Headless CMS behind the sales pitch

If you are considering a headless CMS, does it seem like there are only sunshine and rainbows on the modern technology stack? Perhaps you're more practical and realize there will be hiccups when implementing the new CMS, but you don't know exactly what it looks like from the other side.

Here's what we'll discuss today: since we do marketing for ourselves, we know how to make the product look tempting, but very few warn buyers about hidden costs, potential complexities, and whether a headless CMS is even the right solution for them. Lacking this knowledge can lead to unsatisfied customers, create myths about CMSs, and make tech leaders believe that a headless CMS is not worth the investment, which is something we want to avoid.

To begin with, let's examine what lies behind the "headless CMS pitch".

#Potential complexities and hidden costs of a headless CMS

1. Learning curve

Let’s be fair. There is a learning curve when starting everything. The difference with a headless CMS is that the name and entire idea might intimidate users from the start. It’s true that marketers and developers need to overcome some learning curves as they adjust to different workflows, content models, and APIs. If the headless CMS lacks a WYSIWYG editor or drag-and-drop features, it will frustrate non-technical users.

However, we need to acknowledge that a headless CMS is more powerful at structuring content. When modeled correctly, it can retrieve content as data, eliminating the need to work back and forth through the CMS repeatedly.

Headless CMSs allow you to manage content models like a blank canvas. Depending on how you structure the schema, you will need to share knowledge across your team. This means internal documentation is essential, and it's more complex than traditional content models like WordPress (however, WordPress content models are designed for only one use case). Nevertheless, once you overcome the learning curve, it will benefit both editors and developers and improve efficiency.

2. Content modeling

Content modeling is one of the most critical mind shifts when migrating between CMSs. The way it’s set up can make or break your CMS experience.

Some CMSs provide a predefined schema or push you to model content using a page-based mentality, so your needs must be adapted to fit it. Other CMSs allow flexible content modeling, but making structures too complex and exceeding requirements is still possible. Setting up an efficient schema ensures both developer and editorial productivity.

Content models must facilitate developers' query writing while making editors' UI browsing easy. Furthermore, overly complex or poorly designed content models may impact APIs, leading to the creation of unnecessarily complex queries. To overcome this challenge, we recommend you spend some time learning about content modeling and carefully read through all relevant documentation from the CMS you are migrating to.

3. Content delivery

You'll find it easier if you've never used a traditional CMS before or you're moving from one headless CMS to another. In contrast, users accustomed to monolithic content delivery need to come to terms with headless architecture.

A traditional CMS combines content creation, storage, and presentation layers into a single system. When a user requests a page, the CMS generates and delivers fully rendered HTML directly to the user’s browser, often including both the content and its presentation in one package.

A headless CMS only handles content creation and storage, and content is delivered through APIs (like RESTful or GraphQL). These APIs allow the frontend to request content as needed without dictating how it will be displayed. Since the content is in raw format, it can be rendered and styled with any frontend framework. This means developers have complete control over the user experience and the technology they choose. It's a great trait, but it can be difficult to adapt to and build from scratch.

4. API design

By now, you probably understand how vital an API is to a headless CMS. Typically, you'll find two APIs on the market: REST and GraphQL. This is something to be considered when evaluating the CMS. You want something that fits either your current tech stack or the aspirational tech stack.

If you choose to adopt GraphQL, Hygraph's GraphQL API design is intuitive and doesn't follow the relay spec, making it readable and approachable for developers without a GraphQL background. In addition, Hygraph offers a Remote Source feature that can help you plug any REST or GraphQL API and then consume this data from Hygraph's GraphQL API.

You should also evaluate how well the CMS's API integrates with the frontend. A robust API should offer seamless integration with popular frontend frameworks and libraries so you can build dynamic user interfaces without compatibility issues. To do that, you need a flexible and developer-friendly API to facilitate smoother workflows and enhance the scalability of your digital projects.

5. Adapt to the new workflow

Moving to headless is all about a mind shift. It can seem intimidating to move from a CMS with page-building capabilities to a headless one where the concept is still abstract. However, headless' modular approach allows the creation of predefined and reusable components mapped between the CMS and your frontend. These components can be building blocks to generate dynamic content creation forms that improve efficiency.

