What is Content-as-a-Service? Definition, Examples and Top 15 CaaS Vendors in 2020

CaaS allows content creation on a cloud-based platform that can be globally accessible from anywhere, thereby establishing a standard format for all your content. CaaS models built on headless CMS allow enterprises to efficiently manage their content on a central repository, for deployment across multiple channels ranging from websites to mobile apps, chatbots, smart devices and more. Traditional CMS architectures (as opposed to headless CMS architectures) are also available in CaaS (cloud-based subscription models).

This article aims to give you a holistic picture of what a Content as a Service means in this omni-channel digital age, how to choose the right CaaS model for your needs, key considerations while evaluating a CaaS provider, and the top CaaS vendors in 2020.

Table of Contents

• What is Content-as-a-Service (CaaS)?
• What is a Headless CMS CaaS?
• Key Benefits and Advantages of Headless CMS CaaS
• Who Needs CaaS and Why? CaaS Use-Cases with Examples
• Limitations of CaaS
• Key Considerations While Evaluating CaaS vendor
• Top 20 Content As A Service (CaaS) Headless CMS Vendors in 2020

What is Content-as-a-Service?

Content as a service (CaaS) – is defined as a web-based content management infrastructure that enables the creation, storage, management and distribution/delivery of content easily and flexibly to a diverse set of front-end environments (such as mobile apps, websites, ecommerce platforms, social media and IoT devices).

In the simplest of terms, CaaS is a CMS built on the cloud and delivered via a subscription model. Since CaaS is a cloud-based service delivery model and not a software, it is also referred to as cloud content management system (CCMS) or managed content as a service (MCaaS).

CaaS is available for both- traditional CMS architectures- such as WordPress and Drupal – as well as for the emerging and increasingly popular ‘headless CMS’ architecture. In this feature, we focus on the emerging headless CMS-based CaaS model, as it is growing exponentially in popularity and functionality.

All references to CaaS in this article are specifically for CaaS built on headless CMS architecture, and offered either on-premise or via SaaS models.

What is a Headless CMS CaaS?

A headless CMS is a content-management system that deliberately separates the content, structure, and layout layers and the content production, management and delivery processes. The biggest disruption from the traditional CMS architecture is that with headless CMS, content only needs to be created once and stored in the central CMS repository, from where it can be fed on-demand to any existing or future front end environment – such as an app, website, IoT device, smartphone, digital signage etc. – without any loss in formatting or user experience. This is done via APIs, and the developer can choose any language to create the front-end experience or presentation / layout layer.

Headless Content Management Systems (CMS) are built on the simple idea that content management needs to be decoupled from the front end (read – separate the ‘head’ or the website front-end from the body (the CMS). Headless CMS address the limitations of the more traditional or ‘coupled CMS’ platforms that are linked by design to content output onto a specific front end, usually a website (or the ‘head’). Headless CMS delinks content management from content presentation.

Thanks to the separation of coding and presentation of content, developers can use RESTful APIs to deploy the same content across diverse platforms – for example, smart devices, IoS, mobile apps for Android and iOS or even different newsletter programs.

Today, with all tools and frameworks available in the market, most developers in fact don’t even need a CMS to build their websites! The actual challenge lies with storing, managing and distributing the content across an increasingly complex set of front-end interfaces that need constant dynamic content feeds. This is a challenge that has come to the fore thanks to the ‘omni-channel environment’ most marketers today operate in.

Marketers and business users are familiar with customers and prospects switching effortlessly between devices, platforms and channels. For example, customers switch easily between channels such as email, social media, call centre, instore, and website; or devices such as smart phone, laptop and other smart devices; and across platforms such as Messenger, WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Facebook. Each front-end needs a great UX and UI, making content content consumption and action (Conversion) imperative. In this scenario, having a traditional CMS that’s built primarily for websites is just not enough.

Headless CMS based CaaS are built for modern marketers operating in complex omni-channel environments, where it is imperative for the business or brand to deliver seamless, consistent brand experiences across a range of channels and devices, as well as be ready to easily make content available on new front-end channels or platforms that will emerge in the future. With marketers embracing immersive technology such as digital signage, smart voice devices, AR and VR to deliver content, the CaaS marketplace holds untapped potential for driving innovation with content management and delivery use cases. When the ‘headless’ CMS capabilities are delivered over the cloud it is Content as a Service or CaaS at work.

