Choosing a headless CMS is only half the decision. The agency that models your content, builds your frontend and hands it over to your editors shapes how well the whole thing works for years.

In this guide, we look at nine headless CMS agencies we've seen do strong work: FocusReactive, oddEVEN, Turbine Kreuzberg, neteleven, Elegant Seagulls, Cheesecake Labs, Umain, AKQA and Code. It isn't a complete list of every good agency out there, and you'll find more in our partner directory.

#What we see from the platform side

As a CMS vendor, we sit in an unusual spot. We see a lot of headless projects from the inside: the content models, the permissions, the support tickets and the moment editors log in for the first time. A few patterns show up again and again.

The content model comes first

The projects that go smoothly usually start with a content modeling workshop. When an agency models content around pages, every new channel or market turns into a rebuild. When it models content as structured, reusable data, the same content can feed a website, an app, a customer portal or an AI assistant without starting over.

Editors are part of the build

A headless setup can be fast and flexible for developers and still miserable for the people who use it every day. Good agencies bring editors’ perspective into the process early, build previews they actually trust, and leave a team that can work without filing a ticket for every change.

Governance is set up before launch

Roles, permissions and review workflows are easy to postpone and painful to retrofit, especially once several teams, markets or brands share one platform. The best agencies treat them as part of the architecture.

When these three things are in place, the results show. When Komax Group replatformed off Sitecore with oddEVEN, its team started building pages two to three times faster than before.

#What a headless CMS development company does

A headless CMS development company designs, builds and maintains digital experiences on a headless CMS, where content is stored as structured data and delivered through APIs instead of tied to one website. Most cover five areas:

• Content modeling: defining content types, fields and relationships so content can be reused across channels.
• Frontend development: building the website or app, usually with a framework like Next.js or Nuxt.
• Integrations: connecting the CMS to commerce, search, PIM, CRM and analytics tools.
• Migration: moving content, URLs and redirects off a legacy CMS without losing traffic.
• Enablement and support: training editors, documenting the setup and improving it after launch.

#How to choose a headless CMS agency

Start with your project’s needs. A brand-led marketing site, a B2B commerce platform and a mobile app need very different partners. Then look for these signals.

• Experience across several CMSs. Agencies that work with more than one platform can tell you honestly where each one fits, and they're less likely to bend your project to suit the only tool they know.
• Content modeling depth. Ask to see a content model from a past project, not just the finished website.
• Migration track record. Ask how they handled redirects, SEO and content cleanup last time, and what went wrong.
• Editor handover. Ask who trains your team and what happens in the first three months after launch.
• Governance. Ask how they set up roles, workflows and environments when several teams share the platform.
• AI readiness. Ask how they structure content so AI tools and agents can use it safely. More on that below.

Red flags: a proposal that starts with page designs instead of content, no named production projects, vague answers about who owns the build after launch, and a fixed price before anyone has looked at your existing content.

#9 headless CMS development agencies in 2026

1. FocusReactive: best for complex multi-site architecture and composable commerce

FocusReactive is an engineering-led headless CMS agency founded in 2019, with a core team of about 20 engineers across London, Amsterdam, Warsaw, New York and Toronto. It's vendor-agnostic and works across Hygraph, Sanity, Storyblok, Contentful, Payload and others, mostly with Next.js on the frontend.

What stands out is how it handles sites that span many countries, languages and teams. For eSIM provider Firsty, it moved more than 190 country pages from Webflow to a headless setup with AI-assisted translation into six languages. AI crawlability and structured data are part of every project, which matters more now that AI assistants read your site too.

2. oddEVEN: best for Swiss enterprise platforms

oddEVEN is a Zurich-based team whose founders have been building digital platforms since 2002. It covers architecture and technology selection, coaching, and building and running platforms for marketing, self-service, eCommerce and industrial IoT.

It's a strong fit for industrial and enterprise companies that need one connected experience across a website, a customer portal and product data. Its work for Komax Group brought product data, the myKomax portal and spare parts together on a headless stack. Other clients include Zurich Insurance and BioCat.

3. Turbine Kreuzberg: best for B2B commerce and marketplaces

Turbine Kreuzberg has been building software since 1997, with hubs in Berlin and Faro and a fully remote team. Its focus is digital commerce, data and AI, and cybersecurity, and it was the first Spryker implementation partner.

It shines on complex commerce: HORNBACH's move from SAP Hybris to a headless Spryker setup across nine markets, and the Swiss B2B marketplace Mercanto. Pairing commerce engines with headless CMSs is part of its toolkit, so content teams aren't stuck inside the shop system.

4. neteleven: best for content-rich commerce in DACH

neteleven is a Munich-based agency covering DXP and CMS, B2B and B2C commerce, search and customer service, from strategy through to operations.

