contact-us
2. Quintype Technologies
Quintype is an intuitive digital publishing platform which understands the needs of modern publishers and content marketers. The Quintype platform is a headless content management system (CMS) which includes an easy-to-use interface to create and organize content. Easy editorial workflows and content reusability are added features to our platform.
Quintype utilizes built-in analytics, personalization and other tools to increase audience engagement. The platform ensures that content is delivered to appropriate audiences, by leveraging social media, SEO and on syndication from various feeds. Besides this, it enables multi-channel distribution of publishing content across multiple channels.
Headquarters: San Mateo, CA Employees: 50-99 employees
Specialties: digital, publishing, startup, Content Monetization, cloud, SaaS, news, mobile, Newsroom Workflows, predictive analytics, digital media, advertising, native content, SSP, RTB, CMS, Alternative to Wordpress, Alternative to Drupal, Alternative to Joomla, and Mobile First CMS
Contact: sales@quintype.com
3. ButterCMS
Founded in 2014, ButterCMS serves up two products: a full headless CMS and standalone blog engine that can integrate with any framework. It boasts custom content types, WYSIWYG editing, webhooks and localization features.
API-based CMS and blogging engine that drops into your app. Butter plays well with Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Meteor, Go, Laravel, PHP, Python, Flask, .NET, Django, Angular, React, Vue.js, Elixir, Phoenix, and more.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California Employees: 50
Contact: support@buttercms.com
4. Cockpit
Cockpit is a brain-child of Artur Heinze developed since 2013. Cockpit was born out of the need for a backend which just manages structured content that can be re-used across different channels and devices. Working around the shortcomings of existing content management solutions led to the development of Cockpit.
Headquarters: San Francisco Employees: 2-10
Contact: https://getcockpit.com/support
5. Contentful
Contentful was started by Sascha and Paolo out of dissatisfaction with the existing web-focused CMSs. Those didn't fit for the new web – the web of mobile, interactive, multichannel content. Contentful powers digital experiences for major brands around the globe. Its content infrastructure provides developers a powerful set of APIs to manage, integrate, and deliver content to any device or service -- be it mobile apps, IoT devices in the home, SaaS products, Super Bowl campaigns, smart car dashboards, digital signage, VR and AR experiences, or the next big platform yet to come.
Headquarters: Berlin Employees: 51-200
Specialties: SaaS, Cloud, Mobile, Multi-Platform, CMS, Backend, PaaS, CaaS, Content infrastructure, API , and SDK
Contact: irina@contentful.com
6. GraphCMS
GraphCMS enables developers to build powerful content APIs in a matter of minutes, while it gives content editors all the tools they need to manage their content. The hosted content APIs can then be easily consumed by websites, apps or any other platform or partner. The founders describe their product as content microservice, as it fits in any tool chain dealing with content.
Headquarters: Gießen, Hessen Employees: 2-10
Specialties: Content Management, CMS, GraphQL, API, Content API, and Cloud Infrastructure
7. Cosmic JS
Cosmic JS is a cloud-hosted content platform that makes it easy to add dynamic content to any website or app. Cosmic JS solves a real problem in the content space today. A wide rift between people and easy content management has been created by the many devices and platforms for content consumption. Cosmic JS solves this problem by allowing a user to manage content for multiple websites and apps in one place and makes the content available everywhere in any programming language, whether it’s PHP, Ruby, Swift for iOS, JAVA for Android or web client-side applications. Cosmic JS provides a structured API that works for any programming language or device.
Headquarters: Dallas, Texas Employees: 2-10
Specialties: headless cms, cloud-hosted
Contact: https://cosmicjs.com/contact
8. Typewriter
Typewriter is a headless, API-focused content management system that works with any platform you want to use. Create pages and collections of documents and combine them to build a powerful content provider for your API-driven website or app. Save yourself time, money and the headaches of server maintenance by uncoupling your frontend from your CMS.
Headquarters: Toronto, Canada
Specialties: Node.js, PHP, Vue.js, React.js, Devops, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Sass, Responsive Web, Content Management Systems, and Ruby on Rails, headless cms, Cloud CMS
9. BloomReach
BloomReach is a Silicon Valley firm that brings businesses the first open and intelligent Digital Experience Platform (DXP). BloomReach drives customer experience to accelerate the path to conversion, increase revenue, and generate customer loyalty.
With applications for content management, site search, page management, SEO optimization and role-based analytics, BloomReach is a central location for all players who manage customer experience to come together and intelligently drive business outcomes. BloomReach’s Web Relevance Engine (WRE) algorithmically understands content and users, matching demand and intent data from across the web. BloomReach's industry-leading tools unlock the powerful creativity of humans to improve omnichannel customer experiences at scale. Together, human and machine generate millions of dollars of proven incremental sales.
Headquarters: Mountain View, CA Employees: 200-500
Specialties: eCommerce, Big Data, Marketing, SEO, Search, and Big Data Apps
Contact: https://www.bloomreach.com/en/about/contact-us
10. HashBrown
HashBrown can manage several projects with several environments deploying content to several servers. You can build any content structures and deploy them in any format and to any server with any protocol you can imagine, supported through plugins for the versatile and modular "Connection" interface.