The cloud aspect of Content as a Service or CaaS model takes the convenience of headless CMS even further with all the usual benefits of cloud based computing and services. In other words, content management is ‘outsourced’ to the third-party CaaS vendor who provides all the infrastructure needed to ensure the content is managed optimally and delivered to all specified front-end interfaces at minimal cost and effort. It also ensures that content can be quickly and cost-effectively served to any new front-end; and like any cloud service, promises easy scale up or down without any liability.

CaaS also takes on the headaches of infrastructure capex, and offers the elasticity, scale and pricing flexibility that has made cloud delivery models globally popular across a range of business use-cases. Of course since it is a cloud-based service delivery model, it also brings all the usual benefits that cloud models offer – flexibility, scalability and cost-efficiency (albeit sometimes at the expense of customization and control).

In this article, we further delve into when the CaaS model is the right fit for CMS needs, for whom and why. But first we need to understand the concept and advantages of headless CMS in greater detail.

Learn More: What Is Content Management System (CMS)? Definition, Key Functions, Best Practices With Examples

Key Benefits and Advantages of Headless CMS

In today’s digital age, defined by the term ‘omni-channel or multi-channel’, every business needs to deliver content to their prospects and customers not just over a website, but over many owned and external channels – from mobile phone apps (IoS, Android and other OS) to e-commerce websites, social media platforms, IOT devices, newsletter programs etc.

In this scenario, it is pretty obvious that the business cannot be creating unique content in multiple formats to feed all these channels. That would not only be prohibitively expensive and terribly slow, but also just plain inefficient! They need a way to automate the distribution of the same content – created once – onto multiple front-end platforms, in suitable formats to ensure the reader experience is uniform irrespective of where they are consuming the content.

As per a 2018 studyOpens a new window , the main driver to adopt headless CMS was the ability to centralize content management (48%), followed by flexibility (47%), and building lightweight websites (44%). Here are more benefit sof headless CMS that are making it so popular for content-dependent businesses:

• Convenient and efficient: a single CMS for all content deployment across all digital channels, versus multiple CMS instances to serve multiple channels – for example one for mobile, one for web etc.
• Optimal presentation: content once written can be automatically adapted and presented optimally on multiple publishing environments. For example, web content can be adapted for product descriptions on the mobile ecommerce app.
• More control and convenience for business users: because the front (deployment) and backend (coding) of content are separate, business users such as marketing and content managers can independently handle how their content appears on the front end, thus driving stronger UX and CX.
• Developer convenience: a headless CMS backend provides developers with high quality editing and publishing tools, as well as provides powerful APIs for them to query content and push to any format. A key benefit is not being restricted to a single language – the content can be integrated into front-end environments using any programming languages and framework. So they are not forced to use a proprietary language and can leverage any tool or framework to create content experiences across a range of front-ends. For instance, CaaS models empower developers with the added flexibility to create rich user experiences across multiple channels. As this architecture offers a single source of truth for all the content on a central repository, developers can spend more time on enriching the UX rather than managing a monolithic CMS.
• Stronger digital experiences with customer-centric content: the headless architecture guarantees shorter response times for user-centric content deployment- changes to the content need to be done only once in the centralized repository, and it gets easily and quickly updated across multiple platforms and experiences. When a different experience is needed for new devices or platforms, the existing content library can be deployed to fit new formats, without needing to re-think the existing platforms. This allows content to be more responsive and sensitive to the specific channel or device, thereby providing a more engaging user experience for the reader consuming the content.

In summary, all stakeholders: developers managing the content and the environments where they must be delivered; business users who need the right content delivered at the right time to the right audience in complex, multi-channel environments, and actual consumers of the content – the audience or customer- all benefit from the headless CMS architecture.

For the developer

• All-in solution that can simplify the effort to manage and distribute content across any front-end so they can focus on the UI/UX aspects
• Easy and quick deployment to new front-end formats
• Most efficient use of time and effort for both- mobile app developers and front-end developers
• The CaaS takes care of scalability, performance, security and availability aspects

For Business users:

When site owners need to deploy content across multiple channels such as smartphone apps, websites, or social media platforms, a headless CMS can deliver the content simultaneously to all these channels, with efficiency and speed, without the need to bake separate CMS setups for each channel.

