Frequently Asked Questions

Pricing & Plans

What is Hygraph's pricing model?

Hygraph offers a flexible pricing model that includes a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans tailored to specific business needs. For the most up-to-date details, visit the Hygraph pricing page.

Features & Capabilities

What are the key features and capabilities of Hygraph?

Hygraph provides a GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, and scalability. Key features include rapid content delivery, intuitive user interface, robust integrations, and support for modern, API-first modular architectures. These capabilities help teams build flexible, high-performing digital experiences. Learn more at the Hygraph Features page.

What integrations does Hygraph support?

Hygraph supports a wide range of integrations, including hosting and deployment (Netlify, Vercel), eCommerce (BigCommerce, commercetools, Shopify), localization (Lokalise, Crowdin, EasyTranslate, Smartling), digital asset management (Aprimo, AWS S3, Bynder, Cloudinary, Mux, Scaleflex Filerobot), personalization and AB testing (Ninetailed), artificial intelligence (AltText.ai), and more. For a full list, visit the Hygraph Integrations page.

Does Hygraph provide an API?

Yes, Hygraph offers a powerful GraphQL API for efficient content fetching and management. Detailed API documentation is available at the Hygraph API Reference.

How does Hygraph optimize content delivery performance?

Hygraph emphasizes optimized content delivery performance, which directly impacts user experience, engagement, and search engine rankings. By ensuring rapid content distribution and responsiveness, Hygraph helps reduce bounce rates and increase conversions. For more details, visit this page.

What technical documentation is available for Hygraph?

Hygraph provides comprehensive technical documentation covering all aspects of building and deploying projects. Access the documentation at Hygraph Documentation.

Use Cases & Benefits

Who can benefit from using Hygraph?

Hygraph is ideal for developers, IT decision-makers, content creators, project/program managers, agencies, solution partners, and technology partners. It is especially beneficial for modern software companies, enterprises seeking to modernize their tech stacks, and brands aiming to scale across geographies or improve development velocity. (Source: ICPVersion2_Hailey.pdf)

What business impact can customers expect from using Hygraph?

Customers can expect significant business impacts such as time savings through streamlined workflows, ease of use with an intuitive interface, faster speed-to-market for digital products, and enhanced customer experience through consistent and scalable content delivery. These benefits help businesses modernize their tech stack and achieve operational efficiency. (Source: ICPVersion2_Hailey.pdf)

What industries are represented in Hygraph's case studies?

Hygraph's case studies span industries such as food and beverage (Dr. Oetker), consumer electronics (Samsung), automotive (AutoWeb), healthcare (Vision Healthcare), travel and hospitality (HolidayCheck), media and publishing, eCommerce, SaaS (Bellhop), marketplace, education technology, and wellness and fitness. See more at the Hygraph Case Studies page.

Can you share specific customer success stories using Hygraph?

Yes. For example, Komax achieved a 3X faster time to market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement with a scalable platform, and Dr. Oetker enhanced their digital experience using MACH architecture. Explore more success stories at the Hygraph product page.

Pain Points & Solutions

What problems does Hygraph solve?

Hygraph addresses operational pains (reliance on developers for content updates, outdated tech stacks, conflicting needs from global teams, clunky content creation), financial pains (high operational costs, slow speed-to-market, expensive maintenance, limited integration, scalability challenges), and technical pains (boilerplate code, overwhelming queries, evolving schemas, cache problems, OpenID integration challenges). For more, see the Hygraph product page.

How does Hygraph solve these pain points?

Hygraph provides an intuitive interface for non-technical users, modernizes outdated systems with a GraphQL-native, API-first architecture, ensures consistent branding with content federation, and streamlines workflows to reduce costs and speed up time-to-market. It also simplifies development by reducing boilerplate code and streamlining query management. For detailed examples, visit the Hygraph product page.

What KPIs and metrics are associated with the pain points Hygraph solves?

Key KPIs include time saved on content updates, number of updates made without developer intervention, system uptime, speed of deployment, consistency in content across regions, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, ROI on CMS investment, time to market, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage. For more, see the Hygraph blog on CMS KPIs.