11. Contenta CMS
Contenta is a content API and CMS based on Drupal 8. It provides a standard, jsonapi-based platform for building decoupled applications and websites. Contenta is a Drupal distribution that gives you modern API capabilities out-of-the-box with JSON API, which amongst other features allows you to fetch nested resources in one request, and plans to include the similar GraphQLservice soon. It’s ready to feed content to your JavaScript-powered website, phone app, TV, or even the mythical fridge application.
Headquarters: Spain Employees: 2-10
Specialties: headless CMS, drupal
12. dotCMS
dotCMS' enterprise-grade, Java-based content infrastructure allows global organizations to build, deliver and scale memorable, lasting customer experiences.
Privately owned and headquartered in Miami, Florida, dotCMS has an active open source community that has generated more than 300,000 downloads and has an expanding global network of certified development partners. dotCMS customers include DirecTV, Hospital Corporation of America, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard & Poor’s, Constant Contact, Thomson Reuters, TELUS, and more.
Headquarters: Florida, US Employees: 11-50
Specialties: Content Management System, Professional Help Desk Support, Cloud Hosting on Amazon EC2, Professional Implementation Services, and Digital Experience Platform
Contact: sales@dotcms.com
13. Evoq 9 CMS (DNN CMS)
DNN's CMS (Content Management System) helps customers create rich, rewarding online experiences. DNN products and technology are the foundation for 750,000+ websites worldwide. DNN is the steward of the DotNetNuke Open Source Project, also known as DNN Platform.
Headquarters: San Mateo, CA Employees: 51-200
Specialties: Web Content Management Platform, CMS, .Net Application Development Framework, Open Source CMS for Microsoft .NET, Social Communities, Social Community Platforms, Social Business Platforms, and Cloud Solutions
Contact: sales@dnnsoftware.com
14. Cloud CMS
Cloud CMS is a headless, API-first approach to content management, built around JSON and a high performance cloud architecture. It delivers enterprise features, including flexible content models and a full editorial environment, allowing your business users create, manage and publish fresh content with ease.
Cloud CMS is available either as a hosted subscription or as Docker microservices that you can run on-premise or host within your own private cloud. Cloud CMS runs on top of MongoDB, ElasticSearchand Amazon AWS.
Headquarters: Newton, MA Employees: 2-10
Specialties: content management, mobile applications, web applications, Docker containers, SaaS, and headless cms
Contact: info@cloudcms.com
15. Directus CMS
Directus is an API-driven content management framework for custom databases. It decouples content for use in apps, websites, or any other data-driven projects. "Content Management Systems" should manage content. That's it. They should do that job perfectly and then get out of the way. It allows you to author content independent of where it will be used – this decoupling is why it's called a "headless" CMS.
Content is managed directly in your custom database – with no assumptions about your project, no limitations on architecture, and no proprietary storage. All your data is accessible through the Directus API and SDKs – or, for self-hosted projects, you can pull right from the database. Now you have the freedom to connect any number of websites, native apps, wearables, kiosks, internet-of-things devices... any data-driven projects.
Headquarters: Brooklyn, NY Employees: 2-10
Specialties: Content Management, API, Database Administration, Open Source, Web Development, Content Syndication, and Native Apps
16. ZESTY.IO
Zesty.io is a cloud platform for brand marketing teams to build content-rich websites that engage customers and accelerate sales. Successfully deployed by global customers like Sony Electronics, Astroglide, and Rocket League, the Zesty.io SaaS platform is a low-risk opportunity for mid-market and enterprise brands to speed, scale and secure global distribution, customer engagement, and website management of digital content. Founded in 2010 by Randy Apuzzo and Andy Fleming, Zesty.io is VC-funded and headquartered in San Diego, California.
Headquarters: San Diego, California Employees: 11-50
Specialties: Website Platform, SaaS, Marketing, WCMS, and Enterprise Content Management
Contact: hello@zesty.io
17. Prismic.io
Prismic.io reshapes the way to manage and publish content into websites. prismic.io focuses on design freedom and websites speed by leveraging its API-based approach (often awfully called “headless”).
They build a global platform for content : a web app for content authoring and management and an API for developers to build cool things with no design constraints.
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA Employees: 11-50
Specialties: Content Management, Digital Content, headless CMS, and Digital Marketing
Contact: contact@prismic.io
18. Squidex CMS
An OpenSource Headless CMS, a CMS with an API.
A place for all your content. You can create schemas to define the structure of your content, e.g. which fields it has and how you want to edit them. You can also define validation rules to ensure that your content is consistent. The management UI helps you to create and edit the content, but the heart of the system is a rich API, which supports filtering with OData query options and creates swagger definitions for your content. Therefore you can easily integrate your content to your clients, e.g. to a website, mobile app or another server application.
Headquarters: Sweden Employees: 2-1
Specialties: Content Management, Data Structure, Data Architecture, headless cms, and API
19. Kentico Cloud
The cloud-first headless CMS and digital experience platform. Manage structured content, display it on any channel with the API-first CMS, and personalize the digital experience with visitor tracking.
Headquarters: Brno, JMK Employees: 201-500
Contact: cloud@kentico.com
Specialties: CMS, CXM, E-commerce, Intranet, Online Marketing, Web Content Management System, Social Networking, cloud cms, headless cms
If you feel your headless CMS is a good fit. Then please share your thoughts in comments.