Editors are unlikely to make new content requests every day. Instead, they need to have a thorough onboarding session to familiarize themselves with the headless CMS and talk to developers about how they envision the content so they can build models initially.

6. Hidden costs

• Cloud vs. self-hosting: When choosing the way to host, beware of the different costs it incurs for you. With cloud, you pay for the hosting but don’t have to worry about any updates, infrastructure scaling, etc., and you will receive ongoing support from the vendor. On the other hand, you don’t need to pay for self-hosting, but you need a specialist/team to maintain the infrastructure.
• Custom development: Depending on your team size, if you decide to go the modern way but don’t have enough resources to build the whole website and architecture, you will need to work with external developers or digital agencies.
• API usage: Having decided to go headless, you probably leverage APIs across your stack. Beware that using third-party APIs can cost extra. A static website, on the other hand, will be hitting the API less frequently, thereby resulting in lower costs.
• Integrations: Another perk of going API-first is picking the best-of-breed integrations instead of paying for a whole suite like Sitecore. However, you must plan your budget beforehand since you will work with a pay-as-you-go model. Hygraph, for example, is a composable CMS that allows seamless integration. There are 3 ways to integrate with Hygraph:
  
  • Webhooks: To send information or trigger actions to a specified endpoint when certain events happen in your project.
  • App Framework: To customize the UI of Hygraph and bring in third-party services or custom integrations tailored to specific needs.
  • Remote Sources: If you don’t want to build a service or store data in your own stack, Remote Sources allow you to fetch data from external sources. This Content Federation utility enables teams to add content from other systems and sources to the Hygraph API without migrating content. This allows you to enrich your content entries or fetch third-party data from your Hygraph GraphQL endpoint, using only one API endpoint on your frontend.

7. Content complexity

Every headless CMS has its own pricing model, and a CMS is a commodity whose price varies greatly based on your specific needs. Comparing CMSs' self-service models before asking for a tailor-made demo won't tell you what you'll pay later. We’ve compiled the 7 most critical questions when evaluating CMS pricing. You can write them down and discuss them over your demo call.

• Approximate number of users / content editors
• Approximate number of content entries
• How often do you plan to update your content?
• How often do you plan to introduce new content?
• Approximate number of channels you will deliver to
• Number of languages in which your content will be delivered
• Approximate number of content models and components
• Average fields per content model
• Number of environments

8. Implementation complexities

Let’s examine the potential challenges behind your CMS implementation. To do that, let’s divide the implementation into 3 cases.

• Starting from scratch
  
  • Initial setup: Starting from scratch requires extensive development time.
  • API management: Design, develop, and manage API integrations between the CMS and your frontend.
  • Designing the frontend: A headless CMS doesn’t provide frontend out of the box. You need to create it from scratch, often involving in-house development or an agency to help with that.
• Moving from a monolithic to a headless CMS
  
  • Content migration: Labor-intensive work, requires thorough content mapping and structure design. Possible data and content reformat needed.
  • Breaking the monolith: Re-architect your stack, allocate the intertwined parts of your architecture now to a headless one.
  • Adapting to a new tech-stack: Including the new framework, API integration, hosting platform, and more.
• Moving from a headless CMS to another CMS
  
  • Data and API compatibility: Between different headless CMSs, APIs, content models, and data structures may differ significantly. However, given the flexibility of content modeling with few adaptations, you might be able to easily migrate your content.
  • Rebuilding frontend integrations: Different headless CMSs may have different ways of handling content delivery. This might be a problem only if you are moving from using REST API to GraphQL or vice-versa, but if, for instance, you are moving from GraphQL to GraphQL changes to your codebase could be minor.

#When to use a headless CMS

While the “what, why, how” of headless CMS suggests many possible reasons to choose or not choose it, there’s no standard answer, as every project has unique needs. In the second part of this article, we will discuss whether a headless CMS is for you by reviewing your website and technical requirements.

You should definitely use a headless CMS if:

Creating valuable content efficiently is at the core of your business

Unsurprisingly, we recommend using a headless CMS if your content is regularly added to or updated. While a traditional CMS also does the job, the level of efficiency and scalability is unparalleled. A headless CMS stores content as data and delivers it to different channels via API. Often, you only need to make changes once, and they're reflected elsewhere, saving you time and energy.

