What new features were introduced in the February 2021 Hygraph product update?

The February 2021 product update introduced several major features: The Management SDK is now available on the Free Forever plan, allowing users to programmatically manage content and automate schema changes; a new shared Canada cluster was launched, expanding data center region options to five and enabling users to select the region that best fits their needs for lower latency; the CMS navigation and onboarding screens received a UI facelift, making it easier to access resources and onboard new team members; support chat was moved to a more accessible location in the app interface; new and improved user guides were released, covering typical workflows and features; and under-the-hood improvements, including enhancements to the Rich Text Editor Field. For more details, see the official product update.

What is the Management SDK and how can I use it on the Free Forever plan?

The Management SDK allows users to programmatically manage content and automate schema changes in Hygraph projects. As of February 2021, it is available on the Free Forever plan, enabling teams to unlock new use cases without requiring a paid subscription. For more information and documentation, visit the Management SDK docs.

What is the new Canada shared cluster and how does it benefit users?

The new Canada shared cluster, based in Montreal, increases Hygraph's available data center regions to five. This allows users to choose the region that best fits their needs, reducing latency and improving performance for projects targeting Canadian or North American audiences. The EU region is no longer the default, making it easier to select the optimal region during project setup. For custom clusters across 70+ countries, users can contact Hygraph for more information.

What improvements were made to the Hygraph CMS navigation and onboarding experience?

The CMS navigation and onboarding screens were redesigned for a cleaner look and improved usability. The support chat icon was moved to the left side of the web app above the project avatar, making it more accessible and less intrusive. The onboarding process was streamlined, allowing teams to invite members and access resources more easily. These changes help users get up and running with Hygraph faster and more efficiently.

What under-the-hood improvements were made in this update?

The February 2021 update included design and optimization improvements, particularly to the Rich Text Editor Field, which will continue to evolve in future releases.

What are the key features and capabilities of Hygraph?

Hygraph offers a GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, and scalability. Key features include a powerful GraphQL API, integrations with popular tools (e.g., Netlify, Vercel, Shopify, AWS S3, Cloudinary), localization support, digital asset management, and robust security features. For a full list, visit the Hygraph Features page.

Does Hygraph provide an API for content management?

Yes, Hygraph provides a powerful GraphQL API for efficient content fetching and management. Learn more at the Hygraph API Reference.

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 complete list, visit the Hygraph Integrations page.

How does Hygraph ensure optimized content delivery performance?

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

What is Hygraph's pricing model?

Hygraph offers a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans. For full details, visit the Hygraph pricing page.

What security and compliance certifications does Hygraph have?

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

How does Hygraph protect sensitive data?

Hygraph provides robust 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. For more information, visit the Hygraph Security Features page.

What support is available to Hygraph customers?

Hygraph offers 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, and a community Slack channel. For more information, visit the Hygraph Contact Page.

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 use resources like the Hygraph Documentation and onboarding guides. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months. Learn more at Hygraph Documentation.

What training and technical support does Hygraph offer for onboarding?

Hygraph provides comprehensive training and technical support, including 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone, onboarding sessions for enterprise customers, video tutorials, documentation, webinars, and Customer Success Managers for expert guidance. For more details, visit the Hygraph Contact Page.

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 looking to modernize, and brands aiming to scale across geographies or improve development velocity. (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. For more, visit the Hygraph Case Studies page.

Can you share some customer success stories using Hygraph?

Yes. 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 customer stories.

Who are some of Hygraph's customers?

Notable customers include Sennheiser, Holidaycheck, Ancestry, Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Epic Games, Bandai Namco, Gamescom, Leo Vegas, and Clayton Homes. For more, visit the Hygraph Case Studies page.

What problems does Hygraph solve?

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

How does Hygraph solve these pain points?

Hygraph provides an intuitive interface for non-technical users, modernizes legacy tech stacks 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, query management, and schema evolution, and resolves cache and integration challenges. For more, visit the product page.