• Focus efforts and investments on CX instead of technology
• Cross-platform content management is easy scale up and down, drives customer-centric marketing agility and optimizes operating expenses
• Enables them to deliver consistent and seamless CX across multiple touchpoints on various content delivery channels and even devices- a must-have for modern marketing use cases
• Content created once can be used across many different formats
• Minimal dependence on internal IT resources for content management
• More control over the front-end for non-technical users: a headless CMS lets business users create, manage and edit content in an intuitive UI instead of struggling with .md files and Git repos.

For audiences and customers:

• Consistent content consumption experience across all preferred channels and devices

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Who Needs CaaS and Why? CaaS Use-Cases with Examples

Content management is a growing space for businesses across industries and of all sizes. Ultimately, the kind of content management solution a business chooses depends on its unique context and requirement.

Undoubtedly, some businesses may be better served by the traditional CMS architecture – whether custom or CaaS.

For example, businesses that need a high degree of control over content management and distribution, or highly customized CMS functionalities or even advanced interactive experiences at the front end – where developing custom workflows is worth all the trouble and expense – would rather choose a custom CMS.

Those who have rather basic and simple marketing websites and are not overly dependent on providing dynamic content on multiple channels for their business would be best off choosing an off-the-shelf coupled CMS like WordPress and may not need a headless CMS at all- on cloud or otherwise.

In recent years though, several studies have shown that enterprises of all sizes and growth stages are moving to a headless CMS model, due to its inherent ability to address the scale and diversity of content needs across channels. A Contentstack blogOpens a new window reported a doubling in the rate of adoption of headless CMS in recent times, and it’s no wonder, given the inherent benefits of the model.

For example, Digital-first businesses that operate in complex multi-channel environments and want to deliver cutting edge front end experiences without overly complex backend CMS functionalities are a perfect fit for CaaS.

Businesses choosing CaaS built over a headless CMS are also typically seeking scale, speed, agility and low operating expenses on infrastructure, without compromising on rich digital experiences and customer engagement across omni-channel channels.

CaaS offers the lowest backend cost model possible today, so that makes it a good option for digital first startups that want to compete on UX and CX with a service that is unified and connected but relatively lower risk.

It is also the most cost-effective way to deliver consistent messaging across multiple customer touch points – devices or channels – with minimal amount of effort or content rework.

In summary, the primary use-case for CaaS built on headless CMS are:

1. Multi-channel marketing: When you operate in a complex multi-channel marketing environment or for any reason need to publish content across a range of publishing front-end environments- from the web to smart devices, but want to keep things simple and hassle-free at the backend, doing all that diverse publishing on diverse formats using just one content backend.
2. Dynamic content management: When you need dynamic content management (serving up personalized dynamic content to each individual user) or even for multilingual content use-cases but don’t want to invest heavily in custom-developed backend technology for it
3. When CX is the strategic priority or IT resources are stretched: When business investments are prioritized over IT spends, and managing content at the backend is primarily with the objective of delivering CX at the front end. CaaS is a content management infrastructure on the cloud and does not offer sophisticated development environments. Digital businesses that want to focus disproportionately on the customer experience (CX) at the front end instead of the technology backend would do well to consider CaaS.

Ultimately, much as CaaS or Content APIs are a boon for developers, the final proof of the pudding is to be able to deliver a great content publishing experience for marketers and a great content consumption experience for audiences.

Limitations of CaaS:

However, CaaS is not a silver bullet. It has some limitations, including:

• It is licensed software and the user has no rights to improve, change, customize or modify it in any way
• If content delivery across digital channels is a critical component of your business, you end up putting that into the hands of a third party CaaS vendor and so your business would be impacted by any adverse events in their business
• Being a generic service, customization is not possible in the administrative aspects on the backend, so users need to adjust their workflows based on the CaaS architecture frameworks.
• CaaS are built to handle the lowest common denominator of use-cases so do not look for any ground-breaking sophistication in the coding or functionality!

