Headless CMS explained: A 2025 guide

Key Takeaways

• A headless CMS is a backend-only CMS that provides a "Content Repository" that makes content accessible to any platform or digital channel via an API.
• Unlike a traditional CMS such as WordPress, a headless CMS does not dictate where or how content is shown.
• A headless CMS enables teams to deliver omnichannel experiences at scale, globally, without being restricted by templates or pre-defined technologies.
• A headless CMS enables developers to use their preferred tech stack or framework, including popular ones like React, Angular, and Vue.
• Headless CMSs generally provide better ROI since they are cloud-based, security and backups are handled by the vendor, and they are easily scalable, all while reducing time-to-market when delivering projects.

Since our founding in 2017, Hygraph has been part of the headless CMS journey, pioneering a GraphQL-native approach.

Fast forward to 2025, the market is crowded with buzzwords and lookalike vendors, leaving teams overwhelmed when moving away from monoliths or switching providers. This makes it vital to return to the fundamentals:

• what headless CMS really is
• why it matters today
• how it can bridge the gap to an AI-driven future

The Hygraph Headless CMS Academy offers guides, use cases, comparisons, and headless cms tutorials to help you navigate this evolving landscape.

What is a headless CMS

A headless CMS is a content management system where the backend (content repository) is completely separated from the frontend (presentation layer). Content is served via APIs to any platform — websites, mobile apps, smart devices, digital signage, and more.

The content is stored in a raw, structured format, such as HTML or JSON, and isn't meant for human consumption until rendered on the end device.

Here is an illustration of how headless CMS works.

Headless CMS is the natural evolution of content management

The evolution of CMS mirrors the growth of digital experiences. Monolithic systems worked when websites were the only channel, but as experiences expanded, they quickly showed their limits.

This led to the rise of custom, in-house CMSs, which solved performance and flexibility issues, but at the cost of heavy engineering and hard-to-find expertise.

The popularity of smart devices and the need for multi-channel delivery brought new challenges for content teams — mainly how to deliver content across diverse channels on scale. In the meantime, enterprise companies are looking for solutions that improve efficiency and cross-functional collaboration.

This is fueling the demand for headless CMSs: by decoupling the presentation layer from the content repository, developers and marketers can each focus on their core work, while APIs enable seamless content delivery across any channel.

Why headless CMS?

While headless architecture and headless CMSs have been around for a while, their popularity has grown exponentially. If we look at Google Trends over the last few years, we can see that searches for headless CMS is constantly growing.

What's the reason behind this growing interest?

"Headless" has become the popular approach to handling content due to the increasing diversity of platforms that need content, the improved developer experience it offers, among other benefits.

Earlier this year, we interviewed 10 CMS experts about the future of content and identified top 5 content trends:

1. Hyper-personalization is becoming more feasible
2. Omnichannel customers mandate consistent content
3. AI catalyzes new content strategies
4. Site security remains a top priority
5. Data gets harmonized with a unified content layer

Format-agnostic, machine-readable content is not only easier to manage today, but also essential for AI systems that depend on structured data to automate personalization, localization, and predictive delivery.

Benefits of a headless CMS

Everybody talks about the benefits of adopting a headless CMS, but what are the actual pros for you? То make the advantages easier to understand, we’ve listed the benefits by roles.

Here are 20 reasons to use a headless CMS:

For the company and leadership

• Future-proofing and scalability: Separated content and presentation layers make it easier to adopt new technologies, redesign frontends, or expand to new channels without reworking the whole stack.
• Shorter time-to-market: Developers and content teams can work side by side, which speeds up launches and updates. Companies can experiment with new channels and test new opportunities with minimal risk.
• Reduced vendor lock-in: Content is stored in an agnostic, API-delivered format, which makes migrations or provider changes less disruptive.
• Centralized content management: A single, universal repository reduces silos and streamlines operations across departments.
• Security: With the frontend decoupled from the backend, there are fewer attack angles, while you also reduce reliance on vulnerable plugins.

For developers and architects

• Frontend freedom: Developers can use any framework (React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Astro, etc.) to design experiences without being tied to a monolithic CMS.
• Microservices and composability: Instead of being locked in monolithic feature sets, you can easily integrate together specialized APIs and services for payments, search, personalization, etc.
• Structured, clean data: Clearly defined APIs and data models make querying, filtering, and extending content faster and more reliable.
• Faster prototyping and iteration: Developers can test, deploy, and fine-tune applications without breaking the existing system.
• Simplified upgrades and maintenance: Backend and frontend can evolve independently, avoiding the complexity of plugin/theme updates, which are common in legacy CMSs.
• Team flexibility: Companies can hire developers for modern languages and frameworks instead of having them trained on outdated template systems.

For content editors and marketers

• Omnichannel publishing: You can create content once and publish it across websites, apps, IoT, voice assistants, digital signage, and more — without duplicating work.
• Parallel workflows: Marketers and editors can create and manage content independently of developers, avoiding bottlenecks and delays.
• Future-proof content: Content in decoupled storage can be reused, remixed, or delivered to new channels as they emerge.
• Consolidated repository: Manage all content centrally, with consistency and governance across regions, brands, or product lines.
• Faster campaigns and experimentation: The ability to update, test, and ship out content quickly helps marketing teams adapt to trends and audience needs.

For end users

• Improved performance: Lightweight, API-driven delivery also results in faster load times, leaner pages, and smoother digital experiences.
• Consistent omnichannel experience: Users face unified brand messaging and interactions across web, mobile, apps, in-store, and emerging platforms.
• Tailored and accessible experiences: Structured content and flexible presentation enable personalized, inclusive interfaces that meet rising accessibility and UX expectations.
• Reliability and trust: Improved security and scalability mean less downtime, safer interactions, and smoother experiences even during peak usage.

Types of headless CMS

You’ve likely come across many different ways CMSs are categorized. For instance, the Jamstack site groups them into Git-based, API-first, locale-based, and visual CMSs. Since the list can be overwhelming, we’ve organized the categories in a clearer way.

By storage architecture

• Git-based CMS: These CMSs store content as flat files and integrate directly with your codebase. This allows flexible editing with familiar tools and easy collaboration, but the delivery is limited to Git-friendly frontends only.
• Database-driven CMS(e.g., Hygraph): Content is stored in a traditional database, queried through APIs. This type allows you to combine the strength of content and data to create personalized experiences.

By hosting model

• Hosted/cloud CMS: The CMS is provided as a managed cloud service, where the vendor handles hosting, updates, and security. The terms “hosted” and cloud CMS can be used interchangeably.
• Self-hosted CMS: The CMS runs on your own servers or cloud infrastructure. It gives full control over customization, deployment, and compliance, but demands more developer resources.

By the infrastructure model

• Serverless CMS: A subset of cloud CMSs, where the system automatically scales without dedicated servers. It’s highly elastic and cost-efficient, but it depends completely on the vendor’s infrastructure.
• Non-serverless CMS: Runs on managed servers or virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud. Although scalable, this CMS type usually requires fixed resources and more manual work compared to serverless systems.

By licensing/code access

• Open source CMS: The CMS codebase is publicly available, so your developers can freely inspect, modify, and extend it. Open source CMSs offer a great deal of customization and scalability without vendor lock-in. However, you may need to invest in self-hosting or support services.
• Proprietary CMS: Licensed software owned by a vendor, with limited or no access to source code. These solutions usually come with vendor support, SLAs, and enterprise features, but restrict customization. Pricing is either subscription- or license-based.

SaaS CMS

Most proprietary headless CMSs are SaaS, delivered as subscription-based cloud services. However, keep in mind that:

• Proprietary ≠ always SaaS: Some (e.g., AEM, Sitecore) are licensed software you install and manage yourself.
• SaaS ≠ always proprietary: Some SaaS products (e.g., Strapi Cloud) are built on open source. SaaS is generally a better choice for teams that want low-maintenance, cost-predictable, and automatically updated CMS solutions.

API-first CMS

While not all headless CMSs are API-first, an API-first CMS can be seen as a subset of headless. An API-first CMS is built from the ground up to deliver content via APIs (REST, GraphQL) rather than as a web page. Structured content and integration with other services are the core features here, making this CMS highly flexible for omnichannel delivery.

Challenges of headless CMS

While a headless CMS offers numerous advantages, many organizations are skeptical about adopting one. That's because not every headless CMS offers the hybrid features that modern enterprises need.

Some of the potential challenges include:

No frontend

A headless CMS solution doesn't come with a frontend. So, whether you want to create content for a website or another channel, you need frontend developers to build something from scratch. Without adequate developer resources, this can end up being time-consuming and expensive.

No drag-and-drop page building experience

With a headless CMS, there is a paradigm shift from a drag-and-drop approach to building content components pre-built on the frontend. This may look intimidating at first, but it brings a great deal of benefits in the long run. Hygraph empowers content creators and offers a rich editing experience, including versioning, previews, content staging, and more.

Developer dependencies

While pre-built frontend components work great for the ongoing work, at times when something new is required to be created it would have to be done by the frontend team.

How headless CMS works

A headless CMS works by separating content creation from content delivery, which makes the whole process faster, more flexible, and easier to scale.

On the technology side, all content is stored in a structured database, defined by schemas and content models that ensure consistency.

Instead of being locked into rigid templates, content is delivered through APIs (REST or GraphQL) that fetch exactly what each frontend — a website, mobile app, or smart device needs.

This decoupled architecture results in leaner code, faster load times, and higher performance, since the frontend is optimized independently from the backend.

On the operational side, developers are free to build with their preferred frameworks while focusing only on the user experience, without worrying about how content is managed.

Content editors, at the same time, work in a clean, central hub, where they can create, update, and publish without relying on developers.

Such a parallel workflow eliminates bottlenecks, shortens time-to-market, and keeps projects adaptable.

The result is a content management system where marketers save time, developers innovate freely, and end users enjoy faster, more consistent digital experiences across every channel.

How does headless CMS empower modern team collaboration

A headless CMS improves collaboration by giving both developers and editors the freedom to focus on what they do best, without stepping on each other’s toes.

