Comparing Headless CMS vs Traditional CMS

Introduction

A Content Management System (CMS) is an application or software used to manage content without the need for technical knowledge. Multiple people can manage and update content at the same time according to their roles. CMS can deliver content to websites, mobile apps, and other platforms.

Understanding Traditional CMS

Definition

A traditional CMS manages the entire content of your application such as backend and frontend. In simple language, traditional CMS provides a full-stack solution for your application. It provides a dashboard where users can add, edit and delete data according to their roles. All types of traditional CMS have an admin who can manage overall software.

How it works | Monolithic Architecture

Traditional CMS has an admin panel or dashboard where users can add or edit their content which will be saved in the database. There are multiple states of created content like draft and published. For showing the content on the front end, multiple themes or templates are available that define the application layout. Users can choose any of them according to their requirements and build layouts using external plugins but it requires technical knowledge

Content Delivery

When a user requests to CMS, the server-side logic processes the request and retrieves the necessary content from the database. Then the server-side script combines content with the relevant templates to layout like HTML pages and send it to the server of the user’s device like browser.

Popular Platforms

WordPress (Popular for blogging), Drupal, Magento (Popular for e-commerce), and Sitecore.

Understanding Headless CMS

Definition & Core Principles

Headless CMS is a content delivery platform which means headless CMS is a backend-only web platform where you can manage the data only and need to use a standalone front-end application that can use headless CMS data using SDK or API.

How it works

In headless CMS, we need to create our backend architecture like schema, collections or tables. Additionally, we need to create relations between them. We need a frontend application to consume the data from the headless CMS.

Popular Platforms

Sanity , Strapi, Storyblok.

Benefits of Traditional CMS

The main benefit of traditional CMS is that it provides back-end and front-end at the same platform so does not need to worry about creating a different front-end application. Tradition CMS provides themes for the presentation layer, you can choose or purchase a theme according to your requirements. You can easily create e-commerce platforms using traditional CMS by using plugins. It is a cost-effective CMS. It provides a pre-built architecture for most of the things like it has a built-in user management system in place and built-in category management.

Benefits of Headless CMS

There are lots of benefits to using headless like providing a better developer experience, version control, and content reusability.

Flexibility

Headless CMS allows freedom to deliver content across multiple channels such as websites, mobile apps, and IoT devices using APIs. It allows you to choose any front-end platform like React, Angular, or Vue.js.

Scalability and Performance

It serves data through API which reduces server load and improves response time. It also provides an option to deliver data through CDNs (Content Delivery Networks). It is easily scalable to handle high traffic and large amounts of data.

SEO

You can create metadata easily for the application by defining a separate schema for that and relate it with the required part of the application.

Security

With no front-end, it minimised the risk of exploiting vulnerabilities in CMS.

Challenges of Traditional CMS

1. Traditional CMS platforms require time and effort to set up and configure. Users have an understanding of server environments, databases, and other CMS configurations. Non-technical users may face challenges in using it.
2. Users can face performance issues in traditional CMS to handle large traffic and complex functionalities. To resolve this issue it is required to use costly infrastructure.
3. SEO limitations in traditional CMS, to improve SEO performance it requires additional plugins and customization.
4. Traditional CMS requires timely updates and backups. Sometimes updating to a new version can be problematic in traditional CMS.

Challenges of Headless CMS

1. The setup of a headless CMS can be more complex compared to a traditional CMS. It requires setting up a content repository and integrating it with front-end frameworks. Implementing a headless CMS requires advanced technical skills, like API integration and front-end development. This can be a barrier for non-technical users or smaller teams without dedicated development resources.
2. Users can face preview changes in real-time in headless CMS. This can complicate the workflow for content creators who need to see how their content will appear on the front end.
3. It requires expertise to create content models, schema, and relationships in headless CMS.
4. There are some more challenges like cost, user experience for non-developers, and performance.

Future Trends and Innovations

Future trends and innovations in the CMS are to address the above challenges and enhance the capabilities of both traditional and headless CMS. Key trends include the integration of AI and machine learning for personalisation and content automation, the adoption of headless and hybrid architectures for increased flexibility, and the move towards API first and microservices-based systems for better scalability and integration. Enhanced security measures, omnichannel content delivery, and the rise of no-code/low-code platforms are also key in making CMS more accessible and robust.

Conclusion

In conclusion, We have seen both CMSs have their advantages and challenges and in this digital transformation era we should use CMSs that can easily adapt to the latest technologies and trends like AI. Incerro provides headless development services. Get in touch to transform your business.