It’s even more beneficial if you have a big team. Traditional CMS users often experience development dependency. Not only are developers distracted by developing marketing-requested features, but content creation is also slowed down. With a headless CMS, developers can build predefined content models and components so content creators can create or reuse content from existing systems.

You should definitely use a headless CMS if your content is a commodity by itself, in which case your audience relies on your content to be educated, informed, or entertained. For example, you are a publishing platform, a streaming website, or a knowledge base. A headless architecture decouples the frontend from the backend, increasing the flexibility, richness, and security of your content.

Typical use cases include but are not limited to:

Product catalogs

Product catalogs are fundamental in buyers’ consideration stage since they connect buyers with product details like specs, pricing, availability. Sellers face growing pressure not just to digitize catalogs, but also to offer engaging, user-friendly experiences. PDFs won’t do the job as they complicate product information management. Headless CMSs store content as data, making product information easily reusable and allow sellers to create unique digital experiences.

The Komax Group uses Hygraph for their website which includes product catalogs and a customer portal. The headless setup is flexible enough to develop the website for new use cases without breaking the system, and the product catalogs are powered with structured content so they can be easily managed and retrieved anywhere necessary.

Information platform

Information publishers like intelligence, insights, and research companies deal with tremendous data points and industry insights. Their challenge grows when they need to publish information timely. This raises the bar for the CMSs they use, and PDF reports can’t be iterated quickly. Headless CMSs break down the constraint by letting you define your own schema, making content models that cater to your unique requirements. Modular content components remove the pain of siloed content, allowing you change content in one place and reflect it everywhere it appears.

TechInsights is the most trusted and authoritative semiconductor information platform. They use Hygraph to publish the latest information. Prior to adopting a headless CMS, TechInsights published reports in lengthy PDFs that included heavy text blocks, charts, videos, and images. With Hygraph, they have created content models for each type of content, enabling them to pull in the content where needed and publish reports progressively.

Your content modeling needs are complex and unique

If you use a monolithic CMS, take WordPress as example, it’s opinonated as a ‘blog engine’. If you want to use it for anything else, you need to make a lot of adjustments and it’s not really scalable unless you keep it on the ‘publishing’ level. Nothing out-of-the-box matches your requirements, and you need to build content models and components by yourself.

Headless CMSs offer flexible content modeling. We compared it to a blank canvas earlier in the article. That’s because developers can define flexible and reusable content structures from the ground up. This facilitates query writing and scaling content in the organization. Their highly customizable, modular structures enable easy adaptation to specific workflows and flexibility to deliver content seamlessly across various platforms and devices.

Rich-media products

Traditional CMSs fail at delivering rich-media platforms because they tightly couple content with presentation, making it difficult to structure, deliver, and scale assets like video across multiple frontends. This slows development and limits flexibility. Headless CMSs allow you source content from diverse sources and customize metadata with structured content for discoverability.

The Norwegian telecommunication giant Telenor uses Hygraph for its streaming platform. The no-code schema editor made it easy for team members to make changes without touching the codebase, even as the project evolves. Hygraph’s native GraphQL API also supports the sustained high performance necessary for Telenor’s project of approximately 100 messages per second.

A unique design is needed to display your content

There are 2 problems that come with designing frontend for websites. One is that you create a custom frontend, but you are tied to the platform’s structure and template system. You can also use templates provided by the CMS, but risk losing your brand identity by looking like other websites using the same template.

Content and design are interdependent and enhance each other’s impact. It comes naturally that you want a good design to display your content, and there’s nothing like designing your own frontend without constraints with a headless CMS.

Marketing websites with structured content

Marketing websites play an important role in buyers’ journey and they should deliver standout digital experiences. That’s why many brands double down on unique digital offer and compelling content. Structured content has become the secret weapon for brands to scale content efficiently.

HolidayCheck is the largest hotel review and booking portal in the German-speaking area. Its information-rich content has always been the cornerstone of the brand. It publishes listicle articles about travel destinations followed by accommodation suggestions. Because of this format, same content might be used across different articles. With Hygraph’s modular components, HolidayCheck can easily pull in content blocks where needed without duplicating the effort. HolidayCheck now reports an impressive 125% increase on the magazine traffic, underlining the impact of its content strategy.