For developers, decoupled architecture means no more firefighting small editorial requests — they can concentrate on building modern frontends, integrating new tools, and keeping the system scalable.

Features like roles, permissions, and workflow automation further streamline collaboration, letting developers shape the architecture while editors safely manage content.

For editors and marketers, headless removes the reliance on developers for routine updates — been there, done that!

Once the schema is set, editors can create, publish, and reuse content across channels independently, confident that design consistency is enforced by predefined components.

Free from routine maintenance, Alex can focus on building a new feature, while Maria doesn’t have to wait on him to tweak a carousel or re-code homepage links.

Together, this shift creates an optimized, future-proof collaboration model: editors focus on content quality, developers innovate on technology, and the business benefits from faster time-to-market, reduced costs, and a smoother user experience.

Headless CMS is the future of content management

Headless CMS has moved beyond managing pages — it’s now the backbone of digital experience. By decoupling content from presentation, it allows brands to deliver seamless experiences across every device and channel, while scaling effortlessly.

Today, headless platforms are evolving into digital experience ecosystems that integrate analytics, personalization, and commerce into a composable stack.

Instead of relying on rigid monoliths, leading organizations are building modular, best-of-breed architectures — with the headless CMS at the center of their digital strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a headless CMS?

A headless CMS is a content management system that provides a way to create, edit, and deliver content to one or several frontends. Instead of having your content tightly coupled to a particular frontend (like a website or mobile app), it provides your content as data over an API to be served to any frontend.

What does headless mean?

Headless means that the application is running without a graphical user interface (GUI) and sometimes without a user interface at all. The frontend (head) is detached from the backend (body), allowing both to be developed independently.

What are some other terms for headless CMS?

Headless CMS may commonly be referred to as Content Database, Content Backend, Content Repository, or Content API. It is essentially a backend-only content management system that acts as a content repository, and makes content accessible via an API for display on any device, without controlling the presentation layer(s).

What is a headless Website?

A headless website is built using a headless CMS, where the content is served via API from a backend rather than a classical “web CMS.” When needed, the same content can be distributed to multiple websites, apps, and other digital platforms.

How do you use a headless CMS?

To use a headless CMS, you must build a frontend (website or an application) first, then use the CMS's API to query and serve your content. This is in contrast to “creating your content on the website” as in the case of page builders and classic Web CMS.

Is a headless CMS just an API?

The short answer is no. A headless CMS is more than just an API. While headless CMSs provide APIs to connect the frontend with the backend, they also provide user-friendly interfaces for content editors and content management features like content workflows, version control, role-based access control, and more.

Is a headless CMS just a database?

No, a headless CMS is not just a database. While it stores and retrieves content like a database, it also offers a user interface (UI) and content management features. Headless CMSs allow you to use a separate database of your choice if needed, but they also provide APIs to connect with various frontends.

Is a headless CMS a backend?

Headless CMS is part of the backend. However, it does not replace the entire backend infrastructure. While it handles content storage, management, and API-based delivery to various frontends, it typically works alongside other backend systems like Product Information Management (PIM), authentication services, and business logic layers to form a complete backend ecosystem.

Where to host a headless CMS?

The hosting options for a headless CMS depend on the type of CMS you choose. If you choose an open-source CMS like Strapi or Ghost, you will need to self-host it on a server, which can be a local setup or cloud-based on platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, when you use a SaaS solution like Hygraph or Contentful, the vendor manages the hosting, so you can focus on content and development. Some platforms also offer managed hosting.

Should I use a headless CMS?

If you are creating a simple corporate website or portfolio, perhaps not. If you have development resources and are building multiple or complex websites, applications, and other digital products, then it may be worth exploring Headless CMS. The same applies to whether you require stronger flexibility and performance with your digital projects.

What means a cloud headless CMS?

A cloud headless CMS means a hosted solution where content is stored in the cloud and delivered via APIs. The vendor manages hosting, updates, and security, so teams can focus on creating and publishing content without maintaining infrastructure.

What’s the difference between headless vs. non-headless CMS?

A headless CMS separates backend content from frontend presentation and delivers content via APIs to any channel. A non-headless (or traditional) CMS tightly couples content and design, which limits flexibility and reuse.

Are headless CMS the way to go?

Yes, headless CMSs are the way to go, especially for businesses that need omnichannel publishing, scalability, and future-proof flexibility. However, smaller projects with simple websites may still benefit from a traditional CMS.

What makes a headless CMS data-driven?

A headless CMS uses structured content models and APIs to store, query, and deliver data in consistent formats. This makes content machine-readable, reusable, and easily integrated with analytics, personalization, and AI tools.

How about a drag-and-drop headless CMS?

Some headless CMS systems offer drag-and-drop interfaces to make life easier for marketers. While useful for quick edits, these tools can limit scalability and consistency, so modular content components are still the more sustainable approach.

How do headless CMS platforms make content collaboration easier?

Headless CMS platforms make content collaboration easier by centralizing content in one hub, enabling roles and permissions, and supporting workflows for approvals. Editors work independently of developers, reducing bottlenecks and allowing teams to collaborate in parallel.

Having a mobile-friendly website or an optimized landing page is no longer sufficient. The world is shifting towards embracing composability, where consumers are spoiled for choice when consuming content on multiple platforms simultaneously.

As we gear towards preparing content for the omnichannel world, we need to understand how CMS’s role in delivering digital experiences has fundamentally changed. Traditional CMSs can no longer keep up with digital experience demands; headless CMSs are on the rise instead. In this chapter, we will discuss how headless CMSs compare to traditional CMSs and why we believe they are a better solution.

What is a traditional CMS?

A traditional CMS is a content management system where the backend content repository is tightly coupled to the frontend presentation layer. It's also commonly known as a monolithic CMS.

Since the dot-com bubble, the content management universe has been dominated by massive .NET, Java, Perl, and PHP-based systems. Traditional CMSs like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal have democratized the creation of simpler websites, making them accessible to non-tech users.

However, these traditional CMSs focus on a web-first platform. Adapting them for modern digital content channels such as mobile, IoT, or ARM is difficult or requires significant effort. Even small technical changes lead to long implementation times.

How traditional CMSs work

Born in the mid-90s, traditional CMSs are primarily built for non-technical users to manage websites. They have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that allow content creators to create content and publish it to styled "templates," choosing from endless themes and plugins.

The content created is stored within a database and displayed to the end-user or reader based on this pre-defined template.

Everything is packaged together, and the architecture of the CMS causes heavy codependency between the frontend and backend. For example, when downloading WordPress, what you're getting out of the box and building upon is:

• A pre-defined theme (like Twenty Nineteen by WordPress) with HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
• An optional further customization of that theme with a page builder like Elementor or WPBakery.
• A pre-defined MySQL database with a pre-defined schema, changes to which require manually modifying the database itself.
• PHP that powers the usability of your site and links your theme to the database, constantly pulling entries (posts, media, etc.) from the database into your frontend, where the theme defines the placement.
• Further enrichments and customization via plugins.

To visualize this content, Wordpress's PHP application pulls the raw data for a blog post from the MySQL database and pushes it to the theme. The theme then converts the content into HTML and styles it based on the specified CSS so the visitor can consume it.

Therefore, managing, creating, publishing, and designing your content is entirely within WordPress itself. Content is stored in the database and pulled whenever the site needs to be rendered for a new visitor.

This tight coupling can lead to usability and security issues. For example, if a developer wants to make a change to the frontend, they may need to update the backend code as well to accommodate the change. Additionally, traditional CMSs are more susceptible to distributed denial of service attacks as there is a greater surface area to attack than with a headless CMS.

The traditional CMS didn’t provide an ideal way to use our developer resources, because we want them to focus on the technical improvement of the website.

Limitations of traditional CMS

Due to the rigid architecture, traditional CMSs force teams to depend highly on the vendor's preferred frameworks, databases, and technologies. They do so while only being able to render on one front, i.e., a single website or mobile app.

In the long term, once overheads like training, maintenance, and security updates are accounted for, the ROI of traditional CMS begins to come into question, and teams are left with unmanageable content silos across several CMS and services.

Here are the main limitations of traditional CMSs.

Limited flexibility

Traditional CMSs are often built on a rigid architecture, making adapting to changing business needs and emerging technologies challenging.

Security concerns

The tightly integrated nature of monolithic CMSs poses security risks, as a single vulnerability can compromise the entire system. In April 2013 alone, there were 90,000 attempts per day to hack WordPress sites via brute force attacks.

Slower time-to-market

Monolithic CMSs' rigid architecture and complex development processes can lead to longer development cycles, resulting in slower time to market for new content and features.

Scalability issues

As businesses grow and their content requirements expand, monolithic CMSs may struggle to handle the increasing workload efficiently.

SEO challenges

Monolithic CMSs can be less SEO-friendly due to their restricted customization options, impacting search engine rankings and visibility.

High maintenance costs

Monolithic CMSs may require extensive resources and ongoing maintenance to keep the system up-to-date and secure. The costs associated with maintaining and upgrading the platform can strain an organization’s budget and divert resources from other critical business initiatives.

What is a headless CMS

A headless CMS is a content repository that makes content accessible via an API to any platform. The term “headless” comes from the concept of detaching the “Head”, i.e., the frontend(website, app, etc.), from the “body”,i.e., the backend(content repository, database, etc.). Instead of delivering compiled HTML, a headless CMS only delivers the content using an API. An API-driven approach offers many advantages over traditional CMS paradigms.

As a backend CMS, a headless CMS houses all the content teams need to produce for all digital entities as structured content, including text, images, videos, files, and other content assets in the backend.

Developers can query this content via API while working with modern and preferred technologies and distribute them to any digital front from a single source. In the long run, the ROI of this approach leads to a more scalable architecture and removes content silos.

How headless CMSs work

A headless CMS completely defies the logic of a traditional CMS. By fragmenting the flow and decoupling the frontend from the backend, it focuses on content creation and storage, with little to no restriction on how content gets rendered on the frontend.

