What is a composable CMS

A composable CMS is a content management system that structures content as modular blocks that can be reused on any frontend channel, and breaks up functionality into modular services so that it's easy to integrate the CMS with other systems.

The popularity of composable CMS has risen alongside the scope of digital business. As companies look to use more types of digital content, in more unique ways, across more customer touchpoints, many teams are finding out that the limitations of their legacy CMS are a big barrier to their best ideas. Moving to a modular, composable CMS gives these teams a lot more flexibility in how they structure, create, reuse, integrate, and scale their online content.

This article looks at the building blocks of a composable CMS and where it sits on the spectrum of content solutions available on the market today. From all-in-one platforms that provide prebuilt templates for simple sites, to headless CMSs built for multichannel content, to composable CMSs that evolve the headless model to support more complex business needs.

#What is composable CMS?

As an overall approach to technology, like when talking about composable commerce, composability is the idea that instead of being locked into a set of features from a single vendor suite, companies should be able to compose their own tech stack of best-of-breed tools for each part of digital. For this to work, the technologies in their stack must be adaptable and easy to integrate.

A composable CMS is the latest evolution in designing content systems to support this big-picture composable approach. When comparing common types of CMSs available on the market:

• Monolithic CMS The way most CMSs were designed in the early days of online business. Web and mobile page templates are provided out-of-the-box, and content is organized in a page-based way. The frontend and backend are managed as one big application, and features are highly dependent on each other, which makes customizations and integrations with third-party tools difficult.

• Headless CMS A backend-only solution that delivers content via APIs to any frontend channel. Content data is highly structured so that each channel can decide what data to use and how to present it. This allows teams to reuse content and more efficiently manage multichannel strategies. Headless architecture also makes it easier to integrate APIs from different systems into the frontend experience.

• Composable CMS A headless CMS that also breaks up backend functionality into microservices. Each service works independently, exposes all data via APIs, and can be updated or replaced without disrupting the others. This modularity gives teams a lot of flexibility when it comes to integrations and adapting the CMS to support complex use cases.

#Composable DXP vs monolithic CMS

Monolithic CMSs have remained popular for a reason. They provide prebuilt website templates, work out-of-the-box, and don't require a lot of technical knowledge to get started with. This makes them a really good option for personal projects and small businesses (and even some very large businesses) where all that's needed is a simple, static website.

However, as online business grows, it is less likely that all of a company's digital needs can be covered by a one-size-fits-all CMS or by any type of stand-alone platform. This is why teams are increasingly choosing to create their own digital experience platform (DXP) out of a variety of tools and services that are best fit for each need. In other words, a composable DXP.

The same architecture that makes monolithic CMSs easy to get started with is also what makes them ill-suited for this composable approach.

To be able to work out of the box, the features and templates of a monolith are designed to work together in a very specific way. This means that a small change to one part of the website or content creation process can lead to a waterfall of unexpected errors throughout the application. This makes integrations and other customizations complex, hard to scale, and often feel too risky to even try.

Some use cases simply don't need more than a monolithic CMS, but any company planning on ramping up digital business is likely to outgrow these types of solutions. Putting in a little extra effort to implement a composable CMS now can save teams a lot of time, and headaches, down the road as they expand and experiment with the digital experience.

#The building blocks of composable CMS

As composable becomes a more popular approach, it also becomes a more popular marketing term. While there are no strict criteria that software has to meet to claim it's composable, here are general areas to look at to evaluate just how well a CMS is going to support a modular, best-of-breed tech stack.

Content modeling

Instead of organizing content around specific web pages, a composable CMS structures content as modular components. These components are repeated blocks of content data such as product details, customer testimonials, author profiles, or SEO metadata. Content editors can mix and match components to create new content, and updates to components can be done globally instead of copy-and-pasting changes on individual pages.

This modular structure makes it easy to adapt content to multiple channels, unique use cases, and enrichment from third-party data. It also helps teams to efficiently create, translate, update, and reuse content.

Modular architecture

Functionality is broken up into independent services that can be updated, changed, or even replaced without disrupting other features.

For instance, you might start out using the media library that comes with the CMS and later decide to use a specialized digital asset management (DAM) tool for video content. A composable CMS lets you make this switch with a few simple API changes, instead of requiring you to refactor the entire system.

API-first design

The CMS exposes all content and data via APIs. Not only are APIs used to send data between the backend and frontend, like all headless CMSs, but backend services also communicate without one another via APIs. With everything accessible via APIs, developers can easily integrate the CMS with third party data and services.

Customization and scalability

A composable CMS lets teams design content models, user workflows, and customer experiences around the needs of the business instead of around a monolith's strict set of templates and features.

The modularity of content and functionality offers a lot of flexibility when setting up the system and, more importantly, evolving it as needs change. It also makes it easier to reuse content, and the underlying structure and logic that power that content to quickly scale to new channels and into new markets.

#Why composability is the future of content management

We recently spoke to industry leaders about the future of content in enterprise business and the technologies driving the top trends. Below is a quick look at how composability is enabling some of their key predictions. For the full insights, check out the ebook: 10 Experts Predict the Future of Content.

Digital product model

For business models like streaming services, online courses, and industry research portals the digital content is the product. When content is the bread and butter of business, companies need a CMS that is up to the task.

“With the rise of digital product models, content is increasingly becoming the actual asset that is sold to customers instead of just the marketing offered around a product. With this, we see an increased demand of handling structured content at scale similar to a database, but with CMS functionality on top. Managing content for such applications is fundamentally different to managing content for marketing websites. You wouldn’t build a service like Netflix with a visual page builder. You need the ability to handle complex schema structures, large amounts of traffic, a reliable API to handle the complex requests as well as modern content management workflows.”

Omnichannel

All composable CMSs are headless, so they can deliver content via API to any digital channel a customer might use to interact with a business. From web and mobile sites, to marketplaces and portals, to smart devices and in-store kiosks.

Technical teams have long run against the confines of monoliths and yearn for the flexibility to pair any number of frontend web and mobile applications with a unified backend data platform. Headless CMS is a critical piece in that evolution.

The flexibility of a composable CMS gives teams more control over omnichannel content than just how it looks on different devices. The ability to reuse content, define complex workflows, and customize user permissions helps global teams efficiently manage channels for multiple brands, across multiple regions, in multiple languages from one CMS.

Data-driven

As customer expectations grow, companies are tasked with using more content, more data, and more data sources to enrich and personalize the digital experience.

With its structured approach to content and ease of integration, a composable CMS can be used to create a central source of truth where teams can access and manage the content that lives in all their different systems without worrying about duplication or out-of-date information.

The harmonization aspect is crucial. It's not merely about accumulating content from different sources but ensuring coherence and consistency across the board. Harmonization helps unify content formats, languages, and structures, ensuring that regardless of the source, the information aligns and resonates with the brand's voice and values.

Adaptability

The expectations around digital experience change too fast to stick with an old school approach to business software. Where it takes months to implement a solution before even starting to see results, changes get made with one-off workarounds, and tech debt builds up for a couple of years until the software becomes a big enough barrier to change that it's time to rip-and-replace and start the cycle again.

A composable approach breaks this replatforming cycle and allows companies to continuously modernize their tech stack in small steps that quickly show benefits. With modular technologies, teams can add, remove, or replace components in their stack without having to rewire the whole system with every change. Making it easier to quickly add new features, retire obsolete tools, and pivot to new priorities as the market shifts.

Curious to learn if composable is the right move for you? Hygraph's team of solution experts have helped digital teams at companies like Samsung, Telenor, and 2U make a successful transition to composable strategies. Request a demo to learn more and see how a modern CMS could boost your business.