Traditional page builders are built for blogs and not for quick-paced publishing operations that scale wide and deliver content across channels. Traditional tools like WordPress struggle with structured content, complex editorial workflows, and multi-frontend delivery.
Modern publishing companies need a CMS that supports collaboration, reusable content, API-first delivery, and performance at scale.
This article explains why legacy and homegrown systems fall short and which modern CMSs are actually built for the publishing business.
#Different publishing sites, different needs
Publishing companies come in all shapes and sizes. Their success largely depends on setting up effective content operations. Here are some of the most common types, each with its own unique set of challenges and priorities. See which one sounds most like your team.
News sites
These sites act as digital newsstands, providing timely news, expert opinions, and information about current events in a variety of formats like articles, videos, and multimedia. Examples include BBC and The New York Times.
- real-time publishing
- high content velocity on multiple channels
- complex tagging and categorization
Research sites
Research sites like PubMed or ResearchGate are platforms for information gathering, resource sharing, and collaboration in academic and professional settings. They provide access to scholarly articles, research papers, data, statistics, and other resources.
- different content models
- versioning
- advanced search and filtering
- internal & external references and linking
- granular permissions
Insight sites
Insight sites provide valuable information and analysis in different fields, from consumer research and data-driven marketing to UX research or website tracking. Examples include TechInsights and Wynter.
- repurposable content blocks
- embeddable charts, slides, or external embeds (e.g., Tableau, Wistia)
- discoverability
- complex author attribution
- access authorization
Market intelligence sites
Market intelligence sites help businesses understand their market, customers, and competitors, so they can make better strategic decisions. Examples include Crayon, G2, and Crunchbase.
- data-driven content
- frequent updates without disruptions
- flexible schema modeling
- API-first delivery
- localization and segmentation
#Why traditional CMS doesn’t cut it
Content is the core product of any publishing business. That content is often complex, with all sorts of data points, graphics, and sensitive information. Simple page builders like WordPress or Joomla can’t meet such demands.
Here are the biggest reasons why a traditional CMS is a bad choice for publishing sites:
- Content difficult to repurpose — turning PDF publications into different asset types is difficult, often requiring double work.
- Poor content searchability — even within the PDF itself, searching with Ctrl+F leaves hundreds of pages to sift through, especially in long expert reports.
- Inefficient workflow management — relying on PDF reports leads to silos between analyst and editor teams, with a ton of manual work at every stage and poor multimedia management.
- Outdated user experience —a lagging publishing process also affects how your audiences engage with your content. Also, there’s no way to track user engagement.
Sounds familiar? Here’s an in-depth article where we explore challenges that publishing organizations face and offer solutions to overcome them.
#Why custom CMSs fail to scale
Many publishing businesses start with a homebrew CMS to stay closely aligned with internal workflows. But with time, we’ve seen a wave of news sites abandoning in-house CMSs for more agile systems that cost less to maintain and are easier to scale.
A few quick examples: Vox Media decided to ditch Chorus, its proprietary CMS, in favor of WordPress VIP. Hubbard Broadcasting, a 50-station-strong media network, also left its legacy publishing infrastructure for WordPress on Pantheon. The third example is Morning Brew, a tech media company that replaced its unscalable in-house CMS with Sanity.
This trend is worth noting, as publishing companies are increasingly weighing the hidden costs of maintaining custom CMSs against the efficiency, reliability, and ongoing innovation offered by SaaS platforms built and maintained by CMS specialists.
#Traditional vs. homebrew vs. headless CMSs for publishers
Let’s look at how the three main CMS types stack against each other from the publishers’ point of view.
| Features | Traditional CMS | Homebrew CMS | Headless CMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content reusability | Tightly coupled to templates and themes | Custom solutions possible, but hard to scale | Structured content with API-first architecture |
| Content delivery | Web-first, limited support for other channels | Web-first, custom integrations needed for other channels | Multichannel by design: web, mobile, apps, syndication |
| IT dependency / maintenance | Frequent plugin updates and server upkeep | Developers needed for (almost) everything | Managed services and clean API-driven workflows |
| Price | Low upfront, but high long-term TCO | High development cost, gets even higher over time | Scalable pricing; costs tied to usage and complexity |
| Performance | Often slower due to plugin bloat and monolithic setup | Varies — often not optimized for scale | High — frontend decoupled from CMS, fast global delivery via CDN |
| Frontend flexibility | Tightly coupled themes, limited design freedom | Customizable but tied to legacy stacks | Total freedom — any frontend or device |
Editor's Note
For those in the later stages of evaluating traditional, custom, and headless CMS platforms, our eBook offers a complete guide to finding the best-fit solution for your use case.
Download eBook: The CMS Choice: Monolith, Custom, or Headless
#Features that publishing sites really need
As we’ve seen, when you’re running a high-volume, multi-author, even multiple-market publishing operation, the wrong CMS doesn’t just slow you down. It creates bottlenecks and silos all over editorial, design, and engineering.