In this scenario, a typical setup might look something like this:

• You create content based on self-defined schemas in a headless CMS like Hygraph.
• You connect your API endpoint from Hygraph to your website through a data-fetching library like Axios or even the native Fetch methods supported across server and browser environments.
• You query your content to your website, app, or another platform with GraphQL, in the case of Hygraph.
• You render the returned data in a way that makes sense for your application.

Therefore, when creating content in a headless CMS like Hygraph, you're simply focusing on the content itself and not the layout or design. This is then delivered anywhere through the API, so a developer and a content creator can define how and where the content shows - regardless of the platform, design, style, or format.

Advantages of headless CMS over traditional CMS

The API-driven approach offers many advantages over traditional CMS paradigms:

Frontend freedom

By removing the presentation layer, or the head, from the CMS, there are theoretically no restrictions on how or where content can be delivered.

Worry-free content creation

Marketing and editorial teams can create content within the editor interface of a headless CMS, similar to how they would with traditional CMSs like WordPress or Joomla. Meanwhile, the engineering team can define how and where this content is delivered by creating a frontend on the channel where content will be rendered.

Choose your own framework

Engineering teams are also free of traditional CMS templating and framework restrictions. With a headless CMS, they can take advantage of framework agnosticism and create frontend experiences using React, Angular, Vue, Next.js, or any modern technology they see fit.

Flexible content

A headless CMS offers greater flexibility than a traditional CMS, where "content" is restricted to a landing page or a blog post. There are virtually no limitations on what can be considered content, including anything from blog posts and landing pages to banners, alerts, flight inventory, and news feeds.

Deliver to any platform

Similarly, there are no restrictions on platforms where this content can be delivered, extending from websites and mobile apps to smart tablets and watches or even IoT-connected kitchen appliances like dishwashers and fridges.

Differences between headless CMS and traditional CMS

Here is a side-by-side comparison table of headless CMS vs. traditional CMS, covering everything from framework compatibility to content modeling ability.

See headless CMS vs. traditional CMS side-by-side comparison in full resolution

How do you choose between headless CMS and traditional CMS?

Even though we believe headless CMS is the future of content, not everyone has the resources or the capacity to implement a headless CMS, or perhaps your team is too comfortable with the traditional CMS in place to switch to a headless one. Consider these four questions when choosing between a headless CMS and a traditional CMS.

Do you need to update your content often?

It depends on what type of business you have, but if you produce a lot of content and need to update your website frequently, a headless CMS is better since content is stored like data and can be reused. Otherwise, you can manage your digital presence with a traditional CMS.

Do you have enough development resources?

Choosing a headless CMS often requires dedicated developers who know how to work with APIs and build custom frontends. If your team has the technical expertise and bandwidth, headless might be a solid choice. But if you're short on skilled developers or working with limited resources, a traditional CMS with its built-in templates and ease of use could be more practical.

Do you want to connect your content easily?

Headless CMS excels at flexibility, making it easier to push content to multiple channels, from websites to mobile apps. If you’re looking to create seamless experiences across various platforms, going headless makes sense. On the other hand, if most of your content lives in one place, like a single website, a traditional CMS could do the job just fine.

Do you want to scale your project?

Scalability is a big factor. With a headless CMS, it's easier to grow your project by adding new digital experiences without restructuring your entire content system. If your future plans involve expansion or reaching new audiences across different platforms, headless is more future-proof. But if your content needs remain stable and simple, a traditional CMS might be sufficient for now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which one is better, headless CMS or traditional CMS?

The answer depends on your content requirements and available resources. If you have demanding content that requires frequent updates or complex content model, want to present your content easily on different platforms, plan to scale your project in the future, and have enough development resources in place, then headless CMS is a better choice. If not, traditional CMSs come with templates, which make website creation easy.

Is traditional cms faster than headless CMS?

Traditional CMS makes it easy for non-technical users to create a website. In contrast, headless CMS requires you to develop your own frontend, which takes longer to launch a website. Nevertheless, if you frequently update your content, traditional CMS's tightly coupled architecture will be more difficult to scale and slower to work with.

Is traditional CMS mostly coupled or headless?

Most traditional CMS platforms are coupled, meaning they tightly connect the backend (where content is created and managed) with the frontend (where content is displayed). This setup often restricts flexibility because both parts are directly linked. In contrast, a headless CMS separates the back and front ends, delivering content via API, so it’s easier to display content on different devices and platforms.

Summary

In this article, we walk you through the differences between WordPress and headless CMSs. We’ll show why WordPress becomes costly, complex, and rigid as projects scale, and why a native headless CMS like Hygraph offers the flexibility, scalability, and performance modern businesses need to deliver omnichannel content with confidence.

• WordPress is easy to start with but quickly becomes insecure, plugin-heavy, and high maintenance.
• Performance suffers under plugins and server-side rendering, slowing SEO and UX.
• Headless WordPress adds complexity without true flexibility.
• A native headless CMS supports scalability, omnichannel delivery, and modern developer workflows.
• Hygraph solves WordPress’s limitations with GraphQL-native APIs, Content Federation, and enterprise-ready collaboration.

When it comes to choosing a content management system, the question of headless CMS vs. WordPress often arises. WordPress remains the most widely used CMS, powering over 43% of all websites. But as businesses demand more flexibility, scalability, and multichannel content delivery, headless solutions like Hygraph are proving to be a superior alternative. This article explores why headless CMS — and particularly Hygraph — is a smarter choice for modern projects.

What is a CMS?

A content management system (CMS) allows users to create, manage, and publish digital content across platforms. Early CMS platforms like Vignette and Documentum emerged in the mid-1990s, focused primarily on website publishing. By the early 2000s, WordPress and Drupal rose to prominence and continue to dominate the CMS landscape.

The rise of mobile devices and smartphones in the 2010s marked a turning point. Traditional CMSs struggled to serve content beyond websites. Enter the headless CMS: a new model that decouples the frontend from the backend and uses APIs to deliver content seamlessly across websites, apps, and emerging channels. This shift solved the challenge of multichannel content distribution — and Hygraph is leading the way with its API-first approach.

WordPress: An Overview

WordPress is often the first CMS people encounter. It holds nearly 65% of the global CMS market share and is praised for:

• Ease of setup: Quick installation and a free tier make it accessible.

• Beginner-friendly: A visual interface and community support lower the entry barrier.

• Plugins: Tools like Yoast SEO and WooCommerce extend functionality.

However, these strengths come with significant trade-offs. The disadvantages of WordPress, particularly when compared to a headless CMS, are well-documented:

• Security risks: Its open-source nature and plugin ecosystem create vulnerabilities.

• High maintenance: Frequent updates and patching drain resources.

• Plugin dependency: Advanced features rely heavily on third-party plugins.

• Performance issues: Server-side rendering and plugin overload slow down sites.

• Design limitations: Creativity is restricted by themes and templates.

• Platform rigidity: WordPress struggles with omnichannel content needs.

• Developer challenges: A specialized codebase limits flexibility.

• Limited collaboration: Simultaneous editing features are weak compared to native headless CMSs.

Why a Headless CMS is Better Than Traditional WordPress

Reusable Content Components

WordPress works like a page builder, binding content tightly to layouts. Updating content in multiple locations requires repetitive effort. In contrast, Hygraph’s modular approach enables you to build reusable components that can power consistent, scalable experiences across platforms. Teams can create once and reuse everywhere.

Creative Freedom in Frontend Development

WordPress templates restrict design flexibility. With Hygraph’s decoupled architecture, developers can choose their preferred frontend frameworks and technologies. This flexibility ensures pixel-perfect control over the user experience while future-proofing against tech shifts.

Seamless Integrations Without Plugin Chaos

Instead of patching together dozens of plugins, Hygraph integrates natively with modern tech stacks. CRM, analytics, personalization, and commerce platforms connect smoothly through APIs. This not only reduces complexity but also ensures reliability and long-term scalability.

Why You Shouldn’t Use WordPress as a Headless CMS

Some teams try to modernize by using WordPress in a headless setup — keeping WordPress as the content backend while building a custom frontend. While this avoids a migration and preserves familiar workflows, it introduces serious drawbacks:

Performance Concerns

Even in headless mode, WordPress carries unnecessary overhead. Customers report slow load times (3+ seconds) caused by plugin-heavy WordPress cores — issues resolved after moving to Hygraph.

Added Complexity

Running a WordPress backend alongside a separate frontend increases operational complexity. Developers spend more time on deployments, maintenance, and debugging than building value.

Limited Flexibility

WordPress’s legacy architecture restricts flexibility. While “headless WordPress” can decouple the frontend, it lacks the agility and scalability of a native headless CMS like Hygraph. Workarounds often introduce more technical debt.

Key takeaway: Headless WordPress may feel like a compromise. Hygraph, built natively for headless architectures, eliminates these challenges from the start.

When is a Headless CMS the Right Choice?

If your business needs to deliver content across multiple platforms with minimal maintenance, a headless CMS is the answer. Use cases where Hygraph excels include:

• Omnichannel content delivery: Websites, apps, IoT, and beyond.

• Scalability: Handling large volumes of content and high-traffic spikes.

• Global teams: Seamless collaboration across markets and locales.

• Developer freedom: Modern frameworks, seamless integrations, and API-first flexibility.

Many businesses are already migrating from WordPress to alternatives like Hygraph. If you’re weighing ROI, check out our CMS cost calculator and explore this migration guide. With Hygraph, you gain not only operational efficiency but also a future-proof digital foundation.

Conclusion: Hygraph is the Future of CMS

The debate of headless CMS vs. WordPress comes down to one question: Do you want to keep patching a legacy system or adopt a platform designed for today’s digital challenges? With Hygraph, you can reduce maintenance costs, speed up delivery, and innovate faster — all while ensuring your teams and customers enjoy a seamless experience.

Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ)

What’s the difference between a headless CMS and traditional WordPress?