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Key considerations while evaluating a CaaS vendor

1. Key features of the headless CMS:

• APIs to fetch content: Deploying a CaaS infrastructure that features open, standards-based REST APIs, GraphQL, and SDKs for a flexible metadata model makes life a lot easier for developers by offering a low-code approach to address complex content needs.
• Language independent: the CaaS should allow developers freedom from frameworks, so they can build the site in any programming language or framework, on any server. It should allow distribution of the content to an unlimited number of sites or front-end environments – in JSON or RSS, as custom templates, or XML.
• Correspondence between the front (pages/ screens) and back end: is an essential feature for a headless, decoupled CMS to allow content publishers to toggle between content and screens.
• Personalization: this refers to the holistic management of all content in any format- for example, text, audio, video – in the CMS. The system should be able to deliver a personalized user experience, for example, dynamic user-based layouts for campaign landing pages or micro sites, based on the rules defined by business users for each channel or front-end screen/page.
• Testing: A/B testing and reporting to optimize content performance across apps, websites and devices.

2. Integrations : When migrating to a cloud-based CaaS model, the vendor should support easy integrations among the content and data systems through the stack, especially with related systems such as the enterprise content management (ECM) system, the digital asset management (DAM) system or the digital experience management (DXM) system.

3.Content Project Management: for improved team collaboration to organize content groups or release schedules, especially with respect to offers and time-bound content or communication for example for product launches and sales.

4. Infrastructure maintenance: the CaaS must offer high-level SLAs with scalability and global CDN to ensure the cloud infrastructure runs smoothly in the background. This lets developers focus on their projects instead of fire-fighting or operational maintenance work.

5. Cloud-native vendors: are better able to fully leverage cloud-based storage, databases, elastic scalability, dynamic pricing, and web-based services. Many vendors in the market claim to offer cloud-based services, but in reality, are merely offering a cloud-hosted version of their on-premises applications, where they may have historically excelled.

6. AI-Powered CaaS: integrating emerging technology such as AI and ML into cloud-based content management software is a great way to propel intelligent classification, recognition, and prediction capabilities for enterprises. Besides, AI-powered Content as a Service software empowers enterprises to increase their overall productivity by automating redundant, time-consuming manual processes. Advanced vendors are moving to high-value applications such as metadata extraction and enrichment. Some providers even feature zero-touch ingestion of digital assets that allow firms to create their dataset systems and use it to analyze text or tags, determine sentiment analysis, and trigger smart automation in their workflows.

7. Multi-Lingual Support: Companies targeting a global audience need a CaaS that offers multilingual support for content management. Though many vendors provide multilingual capabilities through plugins or extensions, it may be challenging to maintain as they are not actually created by the provider itself and can expose the customer’s system to malware threats or other vulnerabilities. A built-in multilingual feature offers more security and can be better maintained in terms of feature upgrades by the vendor. Features could include the ability to fully customize URLs, automatic translations for specified languages, and a robust language switcher to deliver rich user experiences.

8. Open APIs: Providing open APIs, along with a flexible content repository, equips in-house developers to build targeted apps or new experiences using the existing content. In this way, companies can create engaging content once and then repurpose or modify it to fit multiple channels from mobile apps, instant messaging, and websites to smart devices and even outdoor digital signage. Another benefit of open APIs is that companies can integrate the CaaS with their internal and external enterprise software stack to drive collaboration and interoperability. For example, integrating content management with the payment processing system in an e-commerce website can give insights into the content that closes a deal while providing rich data to analyze and gain actionable intelligence on customers’ behavior.

9. Data analysis for performance improvement: a CaaS can help track and measure content consumption in absolute numbers and also identify patterns and measure content and channel value by tracking where the APIs deliver content.

Learn More: Using CRM to Manage Your Digital Content Library

Top 20 Content As A Service (Headless CMS CaaS) Vendors for 2020

Today, smarter content management and delivery is responsible for propelling a more effective, efficient, and empowered digital experience. Let’s take a look at the top vendors offering cloud-native content management services built on headless CMS systems.

Disclaimer: This is an alphabetical listing of the top 20 CaaS Vendors – cloud-native content management services built on headless CMS systems – for the year 2020. These listings are based on publicly available information. Readers are advised to conduct their own final research so as to ensure the best fit for their unique organizational needs.