Its sweet spot is brands where content and commerce have to work as one. For BSH, the home appliance group behind Bosch and Siemens with 11 brands in more than 80 countries, it helped move from a monolith to microservices with a headless CMS, commercetools and new search. neteleven is clear that AI initiatives depend on a structured, reusable content foundation, which is exactly the right starting point.

5. Elegant Seagulls: best for brand-led web design

Elegant Seagulls is an award-winning creative and brand agency from Marquette, Michigan, founded in 2006. It handles strategy, branding, design and development, including headless builds.

Choose it when the look and feel of your site is the product. For Audible, it built an interactive 3D gifting quiz with a headless CMS behind it, so the team can change content without a rebuild. Recurly and Lionsgate are among its other clients, and its stance on AI is refreshingly human: AI supports the creative work, and people make the call.

6. Cheesecake Labs: best for web and mobile apps

Cheesecake Labs is a product engineering company founded in 2013, with offices in San Francisco and Florianópolis and more than 300 products shipped. It covers product engineering, application modernization, data and AI implementation.

It's the right partner when your headless CMS powers apps as much as websites. For veterinary pharmacy Wedgewood, it moved the site to a headless CMS with Next.js. On AI, it's further along than most: for fintech platform Knapsack, it built an AI agent platform with more than 20 custom MCP connectors.

7. Umain (Eidra): best for digital product strategy

Umain was founded in Stockholm in 2001 and has more than 100 designers, engineers and product thinkers across Stockholm, Oslo, London and Chicago. It's part of Eidra, a collective of 17 companies and about 1,500 people.

Umain shapes, ships and scales digital products across apps, commerce and websites, for brands like Polestar, Spotify, Volvo and Telia. It's a good fit when the headless build is one part of a bigger product strategy, and its AI engineering team builds production-ready agents that work across internal systems.

8. AKQA: best for global brand experiences

AKQA is a design and innovation agency with 30 years of history and more than 30 studios worldwide, and part of WPP. It works across brand, intelligence, digital surfaces and experiences, and has won Cannes Lions Agency of the Year and an Apple Design Award.

It's built for global brands with many markets to serve. With Dr. Oetker, it rolled out a composable platform for brands in more than 40 countries. Its rebuild of the UPS mobile app reached 2.5 million first-time downloads in six months.

9. Code: best for customer experience and optimization

Code, formerly Code Computerlove, is a Manchester-based customer experience, innovation and AI agency founded in 1999 and part of WPP since 2017. It works across Hygraph, Contentful, Storyblok and DatoCMS.

Code is strongest when the goal is a measurably better customer journey. For The Crown Estate, it merged more than 12 legacy sites onto one headless CMS, and for Bruntwood it replaced a sprawl of microsites with a single design-system-led site. Its AI team builds MCP servers that open internal systems up to AI tools.

#The AI era raises the bar for agencies

A few years ago, a good headless build meant a fast website and a CMS your editors liked. Now there's a new reader: AI. Search engines summarize your pages, assistants answer questions about your products, and AI agents start to act on your content.

As we like to say, AI doesn't need better prompts. It needs better context. That context comes from the content model, so the agency decisions above matter even more:

• Structured content AI can use. Clear fields, types and relationships give AI tools meaning to work with, instead of a wall of HTML to guess from.
• MCP and AI-assisted editing. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets AI assistants read and update content in your CMS. Several agencies on this list already build MCP servers and connectors.
• Human-first governance. AI can draft, translate and update content at scale, but people stay in control through roles, review workflows and approvals.

When you talk to agencies, ask how they'd structure your content for AI, how they'd connect AI tools to your CMS, and how editors keep the final say.

#In-house team or web agency?

You might not need an agency at all. If you have experienced frontend developers, a fairly simple content model and time to learn, an in-house build can work well. Whoever delivers the project, though, needs real experience with headless and composable architecture, and needs to know how to model schemas. That’s the part that’s hardest to fix later.

An agency earns its fee when you’re migrating off a legacy CMS, serving several markets or brands, connecting commerce and other systems, or working to a fixed launch date. Agencies have seen a wide range of projects and scenarios, so you’re buying that experience along with the build. It usually means a faster launch and fewer surprises along the way.

Getting the setup right from day one also pays off for years in performance and flexibility. Saving on the foundation tends to cost you twice: once for the first build, and again for the rebuild. Many teams split the work: an agency sets up the architecture and content model, then the in-house team takes over.

#Find the right partner for your project

The right headless CMS agency depends on what you're building. Start with your content, use the questions above, and talk to two or three agencies that fit your project type.

Want more options? Browse our partner directory to find agencies that build on Hygraph, by region and expertise.