A traditional WordPress setup couples the backend and frontend, meaning your content and presentation layer live in one system. A headless CMS decouples the two, serving content via APIs to any frontend. This offers greater flexibility for multi‑channel delivery and lets you use modern frameworks without being tied to WordPress’s theming system.

Can I reuse content across multiple platforms with a headless CMS?

Yes. A key benefit of a headless CMS is modular content modelling. You create components once and reassemble them across web, mobile, and other channels. In a traditional WordPress site, you often need to duplicate content or rely on plugins to reuse it.

Is headless WordPress the same as a headless CMS?

Not quite. Headless WordPress keeps WordPress as the content repository but uses a separate frontend. While this decouples presentation, the underlying system still carries the overhead and limitations of WordPress. A native headless CMS is designed from the ground up for API‑first content delivery and tends to be more performant and flexible.

Why is performance better on a native headless CMS?

Headless CMS platforms serve content via lightweight APIs and don’t load unnecessary plugins or themes. This allows your frontend to render quickly using static site generation or client‑side frameworks. WordPress, especially when burdened by plugins, can introduce server‑side delays and slow page speeds.

What are the main drawbacks of using WordPress?

WordPress’s popularity makes it an attractive target for security exploits. It often requires constant updates, plugin maintenance, and custom fixes. As you scale, these factors increase costs and hinder innovation. Design flexibility is also limited unless you invest in page‑builder plugins, which can further slow your site.

When should I consider migrating to a headless CMS?

If you plan to deliver content across multiple channels—web, mobile apps, digital kiosks—or require a custom frontend, a headless CMS is worth considering. Businesses that struggle with WordPress performance, plugin maintenance, or the need for omnichannel content will benefit most from a headless approach.

Is the migration from WordPress to a headless CMS complicated?

Migration requires planning, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. A phased approach can reduce risk: audit your content, model it in the new system, map existing URLs, and implement redirects. Many headless CMS vendors, including Hygraph, offer migration guides and support to streamline the process.

Does a headless CMS improve collaboration for editors and developers?

Most headless CMSs support concurrent editing, role‑based permissions, and workflows out of the box. Editors can work simultaneously on different content pieces, and developers can build with their preferred frameworks without touching the content layer. This separation leads to faster iteration and better teamwork.

Decoupled CMS, headless CMS, traditional CMS - all terms used when teams seek a new system to house their growing content needs. However, the differences between them aren't always clear. We covered the difference between a headless CMS and a traditional CMS in a previous chapter. In this post, let’s look into how a decoupled CMS and a headless CMS differ.

What is decoupled architecture?

Decoupled architecture is a software design strategy where the backend and frontend are separate, independent applications. Changes can be made to one without disrupting the other, allowing teams to develop them in parallel and push out updates quickly and with minimal risk.

While the terms “headless” and “decoupled” are often used interchangeably, there are some key differences in platforms that are considered one or the other. In short, while both types of software have a decoupled architecture, headless solutions are backend-only and decoupled solutions offer both backend and frontend components. This difference has a big impact on the capabilities and flexibility of the platforms.

What is a decoupled CMS?

In a decoupled CMS the backend content management system and frontend presentation layer are separate applications, but they are provided by the same vendor.

The frontend layer has templates, themes, and pre-configurations for standard web and mobile sites, allowing users to build pages just like with a traditional CMS. Unlike a traditional CMS, the backend can also send content to custom frontend solutions built for use cases that fall outside of the standard page templates, like mobile apps or internet of things (IoT) devices.

Decoupled CMSs are most often the result of a traditional CMS being split into backend and frontend components, catering to users that want a bit more flexibility without having to say goodbye to out-of-the-box starter sites. The option to use both traditional templates and custom frontends is why decoupled CMSs are sometimes referred to as “hybrid” solutions. WordPress, Drupal, and Magnolia are popular traditional CMSs that now also have a decoupled version available.

Decoupled CMS use cases

By separating the content management and presentation layers, but providing both, a decoupled CMS offers more flexibility than a traditional CMS while still giving teams familiar templates and editing tools. Making them well-suited for businesses that are starting to explore use cases beyond a standard website, including:

• Extending legacy systems: Teams that are used to a traditional CMS, like WordPress or Drupal, can switch to the decoupled version of their current CMS to gain a bit more flexibility without having to overhaul existing infrastructure or ways of working.
• Digital signage: The same CMS can be used to manage content for the website and for other digital screens, making it easier to keep branding and information consistent.
• Content delivery to IoT devices: Developers can create custom solutions for interfaces beyond a typical website, like Smartwatch apps and voice search.

Advantages of a decoupled CMS

For some teams, a decoupled CMS is the right balance between a traditional and headless CMS. It provides familiar templates, themes, and editing previews out-of-the box which can help get standard websites up and running quickly, especially for teams with limited frontend resources. The separation of the backend and frontend makes it possible to also deliver content to digital channels beyond a website, and to develop and update each channel independently.

Disadvantages of a decoupled CMS

While generally more customizable than a traditional Web CMS, decoupled CMSs are less flexible than headless CMS and can become cumbersome over time.

The main drawback of decoupled CMSs is that they make assumptions about your frontend. While technically separate, the backend content management system is designed around the provided presentation layer. So as you start creating custom frontends for different applications, devices, or unique site elements you’re still stuck using the limited content models and workflows designed specifically for the preconfigured web templates.

The more you move away from the templates, the harder it is to manage and scale your content, and the more you lose out on the key value of a decoupled CMS - its ready-to-go frontend.

Side-by-side comparison: Decoupled CMS pros and cons

What is a headless CMS

A headless CMS is a content management system that only focuses on delivering content via API, usually in a structured JSON format. A headless CMS is backend-only, it provides no built-in presentation layer and it does not offer any themes or templates out of the box. This means that a headless CMS is not tied to a specific frontend framework, making it a highly flexible solution.

With a headless CMS, teams can create their own structured content models, and content schema, that enables them to deliver and reuse content across multiple channels, without the restrictions of a template-based CMS.

Use cases of headless CMS

Headless CMSs enable teams to build a flexible, data-rich content repository that can be used for a wide range of use cases, including:

• Streaming platforms: A headless CMS significantly reduces development time, enabling a streamlined creation of complex streaming platforms while ensuring high performance and efficient content management.
• Modern eCommerce solutions: A headless CMS revolutionizes eCommerce management by enabling businesses to deliver personalized and engaging product experiences across multiple channels, powered by structured content models and API-driven integrations.
• SEO-optimized websites: A headless CMS empowers teams to craft SEO-optimized websites powered by structured content, efficient asset management, and localization for ensuring better search engine visibility, customer engagement, and conversions.

The structured content approach of headless CMS helps teams future-proof their tech stacks and makes it easy to take advantage of UX innovations of evolving frontend frameworks.

Advantages of a headless CMS

The benefits of a headless CMS include greater flexibility, more agility, and better performance. Teams have full control over how content is stored, structured, enriched, and delivered so they can design the digital experience around the features and channels that make sense for their customers, not around a set of predefined templates.

A highly structured, modular approach to content management helps teams efficiently manage and scale content with a headless CMS. Editorial teams can use modular blocks to create new pages without technical help, and developers can reuse components to quickly spin up new features or channels. Helping teams create future-proof content that can be quickly adapted to different needs.

Headless CMSs are easy to integrate with other tools, making them well-suited for a composable approach, where instead of being locked into the capabilities of a single vendor suite teams can create their own tech stack of best-fit tools for each part of the digital experience. Some advanced headless CMSs even offer a way to bring together the content data from across your composable stack into a single source of truth, also known as content federation.

Disadvantages of a headless CMS

Drawbacks of a headless CMS include the necessity of more developer resources to set up compared to a traditional or decoupled CMS, and that there can be a bit of a learning curve when it comes to working with structured content and creating your own content models. Quick start guides and resources on migrating from a traditional to headless CMS can help bridge the information gap in the early days of working with a headless CMS.

Side-by-side comparison: Headless CMSs pros and cons

What’s the main difference between traditional CMS and decoupled CMS?

The main difference between a traditional CMS and a decoupled CMS is the separation of backend content management and frontend presentation.

In a traditional CMS the backend and frontend are part of one big application, or “monolith”. Content storage, UI features, and frontend templates are all part of the same code base and are highly dependent on each other, so making even a small change to the website can feel risky.

In a decoupled CMS the backend and frontend are separate applications that can be developed independently. Website templates and themes are available, but it’s also possible to use other frameworks to build custom frontends. Which allows a decoupled CMS to support channels that a traditional CMS struggles with like digital signage, IoT devices, and mobile apps.

What’s the main difference between headless CMS and decoupled CMS?

The main difference between a headless CMS and a decoupled CMS is the availability of a frontend presentation layer, and the impact this has on how teams create and manage content.

A decoupled CMS comes with a frontend solution that includes prebuilt website templates and themes. While using them is optional, these templates are a big part of the value of a decoupled CMS and the backend application has to make some compromises on flexibility and customization to make sure they work out-of-the-box. To provide the same type of editing experience as with a traditional CMS, the content created with templates is often unstructured and tied to a particular page. So while a decoupled CMS is able to support different digital channels, keeping content consistent across them typically requires a lot of copy-pasting.

A headless CMS is backend-only and gives teams complete control over the channels, frameworks, and content models used to create the frontend experience. Headless content is shared as raw, structured data and each channel can choose how to present it. This Content as a Service (CaaS) delivery module allows content to be reused in multiple ways on multiple channels. Making it easy to keep content consistent and up-to-date across touchpoints.

Headless vs decoupled: how to pick the right architecture

A decoupled CMS can be a good choice for teams that:

• Want the familiar templates, themes, and drag-and-drop editing of a traditional CMS, with a bit of flexibility to build custom frontend applications if needed.
• Have the majority of their needs covered by the provided web and mobile templates, and would like to experiment with one or two digital channels that require custom frontends.
• Need to get simple use cases up and running quickly, like websites with only a few content types, minimal integrations, and no need for complex logic or real time calculations.