1. Agility CMS

Agility CMS is one of the fastest headless content platforms in the market. It is an open platform designed to help developers make seamless integrations with in-house as well as third-party applications.

Key Features:

• Agility CMS is language agnostic and lets developers to choose their preferred language and framework
• Cloud native architecture ensures regular monthly updates, scalable framework, and an API-first approach
• Agility CMS is deeply focused in enabling faster and seamless integrations with in-house systems as well as third-party apps.
• Built-in components for marketers such as eCommerce, website search, content management , page management and ticketing sets Agility CMS platform apart in the market

Specialization if any:

Agility CMS specializes in providing services to customers in industries such as higher education, media and entertainment and retail.

Pricing and trials:

Both free trials and demo versions of Agility CMS are available along with subscription plans that fit various budgets and needs with the Nano, Pro and Enterprise packages.

2. Bloomreach

Bloomreach is a CaaS vendor that helps companies create, measure, scale, and improve their customer experience. It’s AI-driven search and merchandising tools (brSM), next-gen content management system (brXM), and digital experience platform (brX) are among the fastest and most flexible in the market.

Key Features:

• API-first headless experience solution with intelligence-infused personalization and optimization technology to deliver relevant, contextual, and consistent content experiences
• Powerful marketing and merchant tools such as preview, in-line editing, AI-powered search, personalization, optimization, and A/B/n testing
• In-context editing to edit and preview content without leaving the page
• Intuitive, AI-powered merchandising tools to create data-driven and impactful content marketing

Specialization (if any)

Bloomreach serves companies in verticals such as retail, ecommerce, manufacturing, financial, media & entertainment, and more.

Pricing and trials:

Bloomreach’s live demo or free trial version is available for clients upon request along with premium plans that offer customized packages tailored to specific needs.

3. Butter CMS

Butter CMS is a full-fledged, true-headless CMS that provides an independent blogging platform to deliver seamless integrations with existing frameworks, websites, or apps. For marketers, Butter CMS offers a robust WYSIWYG interface that supports the production of SEO landing pages, customer case studies, company news, and more.

Key Features:

• Flexible content modeling, which makes content changes simple for editors
• Fast content update with built-in SEO, previewing, revision histories, and scheduling
• Offers a robust media library to store image, audio, or video files.
• Multisite content management, a centralized location for managing content for all of your websites and environments
• API-First CMS to edit, search, filter, sort, and paginate content

Specialization (if any):

Built mainly for developers and marketers who require content API to build customized applications, ButterCMS works efficiently and effectively with support for more than 20 modern web technologies including React.js and Gatsby.js

Pricing and trials:

Butter CMS is available as both free trials followed by monthly subscription plans for blog, startup, small business, and agency + enterprise. It also offers a free developer plan for personal non-commercial usage and trying out the platform.

4. CloudCMS

Cloud CMS is an API-first, decoupled JSON and binary content platform that features a high-performance architecture and runs in the cloud or on-premise using Docker.

Key Features:

• Git-like versioning, content modeling, and workflow management
• Single Sign On (SSO) enterprise support to help users log in using their existing business accounts
• Scheduled and automatic publishing, and deployment to other data centers such as Amazon S3 or FTP
• Pre-built integrations with Amazon Web Services, Azure Services, Google Cloud Services, Slack Integrations, and more
• RESTful APIs, GraphQL support, and robust integrations with NLP, ML, automatic translations, and more

Specialization (if any)

Cloud CMS provides an elastic headless content management solution to companies of all sizes and scale – from marketing agencies to consultancies and small businesses to enterprise accounts.

Pricing and trials:

Cloud CMS offers both- SaaS and on-premise versions of its service. Users can start with a free trial and progress to paid subscriptions, which includes a starter, business, and plus plans for small to midsize teams or multiple projects. For large companies, it features a customized, enterprise plan with unlimited projects and users.

5. Contentful

Contentful provides the infrastructure to run a wide variety of websites, applications, and devices. Built to integrate with the modern software stack, it serves as a central hub for structured content, powerful management/delivery APIs, and a customizable web app.