Do the pain points solved by Hygraph differ by user persona?

Yes. For developers, Hygraph reduces boilerplate code and streamlines query management. For content creators and project managers, it empowers non-technical users to update content independently. For business stakeholders, it reduces operational costs, supports scalability, and accelerates speed to market. See more at the Hygraph product page.

Technical Requirements & Architecture

What is a modern, API-first modular architecture and how does Hygraph support it?

A modern, API-first modular architecture allows teams to quickly build and scale digital experiences by integrating best-of-breed services via APIs. Hygraph supports this approach with its GraphQL-native platform, enabling flexible, composable tech stacks and rapid integration with other services. (Source: Architectures for Modern Websites)

What are some best practices for building a modular, API-first tech stack?

Best practices include avoiding content silos by ensuring services communicate, making redundancies intentional, balancing the number of systems to avoid bloat, and considering data privacy standards when choosing services. (Source: Architecture Best Practices)

What frontend architectures can Hygraph support?

Hygraph can support single-page applications (built with React, Angular, Vue.js), multi-page applications (using SSR frameworks like Next.js and Nuxt.js), and static site generators (such as Gatsby, Hugo, and Jekyll). (Source: CMS Myth Buster)

Security & Compliance

What security and compliance certifications does Hygraph have?

Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant. These certifications ensure high levels of data protection and security. For more details, visit the Hygraph Security Features page.

How does Hygraph ensure data security and compliance?

Hygraph provides enterprise-grade security features such as SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and sandbox environments to protect sensitive data and meet regulatory standards. (Source: Hygraph Security Features)

Support & Implementation

How easy is it to get started with Hygraph?

Hygraph is designed for easy onboarding, even for non-technical users. Customers can sign up for a free account and access resources like documentation, video tutorials, and onboarding guides. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months from the initial touchpoint. (Sources: Hygraph Documentation, Top Villas Case Study)

What support and training does Hygraph offer?

Hygraph provides 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance. All users have access to detailed documentation, video tutorials, webinars, and a community Slack channel. (Source: Hygraph Contact Page)

How does Hygraph handle maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting?

Hygraph offers 24/7 support for maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance, while all users can access documentation and the community Slack channel for additional help. (Source: Hygraph Contact Page)

Product Information

What is the primary purpose of Hygraph?

Hygraph's primary purpose is to unify data and enable content federation, allowing businesses to create impactful digital experiences. Its GraphQL-native architecture removes traditional content management pain points and offers scalability, flexibility, and efficient data querying. (Source: About Us)

Who are some of Hygraph's customers?

Hygraph is trusted by leading brands such as Sennheiser, HolidayCheck, Ancestry, Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Epic Games, Bandai Namco, Gamescom, Leo Vegas, and Clayton Homes. For more details and case studies, visit the Hygraph Case Studies page.

What is Hygraph's overarching vision and mission?

Hygraph's vision is to unify data and enable content federation, empowering businesses to create impactful digital experiences. Its mission is to remove traditional content management pain points through a GraphQL-native architecture, advancing the concept of Headless CMS. (Source: About Us)

Webinar Event: How to Avoid Personalization Tech Traps

Architectures for Modern Websites

Modern websites have come to mean much more than simple corporate landing pages. A modern, API-first modular architecture allows for teams to get up and running quickly.
Emily Nielsen

Written by Emily 

Mar 27, 2021
Modern Website Architectures

Modern websites have come to mean much more than simple corporate landing pages. A modern, API-first modular architecture allows for teams to get up and running quickly, using existing services to provide better user experiences. In the case of modern websites, this approach can be particularly useful to optimize a team’s marketing website with minimal effort and enable them to keep their focus on their core business.


In breaking down the monolith, teams are able to work more flexibly and quickly adapt to changes in their scope or product offering quickly. Teams can take a DIY approach by building a custom tech stack without building all of the services in-house. Teams take advantage of having a custom tech stack without having to worry about each system’s maintenance, vendor lock-in, or whether or not their system will scale.