A headless CMS can be a good choice for teams that:

• Want to deliver an omnichannel experience, with the freedom to work with the best framework for each channel and an easy way to keep content consistent across all touchpoints.
• Produce a high volume of content and update it frequently, and could benefit from a modular content model that enables more reuse and automation.
• Need the flexibility to support unique content types, business logic, and complex data scenarios for things like eCommerce, personalization, and localization.
• Have adopted, or are moving towards, a composable tech stack and want a CMS that is easy to integrate and that can provide a single source of truth for content data that lives across their stack.

Examples of headless CMS in the real world

2U

2U, an education technology business, uses a headless CMS to consolidate metadata from over 500 ed-tech offerings and deliver up-to-date information to a global student audience of over 300,000. As a result, 2U improved the cross-platform student experience and increased enrollment rates with higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates.

Lick

Lick, a home decor eCommerce store, used a headless CMS’s component-based approach to double sales in just 6 months and increase the "Add to Bag'' conversion rate by 20%. The team can now efficiently manage over 600 product pages, and their variants, thanks to the flexible content modeling of a headless CMS.

Without Hygraph, we would not have been able to achieve the intuitively modeled content pages in the time frame that we did. After the launch of our new site, our “Add to Bag” conversions increased by 20%. It was easier to build the modular site that we imagined to improve user experience without workarounds.

Summing It Up

Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of content management systems can be daunting, but understanding the key differences between decoupled and headless CMSs is helpful for making the best decision for your business.

Decoupled CMS is suitable for teams with limited resources, providing a flexible approach to managing content across disparate systems. On the flip side, headless CMSs enable scalable content delivery across multiple touchpoints, preventing vendor lock-in and aiding teams in future-proofing their tech stack.

To evaluate which system is more beneficial to your use case, reach out to us to learn more about the applications of a headless CMS in the real world.

Summary

In this article, we walk you through how to optimize SEO with a headless CMS. We’ll cover how headless SEO differs from traditional approaches, technical and editorial best practices, and why structured content, performance, and flexibility matter. You’ll learn how to set up scalable, future-proof SEO strategies that go beyond plugins and deliver results across all channels.

• When using a Headless CMS, being aware of SEO best practices is key, since the concept of plugins and add-ons are not prevalent.
• A Headless CMS can provide a stronger SEO readiness based on performance, content, and optimization for multiple devices.
• A Headless CMS is critical when becoming SEO-ready for omnichannel queries across desktop, mobile, wearables, smart devices, and other IoT platforms like appliances, VR/AR, etc.
• A Headless CMS can integrate and connect with any MarTech stack, ensuring content creators have full control on their content lifecycle from start to conversion.
• High-quality original content, proper keyword choice and placement, interlinked content pieces, domain authority, social sharing, and backlinks from reputable sources are still of prime importance for strong SEO.
• The 19 Best Practices for SEO with a Headless CMS are around page performance, structured data, knowledge graph, HTTPS, CDN, keyword research, SERP friendly URLs, metadata, optimized media, regular audits, quality content, focus keywords, content frequency, XML sitemaps, canonical URLs, internal linking, mobile readiness, and voice readiness.
• A Headless CMS could get better SEO results due to added flexibility and framework agnostic behavior.

SEO has a particularly bad reputation for being overly complicated and time-consuming, especially with Google's constantly changing algorithms. While good SEO is an investment and something that will not yield measurable results as rapidly as advertising, it is most definitely one of the strongest foundations for growing a sustainable online presence.

Previously, we’ve covered the SEO benefits of migrating from a legacy CMS to a headless CMS regarding page performance, security, user experience, and delivering content to multiple platforms. Since a headless CMS will not necessarily give you the simplicity of installing a plugin to manage SEO factors, you need to follow a few best practices to kick-start stellar SEO results.

This chapter aims to help set yourself up for SEO success when migrating from a monolithic system. We will examine the differences between doing traditional SEO and headless SEO, and share both technical and editorial best practices you should follow to take your SEO to the next level.

What is headless SEO

Simply put, headless SEO is the process of optimizing your headless CMS so that your website performs better organically.

That being said, the commonly accepted best practices for on-page and off-page optimization do not change: High-quality original content, proper keyword choice and placement, interlinked content pieces, domain authority, social sharing, and backlinks from reputable sources are guidelines you should keep following.

Previously, SERP placements were heavily dictated by keyword volume and density, resulting in poor-quality web pages aimed at robots more than humans. Since then, algorithms have evolved to factor in content quality, NLP (Natural Language Processing), context, performance, cross-device UX, history, and a multitude of other ranking factors, resulting in websites finding the need to produce more human-oriented quality content rather than robot-focused gibberish.

Traditional CMS platforms, like WordPress and Drupal, made it easier for marketers to better oversee their optimization efforts, primarily via "plugins" and "add-ons" that gave editors an "SEO Score" among other information.

However, the closer we move into the IoT era with AI, Voice Search, and omnichannel experiences, traditional CMSs start to show their limitations. The emergence of the need for a headless CMS for voice assistants like Google Home, Alexa, and Siri; wearables like the Apple Watch, Galaxy Watch, SNAP spectacles; and VR Devices like the Oculus have dramatically changed how we interact with the digital world around us - meaning that we can no longer rely on legacy CMS to push content to the countless devices we consume content from.

Interestingly, the principles of SEO, or a loose translation of them, also apply to the devices we interact with, even though they might not be search results. The structure of a web page selling dresses and following SEO best practices could have its content qualified for an Alexa answer when asked, "Alexa, where can I find a red dress?". The same principles apply to news apps that want to deliver headlines and blurbs to wearables like the Apple Watch or Fitbit, with a headless CMS for smartwatches in a native format.

With all these added layers of complexity pressing on the need to create quality and relevant content, the importance of following SEO best practices with a headless CMS rises in value.

How is headless SEO different from traditional SEO?

A commonly believed myth about headless CMS is that it’s less SEO friendly. Previously, we’ve debunked the myth in the CMS myth buster article. While traditional CMS platforms might offer built-in SEO features, achieving great SEO with headless CMS is absolutely possible with a hands-on approach from developers. Altough the general SEO principles apply, the input and the processes are different given that there are technical differences with having your CMS separated from the frontend.

Empower editors with stonger SEO control

From an editorial side, the biggest visible difference between a traditional CMS and a headless one is the ability to manage content: better edit metadata on the fly, have more control of structured data, and build digital experiences that are defined by the user rather than by the theme or technology. Since a traditional CMS is closely integrated with your domain and controls how content is rendered, using a platform like WordPress or Drupal allows you to add page titles, descriptions, and other meta tags out of the box. However, the drawback is that it's difficult when you want to customize the setup.

Due to its cross-platform flexibility, a headless CMS does not control how your content is rendered, which is why this functionality must be handled differently. Developers have full control over SEO implementation, meaning they can set up the UI according to the team’s SEO preferences. Therefore, the editorial team must be explicit with its requirements. A well-constructed SEO component can look just like the Yoast SEO plugin on WordPress.

Integrate SEO capabilities into your architecture instead of plugins

With a traditional CMS, users are heavily reliant on multiple combinations of plugins to manage metadata, structured content, breadcrumbs, custom taxonomies, caching, security, and content optimization, to name a few factors. This means juggling updates, troubleshooting plugin conflicts, and dealing with security vulnerabilities caused by outdated add-ons.

Conversely, a headless CMS integrates these capabilities directly into its architecture. As a result, the headless SEO approach reduces complexity while offering greater flexibility and scalability. You can configure all SEO factors in the way that works for your team and have granular control over what content goes where.

Implement your SEO strategy with content models instead of pages

Good SEO begins long before the editorial team writes and shapes their content. A project's build and technical implementations are the benchmarks the content team can expand upon. Instead of coming up with an SEO strategy and implementing it page by page afterward, headless SEO requires you to think differently and implement your SEO strategy from the very beginning.

Since headless CMS platforms do not come with predefined page templates, you’ll need to define content models for different types of pages based on your needs. A content model serves as a structured schema outlining the types of content and their attributes. Developers should carefully consider SEO requirements when creating these models. For example, if you manage a shoe brand and want specific information, such as price and customer ratings, to appear in SERP, you should include dedicated fields for these attributes in your content model.

Beyond this, viewing content as modular blocks—such as banners, product descriptions, or reviews—and defining how they interrelate can enhance both site usability and SEO, enabling better indexing and visibility for search engines.

How headless CMS benefits SEO

Create optimal content that works for SEO

A headless CMS lets you focus on structured, SEO-friendly content by allowing you to define your own content models without being tied to rigid templates. For example, in eCommerce, you can create specific fields for price, product descriptions, and ratings, ensuring your content is optimized for search engines. This flexibility makes your content interconnected, reusable, and better suited for driving SEO results.

In the case of Hygraph, you get the ability to pull content and data from other systems and enrich your content entries via Content Federation which may in turn help you create better content while removing the manual work.

Deliver content with full control over your frontend

In the first chapter, we've covered the basics of a headless CMS. A headless CMS comes without a "frontend" out of the box, meaning a user has no restrictions on dictating how, where, when, and why content is dictated across platforms, without the limitations often imposed by themes, templates, plugins, and technology frameworks.

Since headless CMS is "built for the IoT era," content creators can deliver content in any format to any device. The evolution of treating content as anything more than the text on a webpage or mobile app has led to the emergence of having an editor-ready "CMS" delivering content to any platform, including smart speakers, VR devices, cars, watches, and even smart fridges. In principle, a Headless CMS is a future-proof solution since it can deliver content via APIs to platforms and channels that may not even exist yet.

Better site performance

Headless CMS enables you to use an Static Site Generator on the frontend which is by far the best way to build a performant website and make sure your Core Web Vitals are in order. SSG allows pages to load faster since they are pre-rendered as static files and served to users immediately, which improves page speed—a critical ranking factor for Google. Faster-loading pages not only enhance user experience but also facilitate easier and quicker crawling by search engine bots.