Key Features:

• RESTful APIs with compact JSON payloads to provide programmatic control over content management systems
• Microservices architecture to help you manage your content infrastructure to ensure a fault-tolerant service
• Advanced caching techniques are tightly integrated with external CDNs to optime speed and deliver API payloads in the sub-100 ms range
• Language and framework agnostic SDKs with most popular languages and open source components for developing custom apps, systems, and web editor interfaces

Pricing and trials:

Developers can start using the Contentful platform for free with one free micro space and SDKs for upto eight languages. For those who want to scale up their usage, the company also offers premium plans for business and enterprise usage.

6. Contentstack

Contentstack is a pure SaaS-based headless content management system that blends a robust CMS and digital experience (DXP) technology, enabling enterprises to manage content across multiple channels and create rich digital interactions.

Key Features:

• Smart and effortless collaboration with content previews, digital asset management, and versioning and rollback
• Intuitive interface optimized for no-code and low-code business users, and is presented in the best way possible for each mobile form factor
• Seamless integrations with content management tools such as marketing, headless ecommerce, and AI engines through a microservices approach
• Omnichannel content delivery through native mobile support, unified CMS services, and AR & VR ready architecture

Specializations (if any):

Renowned for securing the highest customer satisfaction in the industry, Contentstack enables organizations to accelerate their digital transformation. Its award-winning Digital Experience Platform (DXP) has especially helped sports franchises reinvent how they connect with fans, during game and beyond.

Pricing and trials:

Contentstack offers a 14 day free trial with unlimited access to all the standard and premium features, and affordable business and enterprise-class plans available post the trial period.

7. GraphCMS

GraphCMS is an API-first GraphQL-native Headless CMS built for cross-platform omnichannel content delivery. This enables enterprise teams to build a hosted GraphQL backend for their apps.

Key Features:

• Blazing fast GraphQL content API with query and mutation support
• Follows the JAMstack development approach to offer robust Javascript, APIs, and Markup functionalities
• Content Localisation according to market with full i18n support
• Interactive API Playground with built-in GraphQL API explorer
• Project backups to save all of your project’s content, structure, assets, and other data at any point

Specialization (if any):

GraphCMS delivers exceptional digital experiences to its clientele across ecommerce & retail, travel & hospitality, fintech, insurance, and media & publications industries

Pricing and trials:

GraphCMS provides a free developer plan for small-scale projects apart from premium subscription such as essential, team, growth, and custom-built enterprise plans at affordable prices.

8. Prismic

Prismic is a SaaS headless CMS that comes with a visual editor, custom type builds, multi-language support, and full revision history. Apart from facilitating native integrations with eCommerce platforms such as Shopify and Magento, Prismic offers scheduling and project management tools to drive collaboration and workflow management.

Key Features:

• Custom type builder to model content quickly
• Manage, schedule, and preview content releases
• Full revision history
• Multi-language support
• Dynamic Layouts with reusable custom components

Specializations (if any):

Prismic has a key focus on ecommerce, product campaigning, editorial websites, and more. Besides, it offers a turnkey development kit for developers in their preferred programming language or framework, thereby enabling them to convert human-readable content into machine-readable feeds and then send it across multiple websites, or apps.

Pricing and trials:

Prismic is available as free as well as paid starter, and small subscription plans for developers. For organizations, the platform is available at reasonable pricing in the form of medium, platinum, and tailored enterprise plans.

9. Zesty.io

Zesty.io is a SaaS decoupled CMS platform that is built to help companies generate views as needed and also to expose all of their content via APIs. It provides template and page building, workflow management, automated SEO, advanced SEO tools, and the ability to launch microsites and landing pages without IT involvement.

Key Features:

• Fully independent presentation layer, which can provide both text-based and media assets during the development lifecycle
• In-built responsive design framework to deploy effective mobile experiences natively
• Instant Content API that ensures the delivery of content to the mobile, app, or IoT device via JSON, HTML, RSS, XML, and more.
• A wide host of tools to support website builds and headless applications for any team.

Specialization (if any):

Zesty.io was built from the ground up to be marketer-friendly, bringing marketing leaders, content teams, and SEO strategists on the same page to drive content strategies. It also empowers developers and IT managers to be more smarter and efficient in their work.

Pricing and trials:

With flexible pricing, Zesty.io’s subscription plans include small project, business, mid-size enterprise, and custom-tailored enterprise plans to make large implementations smooth. It also offers add-on data packages to business and enterprise projects that require large data transfers as well as a free sandbox account for developers.