You want to deliver an omnichannel experience but keep a source of truth

A headless CMS becomes increasingly important in a world where the omnichannel experience is at the forefront of modern digital experiences, especially on a global scale. As you can deliver to multiple platforms via API, you must have a single source of truth to ensure data integrity.

The headless architecture retrieves content from the backend and delivers it via API, cross-platform, allowing you to control how and where content is delivered.

Websites that offer omnichannel experience

It’s the omnichannel era where 73% of consumers are channel-agnostic. Brands are under pressure to deliver seamless, consistent experiences. This is a perfect use case for API-first, headless CMSs since their nature is to deliver content via API.

Samsung Electronics Germany(SEG) has its Members’ Program for smartphone users since long ago. Its mission now, however, is to expand the program to reach all of its customers. SEG turned the mobile-first program into an omnichannel customer portal with the help of Hygraph. Its customers now can access the program from any device and enjoy the same perks.

You want to choose your technology and remain agile in your process

A headless CMS doesn't restrict you to a specific technology (PHP in the case of WordPress), pre-defined templates, and themes. You won’t need added functionality to push content to multiple platforms. So you and your team are free to build projects with preferred options like having a CMS for React, Angular, Vue, and so on.

The API-first approach also means that you can choose the best-of-breed integrations that work for you, ensuring you remain agile in your process.

Digital experience catalog

To retain customers, brands are investing in diverse loyalty initiatives and content-rich digital offerings. To deliver delightful digital experiences, brands are adopting state-of-the-art technologies to stay ahead.

Dr. Oetker, one of Germany’s largest food companies, operates multiple Food and Beverage brands across the globe. It engages with its customers with a recipe catalog built around its product lineup. Managing a project across 40 markets and 100 users requires a scalable, state-of-the-art headless platform — which is why they chose Hygraph. Now, Dr. Oetker manages its global brand infrastructure seamlessly through a centralized system powered by Hygraph.

#When not to use a headless CMS

You don't have sufficient development resources

Yet another reason why users initially chose traditional CMS. If you lack development and design resources, a template can get you started more easily.

Drag-and-drop page building is a requirement

A headless CMS might not be the best choice if your team prefers to build page content with drag-and-drop. You can choose from a wide range of traditional CMSs with mature systems and a visually appealing process for building pages.

Speed and scalability are not important factors for your projects

It’s not worth the initial investment for simple or small-scale websites to opt for a headless CMS. You can do the same job with any CMS as you prefer.

#Why Hygraph excels at what it does best

• Flexible content modeling: Hygraph’s visual schema builder, modular components, and powerful content relationships allow teams to model even complex content structures without writing code. Developers and editors can collaborate without compromise.
• GraphQL-native API: Our CMS is built on GraphQL, offering an interactive GraphQL Playground and full mutation support for dynamic use cases. It enables fast API design and delivers content to any frontend, powering true omnichannel experiences.
• Multi-tenancy: You can manage multiple projects, brands, or regions within a single workspace using isolated environments and granular permissions. This keeps operations scalable, cost-effective, and governance-friendly.
• Content Federation: You can connect to external systems like PIMs, DAMs, or legacy CMSs via remote sources, unifying them into a single API layer. It removes the need for complex migrations or middleware, making hybrid architecture easy to manage.
• Dedicated to helping our customers succeed: Being customer-first is Hygraph’s core value. We support teams of all sizes with tailored onboarding, hands-on solution engineering, and fast, responsive support. It’s no coincidence we’ve been voted the #1 easiest CMS to implement — four times in a row.

#A headless CMS without hidden costs or implementation hiccups

Choosing a headless CMS shouldn’t feel like a leap of faith. While there are real challenges. From content modeling to API management, the benefits of flexibility, scalability, and long-term efficiency often outweigh the upfront learning curve.

This article was written not to convince you, but to equip you. A well-structured implementation plan, a clear understanding of your project’s requirements, and the right technical partner can make the transition to headless not only manageable, but worthwhile.

Whether you’re exploring headless for product catalogs, omnichannel delivery, or scaling editorial workflows, the key is knowing what you’re getting into, and choosing a platform that grows with you, not against you.

If you're planning a move to headless and want to explore whether Hygraph is the right fit, get in touch with our team! We're happy to talk through your use case.