This means that updated or newly published content is more likely to be noticed and indexed promptly, ensuring your site stays relevant in search engine results. Additionally, by decoupling the CMS backend from the frontend, headless CMS platforms allow for fine-tuned optimization strategies without reliance on plugins that could slow performance.

Seamless team collaboration

Headless CMS allows developers, content creators, and editors, complete flexibility in ensuring the best structures for content creation, distribution, and SEO. Marketers don't need to wait on developers to implement changes and vice versa. So, teams are able to deliver digital experiences even faster by working in parallel and applying agile methodologies.

A headless CMS saves time since content only needs to be created once, and can be customized and distributed across platforms natively. Without the frontend layer and mandatory tech-stack of a monolithic CMS tying down the processes, performance, and capabilities of teams, embracing a headless CMS improves performance metrics for SEO across the board.

Easy integration with MarTech stack

In principle, this also ensures that a headless CMS can integrate and connect with every MarTech stack out there, as there are no longer issues related to native integrations, plugins, or compatibility. A headless CMS can allow you to easily hook up your favorite tools for marketing automation, CRM, CDP, analytics, performance marketing, A/B testing, and personalisation, either directly via API, or through a series of hooks - the combinations are quite literally endless.

Potential drawbacks

With a headless CMS, you must build things up from the ground up. As opposed to monolithic CMSs such as Wordpress, where SEO is handled by plugins (such as sitemaps, metadata, etc.), you will need a developer to set this up. You might encounter hiccups if you don't have enough development resources.

Headless SEO best practices

Use the Schema.org structured data markup schema

A joint effort by most of the major search engines, Schema.org provides web developers with a set of pre-defined properties to enrich their HTML tags. The on-page markup adds structure to content and makes it more understandable to search engines. Richer search results can be delivered.

Search Engine bots work hard to understand the content of a page. Helping them by providing explicit clues about the meaning of a page with structured data allows for better indexing and understanding. For example, here is a JSON-LD structured data snippet provided by Google that helps understand how contact information might be structured:

<script *type*="application/ld+json">  
{  
 "@context": "https://schema.org",  
 "@type": "Organization",  
 "url": "http://www.example.com",  
 "name": "Unlimited Ball Bearings Corp.",  
 "contactPoint": {  
   "@type": "ContactPoint",  
   "telephone": "+1-401-555-1212",  
   "contactType": "Customer service"  
 }  
}  
</script>

Similarly, if your content is more instructional or enhanced, such as when creating recipes or tutorials, structured data also helps your content show up as featured snippets within a graphical search result. An example would be googling “Apple Pie Recipe,” and instead of seeing a list of results leading you to recipes, you would see a “featured” result on the top, which would either be the recipe itself or a link to a chosen destination that is popular for the same query.

Ensure accurate and concise meta tags

Meta tags are the most essential descriptors of a page’s content. Not visible to the user, they help search engines determine what your content is about. The four key meta tags with their respective recommended maximum text lengths are:

• Title tag (70 characters)
• Meta Description - short description of the content (160 characters)
• Meta Keywords - what keywords are relevant for a page (5-10 keywords)
• Meta Robots - what should search engines do with a page

Since a developer freely designs the content architecture of a website with an un-opinionated headless CMS like Hygraph, the metatags should be added as String fields to all relevant content models. Content authors can then comfortably add the relevant metadata. When used with these best practices in mind, a headless CMS can enable better SEO results.

Regularly perform Lighthouse Audits

Lighthouse is an open-source tool for auditing webpages. It runs a series of tests on your webpage and generates a report with a lighthouse score and a series of recommendations. The audit categories include performance, accessibility, progressive web apps etc.

More recently, a surge in Static Site Generators, like Gatsby and Hugo, have also made a compelling argument for going headless when starting new projects. When testing Gatsby’s starter out of the box, performance scores are very high compared to starting with basic themes from most legacy CMS, giving new projects a head-start on page performance and optimization.

Using React or Vue – SEO is in your hands

Although loading speed definitely favors single page applications built with React and Vue, there are a few SEO challenges that can be avoided if you take the necessary precautions.

Adding a component for your metadata is essential. However, a JavaScript-powered web application that renders dynamically on the client-side may not be crawled and indexed at all. Components that are not properly read will be assumed to be empty. Here are some measures to properly manage your metadata:

• To manage the metadata of a React web app, take a look at React Helmet. A component like React Router will make the URL structure of your website more search engine friendly by creating paths between different pages.
• If JavaScript is disabled on the client side, you can look into Isomorphic Javascript technology, which runs JavaScript on the server-side before sending it to the client. Alternatively, a tool like Prerender will pre-render the website and return the content in full HTML.

Use a static site generator

SSGs like Hugo, Jekyll, and Gatsby often take care of the major technical SEO challenges for you. Not only do they guarantee an amazing loading time due to the application being pre-built when delivered, but they also do the heavy-lifting in regard to metadata management and mapping your content. Check out Gatsby’s React Helmet and Sitemap plugins.

Use a CDN

A Content Delivery Network, like Cloudflare, allows you to distribute your content across a wide network of servers, usually distributed globally. When a user makes a call to your website, your website responds with two things: the basic text and data, and instructions to pull the media and/or scripts from the CDN. The user’s browser obeys those instructions and asks the CDN for the media.

Optimize media and images for SEO

Fine-tuning how a website treats assets and optimizing their usage can provide admirable contributions to SEO when done right.

Ensure that assets uploaded by the content team get properly resized and compressed to avoid adverse impacts on page performance. When new posts are created, ensure that the content team is able to provide relevant file names and alt-attributes for the images to follow best practices when being indexed.

In the case of Hygraph, you can pre-define the desired maximum size of your image assets in your GraphQL query. Even if an inexperienced content creator uploads a large image to the CMS, your precautions will take care of fast loading times.

Make use of Lazy Loading of images and video. The most essential content is downloaded first and only when required do media resources get fetched. Page size goes down, page load time goes up.

Use images in the SVG or WebP format. They are vectorized for the best quality and optimized in size for the fastest loading possible.

Add Open Graph metatags for your images. Users get a quick visual summary of your content, so Google loves them.

Use SSL

Secure your communication with users by upgrading to HTTPS. Users are more conscious about websites that aren’t secure by default, and with Google marking HTTP websites as insecure, there’s no excuse to avoid adding that layer of encryption and security.

HTTPS websites load much faster, and as we know, page speed plays an important role in ranking. More specifically, HTTPS has been a factor in Google’s ranking algorithms since 2014.

Make use of the Knowledge Graph for SEO

The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google and its services to enhance its SERP with information gathered from a variety of sources - which is presented as an info-box next to results for rapid consumption of search queries.

Depending on your use case, structured data might contribute to Google's Knowledge Graph to provide your readers with better results, relevant links, and upfront information. For context, the Knowledge Graph is applicable to a variety of entities, including but not limited to local businesses, public personalities, brands, attractions, etc.

Common information that is part of the Knowledge Graph includes factors like reviews, opening hours, contact information, directions, links to sources, etc.

Information from the Knowledge Graph is used to answer direct spoken questions in Google Assistant and Google Home voice queries.

Keyword research

The precursor to well optimized pages are relevant content needs. No SEO campaign would exist if people didn't know what search terms visitors are using to search for products or services. Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, and a wide range of tools and services can help identify both short- and long-tail keywords. Building quality around highly-searched and relevant keywords can dramatically improve reader relevance and reduce bounce rates.

Use concise, SERP-friendly URLs

Ensure that all pages follow a friendly URL structure.

A clear SERP friendly URL reads similar to example.com/about-this-page.

A complicated and unclear URL reads similar to example.com/products/page-id-1231/2019-09-01

SEO friendly URLs are designed to match what people are searching for with better relevance and transparency of where their click leads to. URLs that are keyword-rich and short tend to perform better than longer ones.

Create content with quality for humans

Consider this to be the number one rule when it comes to creating content with your headless CMS. High-quality content that is engaging, informative, and relevant is a strong SEO factor as it reduces bounce rates, increases time on page, could improve UX, and results in high relevance scores.

Always aim for a conversational and friendly tone with all your content, and match it to your brand persona.

Describe your content with focus keywords early on, and include focus keywords in the URL

Your URL should encourage the inclusion of the target keyword for your page, with the content itself having clearly defined tags like H1, H2, etc. When you include a keyword in your URL, the keyword tells search engines that "This page is about this keyword," and having meta tags enforce that content correlation strengthens your page's relevance to the search.

This lets Search Engines know exactly what your content is about, and how relevant it would be for a user searching for those queries.

Similarly, using the focus keywords higher up in the article increase their relevance to search results. If your page is talking about pizza in New York, having a URL like example.com/new-york-pizza combined with talking about "New York pizza" in the first few sentences would send strong signals to SERPs.

Create content regularly

While the quality of content that you produce is important, and quality trumps pure quantity, we can't deny the perception of larger websites to smaller ones. SERPs tend to prefer larger websites since they are more content heavy, indicating a more mature and established brand. Similarly, the UX wouldn't be exceptional when looking for information only to find a website that has a few pages. To make your site larger, you need to get into the habit of producing high-quality content on a consistent basis.

XML Sitemaps

To ensure search engines index all of your content, you need to create, maintain, and update an XML sitemap, and accordingly submit them to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster, and similar. There are many tools that are available that can help you with this when using a headless CMS like Hygraph. Either you can generate one yourself based on your page structures, or use tools like Gatsby's Sitemap Plugin.

Use canonical URLs and practice internal linking

SERPs tend to lose their preference for websites that create too much duplicate content, even when necessary (like in the case of eCommerce websites with multiple variations of the same product). But it is less about the main body of the content, it is more to do with the tags and HTML duplication that appears in a repetitive manner. Implementing canonical URLs for duplicated content with minor differences will notify search engines that duplicated content should take precedence.

Similarly, internal linking adds authority to pages you control and lets search engines understand what content is relevant to the other. Strong internal linking and high-quality content further enrich site extensions on Google, allowing readers to get relevant and related results for their queries, increasing their likelihood of clicking onwards.