Here’s what your CMS should offer to help your teams create content architecture for advanced publishing that can scale without rework.
Frontend freedom
A headless CMS allows publishers to build, update, and optimize content presentation across frontends without being constrained by the CMS’s rendering layer. The ideal CMS for publishers should adapt to any device and recognize when the user is on mobile, desktop, or any other type of display.
Intuitive editorial experience
Look for a CMS that lets editors quickly recreate content from writing tools without worrying about reformatting. Other intuitive functions include tracking changes, comments, built-in spelling and grammar checkers, and media embeds.
Collaboration features
Version control, approval workflows, and role-based access ensure that your team works smoothly even in different locations. This includes everything from content assignment to editorial review and final publication.
For example, Hygraph has recently introduced Content Workflows, a set of features that allow teams to tailor content creation and approval to their unique processes, assign specific roles, automate content movement, enhance visibility and tracking, and more.
Flexible content modelling
Your CMS should let you define different content types, such as articles, videos, and podcasts. The point is that you should have the freedom to work with any type of content, define how they interact with each other, and perform as you expect. For example, many teams still rely on plugins like Yoast SEO in WordPress or seek out platforms with built-in SEO features, while a more strategic approach is to create your own SEO component tailored to your specific content structure and business goals.
Real-time updates
Your CMS should enable your team to work in real-time, feeding the latest news to your reader base. Features like life news feeds and breaking news alerts help you inform readers about the most important updates.
TechInsights, a leading tech B2B information platform, for example, uses AI-inspired publishing strategies to free authors from only hitting the “publish” button when everything is ready. Instead, they’ve built blocks to create content incrementally, cutting the time to publishing.
BioCentury, another publishing company, relies on Hygraph’s Content Federation to fetch live data from remote sources via APIs.
Find out more about the current trends that shape the future of B2B publishing content operations.
Multi-channel publishing
API-driven content delivery keeps your content served to any platform or device. Your audience gets the same experience and real-time content updates whether on a website, mobile app, smartwatch, AR, or any emerging platform.
#5 best CMSs for publishers
| Feature | Hygraph | Sanity | Brightspot | Strapi | Storyblok |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Fully hosted SaaS | Fully hosted (Sanity Studio on client infrastructure optional) | Cloud & private deployment options | Self-hosted by default (requires setup) | Fully hosted SaaS |
| Frontend flexibility | API-first, framework-agnostic | API-first, frontend agnostic | Supports headless and decoupled | Frontend-agnostic | API-first, Vue/Nuxt starter-friendly |
| Content modeling | Visual schema builder + remote fields | Code-based, real-time updates | Visual modeling + flexible schema | UI-based and code-based | Visual schema builder |
| Collaboration features | Roles, workflows, comments | Real-time collaboration, presence, revision history | Advanced editorial tools (workflows, versioning) | Basic role-based auth | Comments, roles, workflows |
| Cross-device compatible | Headless content via API | JSON-based content supports any device | Web, mobile, OTT, voice platforms | API-ready for any frontend | Works across platforms |
| Multi-channel delivery | Built-in GraphQL & REST APIs | Real-time API, integrates with CDNs | Supports multi-site, multi-format delivery | REST & GraphQL support | API-based delivery |
| Support for migration | CLI tools + APIs + partner support | CLI tools, plugins, and API access | White-glove onboarding & migration tools | Manual or custom scripts needed | Migration CLI + APIs |
1. Hygraph
Hygraph is purpose-built for structured content at scale. It combines a visual content modeler with capable GraphQL APIs, supports complex editorial workflows, and excels at multi-channel delivery. Best fit for teams that need a fully managed, frontend- and backend-agnostic platform with rich integration and migration capabilities.
Hygraph effectively allowed us to change our processes, allowing us to have authors publish directly, which was never before possible. Everything before had to go through publishing. That is speed, that is productivity.
2. Sanity
Sanity comes with great collaboration and real-time editing features, but it requires more engineering investment upfront. Great for teams that want to customize deeply and are comfortable managing their own Sanity Studio.
3. Brightspot
Brightspot supports both headless and decoupled setups, with editorial tools out of the box. It offers strong migration support and flexible deployment options, making it ideal for large enterprise publishers.
4. Strapi
Strapi offers good content modeling and API delivery but lacks native collaboration tools and out-of-the-box scalability. Suitable for teams with in-house devs who value open technology stacks.
5. Storyblok
Storyblok’s visual schema builder and live preview appeal to content teams, while APIs allow for flexible frontend development. It's a good choice for media companies with mixed technical and non-technical users.
#Wrapping up
The needs of modern publishers have outgrown traditional CMSs — whether you're managing a high-volume newsroom, a research portal, or an industry insights hub.
Headless CMSs are designed for speed, scale, and complexity, making your publishing ops future-proof.
Find out more about how Hygraph can help you build your information products smarter by federating content dynamically across sources and unifying content through metadata.