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

Key metrics 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.

Where can I find Hygraph's technical documentation?

Comprehensive technical documentation is available at hygraph.com/docs, covering everything you need to know about building and deploying projects with Hygraph.

What kind of content is available on the Hygraph Blog?

The Hygraph Blog features developer tutorials, product updates, essential guides to content modeling, and industry news. Visit the Hygraph Blog for the latest updates.

Product Update: February 2021

We’ve had a busy few months of development in preparation for some major new features landing over the coming weeks. 2021 is sure to be another packed year for Hygraph, and we are looking forward to keeping all of you up to date on the latest.

#TL;DR

We’ve made it easier to build projects that are optimized for performance in your region. Now, when creating a project, teams are able to choose from one of our five data center regions (hello, Canada!).
We’ve updated our main navigation in the CMS to make it easier to access the resources you need. Most importantly, we have moved our support chat icon to its new home where it doesn’t get in your way of choosing how many entries to show on content views 😉.
Our Management SDK can now be used with our Free plan!
To help you get up and running faster, we have redesigned our user guides to include more detailed “How To’s” for users' typical workflows and features. They can now be found at hygraph.com/docs/guides.
We’ve released some great blog posts that dive into content modeling best practices and localization and internationalization, along with some new content that touches on eCommerce and Fintech.

#Management SDK is now available on our Free Forever plan!

Hygraph Management

In order to make sure that more people get to see the full power of programmatically managing content, we have decided to open up our Management API and SDK to be used on our Free Forever plan! Teams will be able to programmatically make automated schema changes when using our Management SDK unlocking a whole new set of use cases!

To read more about the Management SDK, check out the docs here.

#Welcoming the new Canada shared cluster

New Canada Cluster Hygraph

We recently rolled out a shared Canada cluster, based in Montreal, available for all users - increasing your options on where to host your data to 5!

The EU region is no longer selected as a default, making it a step easier to select the region that fits your needs and gives you the lowest latency.

Need to go a step further and get a custom cluster for your own projects across 70+ countries? Let’s talk.

With Environment (1).png

Instead of a floating icon on the right side of the screen which sometimes blocked important project content, our support chat icon can now be found on the left side of the web app above the project avatar. Never fear, our support team is still only one click away, either via the app or on our Slack channel!

In addition to moving the support button, we gave our entire navigation bar and onboarding screen a bit of a facelift!

We wanted to make onboarding even easier so that your teams could get up and running with Hygraph faster than ever before. Teams can now easily invite team members with just a couple of clicks or find more resources on how to get started with Hygraph.

PS: Notice that tiny upgrade to your project icon showing you which environment you’re currently working on.

#New Guides

To help with user onboarding and giving devs who are new to Hygraph a leg up, we have just relaunched Guides for Hygraph. Some of the highlights include Working with Relations and GraphQL Union Types, Connecting your Hygraph Project to Gatsby Cloud, or Working with Hygraph Audit Logs, just to name a few.

From step-by-step approaches to how to best implement features into your project to building better workflows while using the system, the Hygraph Guides is the go-to place for all of this information.

See something missing that you'd like to know? Let us know and we'll get that guide up and running!

#New content!

Our content team has been hard at work providing content that will help you build using Hygraph best practices. We launched two new Hygraph Talks!

We dove into agencies’ role in the banking industry with our partners at Netguru.

In another talk with Commerce Layer and VWO, we discussed performance and personalization for modern eCommerce projects.

With more technical content diving into how to work with Content Views in Hygraph to a blog post describing content modeling best practices with Hygraph, there are lots of options if you want to brush up on your CMS skills.

#Under the Hood Improvements

In addition to these new features and content updates, we have made some improvements to our design and optimizations. In particular, we have made some improvements to our Rich Text Editor Field which will continue to evolve in the future!

There are tons of exciting rollouts planned for the coming weeks, so stay tuned for those!

Blog Author

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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