Be mobile SEO ready

With over 50% of all searches on mobile devices, businesses no longer have an excuse for having their content purely optimized for desktop traffic. When optimizing mobile experiences, avoid using Flash since it may not be available on the user's phone. Use HTML5 instead.

Additionally, don't block CSS, JavaScript, or images. In the past, most mobile devices couldn't support all the elements, so developers either blocked one or all three. But nowadays, this is no longer a worry. The Googlebot now wants to see all elements of your mobile site to determine whether you have a responsive site or a different mobile offering. In fact, Google is aggressively indexing websites "mobile-first", and placing greater importance on mobile-friendliness for websites that are indexed.

Be voice SEO ready

In 2016, 20% of all queries on Google were voice-based. By 2020, it's predicted that the number will rise to almost 50%. Voice readiness and optimization are no longer a passing fad, and businesses are struggling to grasp "voice readiness." Although the combination for a Headless CMS and Voice Search deserves its own piece, in summary, to rise to "position 0," a few factors play in parallel.

• Use structured data.
• Claim your business' information across reputation platforms to contribute to the Knowledge Graph.
• Be mobile-friendly.
• Create content answering questions rather than discussing topics.
• In a headless CMS, developers have more control over the technical aspects of SEO implementation .
• the flexibility of headless CMS allows for advanced SEO strategies, such as translating URL slugs for multilingual websites, which can give you a global SEO advantage.

Ensure your pages are easily sharable

Lastly, ensure that pages are easily shareable. We’ve covered the importance of having OpenGraph and Twitter Card enabled meta information, making it easier for links shared to carry forward the correct images and page information. Having pages that can easily be shared via Social Media and Bookmarking sites with images, headers, and titles makes it easier for readers to amplify the reach of a page, allowing for overall improvements in backlinks, referral traffic, and brand awareness - giving extra strength to your pages and increasing their trustworthiness when being ranked.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are headless CMSs good for SEO?

There is no a yes or no answer to this. The SEO accessibility that comes included with a traditional CMS such as WordPress doesn’t exist as standard for a headless CMS. With a Headless CMS, SEO is treated as data, giving the user complete control over defining what SEO means for them from a technical and operational standpoint.

How does a Headless CMS impact SEO?

A correctly set up headless CMS can have far more significant SEO benefits than a traditional CMS if it is rightly considered and planned for, beginning with sound technical implementation. The benefits of using a headless CMS include greater site speed, full control of URLs, flexible site architecture, and the ability to control the technical setup far more than with a traditional CMS.

What are some Headless CMS and SEO considerations?

To begin with, ensure that you’re using structured content and structured data, with the correct schema markups for content types. Ensure all content has the relevant metadata and that URL structures and Assets follow best practices. Use modern frameworks to keep the performance of your digital content high, and follow commonalities such as ensuring HTTPS, generating XML sitemaps, and keeping responsiveness.

Do I need to worry about Server-Side Rendering (SSR) with a Headless CMS?

Although Google is able to crawl client-side rendered applications, there are still a few reasons why server-side rendering (SSR) might be preferable.

• Most other search engines still don’t crawl client-side rendered content.
• Googlebot might run on an old version of Chrome that is not supported by your app.
• There are a different set of challenges when crawling JavaScript websites, especially client-side.

What are Headless CMS and SEO best practices?

1. Use the Schema.org structured data markup schema
2. Ensure accurate and concise meta tags
3. Regularly perform Lighthouse Audits
4. Using React or Vue – SEO is in your hands
5. Use a static site generator
6. Use a CDN
7. Optimize media and images for SEO
8. Use SSL
9. Make use of the Knowledge Graph for SEO
10. Keyword research
11. Use concise, SERP-friendly URLs
12. Create content with quality for humans
13. Describe your content with focus keywords early on, and include focus keywords in the URL
14. Create content regularly
15. XML Sitemaps
16. Use canonical URLs and practice internal linking
17. Be mobile SEO ready
18. Be voice SEO ready
19. Ensure your pages are easily sharable

What is headless SEO?

Headless SEO is the process of optimizing a headless CMS to perform better in organic search. It involves managing metadata, structured data, and content models directly in your architecture rather than relying on plugins.

How do I implement SEO in a headless CMS?

Define SEO fields in your content models, use Schema.org markup, ensure clean URL structures, and optimize media. Developers should integrate SEO into the architecture from the beginning.

What are the main SEO benefits of a headless CMS?

Key benefits include faster page performance, mobile and voice search readiness, full control over URLs, and omnichannel content delivery.

How should I optimize media in a headless CMS? Use WebP or SVG formats, compress and resize images, add descriptive alt text, and enable lazy loading for faster performance.

How can structured data improve headless CMS SEO?

Structured data helps search engines interpret your content, qualify for rich results, and even surface answers in voice search devices.

What are common challenges in headless CMS SEO?

Challenges include the need for developer support to configure SEO fields, the absence of out-of-the-box plugins, and the need to maintain structured data manually.

How often should I perform SEO audits on a headless CMS site?

Run Lighthouse audits regularly, ideally monthly, to check performance, accessibility, and technical SEO issues.

Can headless CMS support multilingual SEO?

Yes. You can translate URL slugs, add hreflang tags, and manage metadata for multiple locales to expand global reach.

Key takeaways

• A mobile CMS can help companies create and deliver content worldwide to billions of mobile devices.
• A true mobile CMS gives you all the features of a mobile BaaS and editorial workflows for non-technical users.
• A mobile CMS enables you to deliver content to any portable device, including smartphones, tablets, watches, and VR headsets.
• Headless CMS consistently generates more advantages than legacy CMS in a mobile-first and IoT world.

As of 2024, it is estimated that 4.88 billion people use smartphones worldwide, a number forecasted to reach 6 billion by 2027.

At the same time, mobile applications present massive opportunities to businesses and individuals. Having a mobile presence lets you engage with clients better, collect more in‑app data, and unlock enhanced monetization.

No matter whether your business is looking to launch an app, or you are trying to develop one with a mobile-friendly CMS, we will walk you through everything you need to know, from the characteristics of a true mobile CMS to how to choose the one that suits you best.

What is a mobile content management system?

A mobile content management system (CMS) is a type of content management system that enables organizations to create, manage, and deliver content to mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, watches, and VR headsets.

With a mobile CMS, brands are able to deliver content to a whole variety of mobile devices, whether they choose to access that content via Android, iOS, or a progressive web application (PWA).

What does a mobile CMS do?

A mobile CMS enables businesses to perform a number of different tasks, which is why there are various interpretations of what a mobile CMS does. With a mobile CMS, you can:

Manage content in native mobile apps

For example, if you have an iOS or Android app where users can purchase cars, a mobile CMS can store all relevant car information and deliver it to your app on both mobile platforms.

Manage content on mobile-responsive websites

In addition to your iOS and Android apps for selling cars, you might also have a website that people visit from various mobile devices. If users don’t have a native mobile app installed, they can open a mobile-optimized website instead.

A mobile CMS could help manage content for this website by supporting content delivery to all possible screen sizes, aspect ratios, and resolutions across smartphones and tablets.

Run a mobile application to manage an existing CMS instance

Companies with a website and a CMS might need a mobile app to manage content on the go. For example, if you have a news website built with a traditional CMS like WordPress, you could create an iOS or Android application to add new articles and update existing news stories as they develop on the go.

Characteristics of a true mobile CMS

A true mobile CMS offers the capabilities to create and deliver content to mobile devices and gives technical and non-technical users the features they need to manage that content.

Mobile content publication

A mobile CMS needs to easily publish content to multiple mobile platforms, including ones that may not even exist yet. For example, Hygraph offers API-first content delivery to mobile-responsive websites, apps, tablets, and any device imaginable.

Workflow management

A mobile CMS needs to offer editorial workflows, especially for non-technical users. It should support agile teams and allow them to deliver projects faster, allowing editorial and development teams to work in parallel.

Dynamic content

A mobile CMS needs to support dynamic content that changes frequently without delays in the release cycle. A headless CMS like Hygraph allows you to "create once, populate everywhere", freeing you from doing duplicated content work.

Localization

Considering the escalating consumption of content globally and the vast number of mobile devices available, a true mobile CMS should support localization and multiple mobile frameworks.

Security

Authentication, monitoring, encryption, and compliance features are used to secure all data shared with the mobile device. Hygraph’s security features include enterprise-grade security measures and governance to handle secure data and ensure compliance.

Why you should use a headless CMS to manage mobile content

Here are some of the reasons why a headless CMS is an ideal solution for managing mobile content:

API-first

A headless CMS is API-first. Unlike traditional content management systems, such as Drupal and WordPress (where the API can be added via third-party plugins or was added at a much later stage of development), a headless CMS is built from the ground up with the API at its heart. This can either be a legacy REST API or a GraphQL API.

Separation of concerns

A headless CMS separates content from the presentation layer (frontend). Giving the right tools to the right people is another differentiating factor of a headless CMS. Developers can match the right presentation of content to the right platform via the API, while content creators produce and manage content with the tools they’re used to.

Built for multiple devices

A headless CMS is natively multi-platform and omnichannel-ready. It provides content via an API and doesn’t dictate how content needs to be presented. Such a content management system, by nature, supports all platforms — from smartwatches and smart fridges to AR and VR platforms.

Theoretically, as long as a device can receive content via API, a headless CMS can deliver content.

Performance and security capabilities

A headless CMS guarantees stability, API performance, and security. Though there are self-hosted options for headless CMS, it is better to rely on a cloud-based provider’s expertise and full-time dedication to manage the critical aspects of system stability.

This way, developers can focus on building engaging mobile applications instead of doing risk-heavy DevOps infrastructure work.

Alternative ways to manage content for native mobile apps

A mobile CMS is built to create and manage content delivered to a mobile device. However, many organizations end up using alternative methods to manage content for their mobile apps.

Build a mobile app and use it to manage content

The most common alternative companies use instead of a mobile CMS is building a native application. This offers a straightforward option for content, as all the content needed for the app could be hardcoded into the application itself.