10. Sanity

Sanity is an open-source headless CMS, which is arguably one of the fastest, most flexible platforms for delivering content to digital devices and products. Built on JavaScript and React.js, its WYSIWYG text editor allows you to embed editable data in running text and defer Markup to render time.

Key Features:

• Extensible UI that can be enhanced with React.js and plugins from npm
• Efficient workflows for authoring, SEO, localization and content optimization
• Hosted content infrastructure with great APIs for writing, patching, and querying your data
• Secure, scalable, and GDPR compliant
• A headless CMS architecture that drives modern web frameworks data synchronization with legacy systems

Specializations (if any):

Sanity.io delivers real-time collaboration and efficient content management services to firms across a wide range of verticals such as ecommerce, digital signage, mobile application backend, prototyping and innovation, localization, and more

Pricing and trials:

Clients can start using Sanity.io’s standard version for free, upto 3 users and pay as they scale up the number of users. Similarly, the platform offers a 30-day free trial of its advanced plan for larger teams with high-volume projects, and custom-made enterprise subscription plans for users having critical line-of-business applications

11. Scrivito

Scrivito is a headless CMS that runs on AWS, JavaScript, and ReactJS. This platform is a SaaS CMS, which requires zero IT maintenance and offers flexibility, scalability, and meets the highest security standards. Scrivito comes with a built-in client-side rendering technology, CDN support, and dynamic image resizing functionalities.

Key Features:

• Highly scalable and can grow along with the project
• Offers working copies, which is a virtual snapshot of your site to help editors work independently or in collaboration
• Fast and intuitive editing through drag and drop interface and in-place editing tools.
• Always-on auto-save system on working copy
• Top class SEO tools to optimize content for various search engines

Specialization (if any):

Scrivito’s enterprise-class service scalability, reliability, and customization have secured a wide clientele spanning many bluechip companies in the manufacturing, medical technology, transportation, fintech, research, and ecommerce spaces

Pricing and trials:

Customers can request a demo or test the free trials offered by Scrivito and can then switch to any of the various individual or business-level subscription plans that best suits their requirements.

12. Storyblok

Storyblok provides a visual editor for non-technical users and allows clients to generate APIs of content to be consumed by their applications, websites, and more. In essence, Storyblok is a headless CMS service with the user experience of a page builder. This equips developers with the freedom and access to the APIs they need while giving editors a self-explaining and intuitive interface similar to what they use for content management.

Key Features:

• Visual Composer enables users to edit websites as they browse it
• Nestable content blocks make content management easy, even within complex layouts
• A robust and flexible plugin system that enables you to extend the editor with custom field types
• Customized content staging workflow for each use case.
• Track changes with unlimited version history and restore deleted items at any point in time

Pricing and trials:

Storyblok features forever free usage for one user and free trials of its premium plans, including basic, advanced, premium, and enterprise-grade schemes.

13. Cockpit

Cockpit is a free, open-source, and self-hosted headless CMS. It is a content provider rather than a website builder that serves as a backend solution to feed, store, distribute, and manage structured content that can be reused across multiple channels and devices.

Key Features:

• Quick and simple installation to kickstart your project without any hassle
• Powerful tools built around an API-first and JSON content approach
• Fast and lightweight CMS that do not need full SQL server support
• Built-in tools for markdown, assets, thumbnails, etc.
• Easily expandable to assist developers to create their own module

Specialization (if any):

Cockpit does not have any built-in editing features to adjust the presentation of content. However, it is both language and database agnostic, and offers a simple content platform to manage any structured content.

Pricing and trials: Cockpit is open-source and free to use.

14. DotCMS

DotCMS is an open-source headless CMS for managing content and content-driven sites and applications. Its a hybrid CMS that provides both traditional CMS functionality and headless content capabilities. Written in Java, dotCMS can be self-hosted or cloud-hosted.

Key features:

• Hybrid CMS that offers the freedom of a headless CMS with the full functionality of a traditional CMS
• Single-page Application (SPA) Editor for Edit Mode Anywhere
• Multilingual and multi-tenant capabilities
• Push Publishing to easily schedule and publish sites, content, and code between authoring and production environments
• Built-in multi-step workflows with features like Four Eye approval, AI translations, and third-party integrations

Specializations (if any):

dotCMS has found applications in various use cases across multiple industries such as education, food & beverages, retail, healthcare, and more.