Modern websites consider user experience every step of the way and it is essential that the tech stacks used work together to create a highly performant, fluid user experience. As user-generated content begins to define the modern web experience, building a tech stack that is flexible enough to incorporate these needs seamlessly is critical. As teams begin to search for tools to build their modular, API-first tech stack, it can be a daunting task. That’s why we have created some high-level architectures to give you a place to start and serve as a guide for building an optimized modular tech stack.

#Architecture

Modern Websites Architecture

#Architecture Breakdown

Authentication/Authorization

Authentication and Authorization software center around confirming the identity of users and ensuring that only the correct people have access to the system. Systems such as Okta and Onelogin are popular choices for handling authentication and authorization.

Global Cache

Global caching improves performance by storing copies of files or data in regions that are globally distributed. Future requests of the same data are pulled from the region closest to the request enabling the data to load more quickly. This can be particularly helpful for content that is accessed repeatedly. Cloudflare is a popular option due to its robust network of data centers.

CDN

A content delivery network (CDN) is a globally distributed group of servers that allow for quick transfer of assets. CDNs reduce hosting bandwidth and can improve security by pulling content closer to website visitors.

Analytics

Analytics is a broad category of tools that are critical for having oversight on the performance of a website. These tools can be essential for ensuring the health of a website and can give an overview of the status of various pages and services. Popular tools such as Google Analytics give users insights into page speed, traffic, errors, and more. Analytics tools can be useful for planning based on concrete information such as user engagement.

Asset Management

Asset Management tools make it easy to upload, transform, manipulate assets for your website or digital project. These services give users more control over their assets, a critical component of any modern digital project. Popular tools for asset management include Filestack and Fastly.

Personalization

Personalization tools allow teams to test and iterate content, easily. They make it easy for teams to understand how different content (such as wording, case studies, assets, or even user journeys) performs relative to one another. These tools serve multiple variations of content and collect data on the performance. Tools such as Optimizely and Dynamic Yield are popular options for A/B Testing and Personalization.

Localization and Translation

Localization and translation services help digital products serve the needs of a globalized user base. These tools range in their specific product offering; however, they either allow for easy translation or localization of content. This can be particularly helpful if localization is being outsourced or are looking to use an AI translation tool.

API-first Services

API-first services is a general way to describe how easy it is to connect using case-specific services that have an API. With Hygraph these services can be connected in a variety of ways, including via content federation or using the Mutations API. API-first services make it easy for teams to create their ideal tech stacks without having to build them themselves from scratch.

Explore a wider range of such best-of-breed services that compose better stacks on Build Your DXP.

#Architecture Best Practices

In order to get the most out of your modular, API-first tech stack, there are some critical best practices that should be considered.

Avoid content silos

Services must easily communicate to one another to ensure that content does get stuck in a single system. While it may be a good idea for data to have a single home where it can be manipulated, it should still be distributed to the necessary systems to keep architectures tidy and data current.

Ensure the redundancies are intentional

While it may be the case that you want to build some redundancies into your tech stack for extra security, it is important to make sure that they serve a real purpose. Creating too many redundancies or unnecessary ones can lead to a bloated tech stack rather than an agile, flexible system.

Strike the balance of how many systems to use

One of the best things about a modular tech stack is that it is easy to add and remove services as the needs of the team change. It may take some refinement over time but it is important to ensure that business needs are met but that not too many different services are implemented that the architecture becomes bloated or content silos are formed. Decentralizing various components can be the key to high performance but only when used wisely.


Consider data privacy standards when choosing services

Data privacy varies wildly from region to region and it is important to consider how various services will handle data. For example, the EU has much stricter data privacy laws than other countries. Ensuring that data is stored in the regions that match your standards can be a key consideration when choosing your tech stack.

Explore the complete Architecture Series

Blog Author

Emily Nielsen

Emily Nielsen

Emily manages content and SEO at Hygraph. In her free time, she's a restaurant lover and oat milk skeptic.

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