Pricing and trials:

DotCMS offers a free edition for clients to download and use along with enterprise subscription plans too.

More vendors…..

As the headless CMS vendor landscape continues to grow and evolve in new directions, we also see the emergence of two other kinds of vendors, aside from the cloud-native headless CMS vendors listed above.

The first is industry or vertical specialist Cloud CMS vendors such as BigCommerce, Core dna and Kontent.ai that specialize in ecommerce applications and use cases. Here are a few additional details about some of these specialist vendors:

15. BigCommerce

A SaaS-based CMS, BigCommerce is laser-focused on providing efficient content management for e-commerce startups, dropshipping businesses, or established online shopping carts. It offers more than 80 responsive templates for users to build their online presence, and additional tools to further customize it using HTML and CSS to create a feature-rich UI.

16. Core dna

Core dna is a headless CMS made up of over 80 individual applications supporting digital experience management, eCommerce, portals, and intranets. With a multi-tenant and decoupled architecture, this SaaS platform features personalization, multi-site management, localization, integrations, framework agnosticism, and detailed inventory management.

17. Kontent.ai

Kontent.ai is SaaS headless CMS that empowers developers to build sites by integrating existing tools, using the languages, tools, or frameworks of their choice. Besides, it delivers a WYSIWYG editor, SDKs, secured access to APIs, and SLA-guaranteed uptime to enable collaboration, workflow management, along with offering personalization, and localization of structured content.

The second is a category of vendors that were originally traditional or coupled CMS, but have now evolved to offer Headless CMS solutions on the cloud. The more notable vendors in this group include Drupal and WordPress.

18. Drupal

One of the most popular coupled CMS solution providers in the market, Drupal also features a multisite and headless Content as a Service functionality that supports full-scale digital content lifecycle management. Drupal allows enterprises to create reusable content and customize it to deploy across multiple layouts and channels. It equips content management teams to achieve optimal responsiveness and scale up or down regardless of the organization’s size. With Drupal, users can manage the content for a range of websites or services from any location. Drupal’s open architecture and APIs ensure that developers have both the tool and frameworks at their disposal to create feature-rich UX and UI.

19 .Wordpress

As an open-source platform, WordPress offers great flexibility to create any kind of website. By using WordPress as a headless CMS, you can create the front-end of your web application using any web technology and manage its content using one of the most popular CMS software in the market. Undoubtedly, Worpress has been and remains a leader in the coupled CMS space as well.

WordPress is an ideal choice when you need to add a blog feature in an existing web app built with either React or Angular. Instead of coding the full-fledged content management system in the native framework, WordPress headless CMS helps you to manage the content using Rest API.

20 . Others

Added to this, there are also some open-source options that you can consider such as Directus, a free, headless CMS that wraps custom SQL databases with a dynamic API and provides an intuitive admin app for managing its content. Enterprises can also consider CMS platforms such as Tipe, which offers next-generation API first CMS for developers to build their own content management architecture. Alongside, there are CMS vendors who specialize in serving companies based on their size—small, mid, and large-sized. An example of this would be Siteleaf, a headless CMS that focuses on providing services to small-sized companies. Finally, large enterprise users already invested in marketing or experience clouds such as Adobe Experience Manager will find that they also typically offer CMS functionalities in the suite. Such pre-integrated modules make it convenient and easier to create, manage, test, deliver, and measure excellent content experiences and audience engagement across multiple platforms and devices. Vendors such as the California-based Sitecore also offer two major products: a powerful CMS; and a fully-adaptive Digital Marketing System (DMS) for comprehensive creation and delivery of digital experiences.

With so many headless CMS options available in the market, enterprises have a plethora of opportunities to drive their content strategies and boost audience engagement across their various touch points- including websites, mobile apps and other channels. Headless CMS is undoubtedly a boon for omni-channel marketers that want greater flexibility and responsiveness to the dynamic content needs of their markets.

Do you think the market for Content as a Service (CaaS) will grow after the outbreak? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!