However, while this option is suitable for minimal or static apps that don’t require frequent updates, there are some drawbacks.

Drawbacks of this approach

• A dynamic mobile application will be pretty large and take up a lot of space locally. Running this application also requires a lot of processing power from the device. The result is a slow and unresponsive application that damages the user experience.
• Any content changes are considered changes to the application and must be submitted to the App Store or Play Store each time there is an update. Each version will need to be reviewed and approved on top of the lengthy delivery cycles.
• Changes to apps found on multiple platforms will need to be made manually and simultaneously to keep everything in sync. This might seem like a small effort when running an iOS or Android app, but adding other devices later on will complicate things tremendously.

Use Mobile Backend-as-a-Service (Mobile BaaS)

Instead of hardcoding content for a mobile app, organizations can also use the mobile backend as a service. Mobile BaaS, or Mobile Backend as a Service, is a cloud computing model that provides a platform for developers to build and manage the backend infrastructure required for mobile applications. It offers pre-built backend services and features that can be accessed through APIs.

If you’re keen on open-source software, Parse is a good option, while Kinvey is a suitable option for enterprise companies.

Drawbacks of this approach

While mBaaS is a great alternative to hard-coding content within the mobile application itself, it’s only good for simple, non-content-heavy applications, where the content is primarily static and there is no actual content management system component.

On the other hand, for mobile applications that need content updated frequently or where there is a need for proper editorial workflows, especially involving non-technical users, mobile BaaS isn’t the best option.

| Recommended reading Delivering in-app content for content-intensive applications What is a Component Content Management System (CCMS)? Hygraph powers Fitfox's new mobile-first product with a headless CMS DTM's migration to a headless CMS to empower user-centric digital transformation |

Challenges of mobile content management

While a headless CMS provides vital tools for mobile content management, mobile content still comes with its own share of complexities.

Some of the challenges that organizations need to worry about include:

Platform differences: iOS vs. Android

Each operating system has its unique code base (APK for Android and .ipa for iOS), and screen size and resolution vary wildly.

Another consideration is that Android leads globally with about 70% market share, while iPhones dominate in markets like North America and several European countries. So, if your goal is to reach both audiences, you may need separate apps for each or different interfaces if you go web-based.

Here’s how GDCh used an API-based headless approach to deliver the app content through a codebase that works with Web, iOS, and Android simultaneously.

Responsive design demands

Mobile devices’ screen sizes vary dramatically, from 1.5-inch smartwatches to 7-inch tablets, plus different aspect ratios. Building a mobile-responsive website means consistently delivering a smooth user experience across all of these screens, regardless of their sizes and proportions.

If you're adapting an existing desktop site powered by a legacy CMS, you might tweak themes or rely on dev/design teams.

On the other hand, if you’re building from scratch, it’s an excellent opportunity to go headless.

A headless CMS makes the whole process much more efficient: content is authored once and delivered via API to all platforms — including VR, digital signage, or smart devices.

Creating a seamless user experience

Although mobile is a popular channel, it isn’t the only point of customers’ interaction with a brand. That’s why it’s important to create a high-quality seamless user experience for every channel. Only a headless CMS that supports omnichannel delivery while giving creators and developers control enables truly seamless experiences.

Network and performance limits

Mobile users expect near-instant load times. Stats from Think with Google show that a 1-second delay can drop conversions by up to 20%. Another challenge is that in many regions, users still rely on unstable 3G/4G connections. When users abandon sites quickly due to slow load times, it also affects bounce rates and SEO, which is why lightweight content delivery via efficient APIs is essential.

Localization and personalization at scale

Mobile apps usually serve global audiences, which means multiple languages, currencies, and language-specific content. Personalization adds another layer, as users expect content tailored to their context, such as location, preferences, or devices.

Dynamic content delivery across thousands of devices and regions is a huge operational load that calls for a headless content platform.

Security and compliance

Mobile content often involves personal data collection, such as location, app usage, preferences, etc. Regulations like GDPR and CCPA apply across devices, which is why it’s critical to use secure APIs for content delivery. A single misconfigured mobile integration can lead to compliance violations or data breaches.

Here’s how Statistics Finland met the strict government-grade security requirements by choosing Hygraph to power its content platform.

Features to look for when choosing the best CMS for mobile

When selecting a CMS for mobile, these features are essential:

• Omnichannel: Your users don’t only interact on mobile. A CMS should deliver consistent content across apps, websites, wearables, and other platforms.

• Framework-agnostic (API-first architecture): An API-first CMS integrates easily with any frontend framework (React Native, Flutter, Swift, Kotlin), which gives developers maximum flexibility.

• Reusable, single-source content: Content created once should be distributed everywhere. This prevents duplication, reduces errors, and saves teams time.

• Integration capabilities: A mobile CMS must connect with analytics, personalization engines, eCommerce platforms, CRMs, and marketing tools to provide a unified stack.

• Intuitive editorial features: Workflows, previews, collaboration tools, and versioning let content teams manage updates without waiting on developers.

• Security: Since mobile apps handle personal data, strong authentication, role-based access, and compliance with GDPR/CCPA are non-negotiable.

• Scalability & performance: The CMS should support growth in traffic and content volume while at the same time ensuring fast load times across all mobile devices.

Conclusion

Managing content for mobile boils down to delivering seamless, consistent experiences across every device your audience uses. A mobile-ready CMS built on structured content and APIs makes this possible.

Learn more about how Hygraph supports application content by enabling teams to reuse content, reduce bottlenecks, and stay ready for whatever new platforms emerge.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a mobile content management system?

A mobile CMS is software that helps teams create, organize, and deliver content to mobile apps, websites, and other connected devices.

What does a mobile CMS do?

A mobile CMS centralizes content creation and distribution to ensure consistency across iOS, Android, and mobile web experiences.

What are the characteristics of a true mobile CMS?

Flexibility to publish to multiple devices, API-driven delivery, responsive design support, and performance optimization for mobile networks.

Why should you use a headless CMS to manage mobile content?

A headless CMS separates content from presentation, making it easier to deliver the same content across apps, responsive sites, and future devices.

What are the alternative ways to manage content for native mobile apps?

Some teams hard-code content into the app or use custom-built backends, but both approaches slow updates and increase costs compared to a headless CMS.

Challenges of mobile content management

The biggest challenges include supporting iOS and Android simultaneously, handling device diversity, ensuring fast performance, managing personalization, and keeping data secure.

Choosing a CMS has never been harder. With dozens of platforms, features, and buzzwords competing for attention, it’s easy to get lost. This guide cuts through the noise to help you focus on what really matters — finding a headless CMS that fits your team, your workflows, and your long-term goals.

Why choose a headless CMS to solve technical bottlenecks

Whether you are looking to migrate to a headless CMS from a monolithic, custom, or headless CMS, chances are you are making a leap of faith, believing that a fresh headless CMS will help you with technical bottlenecks after careful assessment.

In this section, let’s look at how a headless CMS can help you.

Break free from the legacy stack

Traditional CMS platforms often have a predefined tech stack, limiting your ability to adopt modern technologies. A headless CMS decouples the backend content repository from the frontend presentation layer, allowing you to use a more flexible and modern tech stack for your frontend applications.

With this freedom and flexibility, it's possible to deliver content to multiple channels, choose the best frameworks and technologies, and integrate with other applications more easily to build a modern, future-proof tech stack.

No more performance concerns

Headless CMSs can be designed to scale more easily since they separate the content management and presentation layers. This makes it simpler to scale each component independently. Maintenance and security updates can also be applied more seamlessly, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities.

Free to choose frontend framework

With a headless CMS, you can choose any frontend framework or technology that best suits your project requirements. This flexibility allows for a more tailored and efficient development process, enabling companies to embrace the newest technologies like Jamstack.

Provide design flexibility

Traditional CMS platforms may limit design flexibility due to their integrated templating systems. With a headless CMS, the design is detached from the content structure, giving teams more freedom to create unique and innovative user interfaces and deliver content to different channels without being constrained by templates.

Faster time to market

Headless CMS allows parallel development of the frontend and backend since they are independent of each other. Additionally, marketers can operate without developer intervention. This can significantly reduce development time, enabling quicker releases and speeding up time to market.

Reduce technical debt

Legacy systems can accumulate technical debt over time due to outdated technologies and codebase constraints. A headless CMS allows for a more modular and maintainable codebase, reducing technical debt by promoting cleaner and more modern development practices.

Reduce hiring bottlenecks

While legacy or traditional CMSs rely on templated systems or restrict the technologies developers can use, a headless CMS removes those restrictions. This reduces the potential hiring constraints and gives companies a larger pool of developers to choose from.

How to choose a headless CMS that’s right for your business

When figuring out how to choose a CMS, it’s easy to get distracted by long feature lists and vendor promises. The smarter approach is to step back and focus on important things, such as whether the platform aligns with your organization’s real needs. Here’s what to keep in mind from the very start.

Organizational goals and objectives

Identifying your key problems and goals as a department or organization will help you navigate the buying process successfully. Knowing your organization’s pain points will tell you what to look for in a headless CMS. This will also allow you to decrease the risk of buyer’s remorse and avoid overspending and overly complex solutions.

Feature creep curve

The complexity of products increases with time due to the continuous addition of newer features. Features released early are essential and solve core problems for most users. However, features released later are often non-essential and only solve a marginal amount of the issues for some users. The complexity caused by many non-essential features often outpaces the value they provide, and user productivity is often negatively affected.

Practical evaluation points

From the developers’ point of view, your headless CMS should align with your overall architecture strategy. On the content and marketing teams’ side, it should support smooth daily operations while staying future-proof.

Here’s a CMS requirements checklist with the most important points to consider:

• Define your storage architecture: Will you need a cloud-native system, on-premises setup, or hybrid?

• Select a hosting model: Consider SaaS (fully managed), PaaS, or self-hosting depending on your team’s technical capacity.

• Plan for integrations: List the critical systems (such as DAM, CRM, and commerce platform) that must connect seamlessly with your CMS.

• Evaluate scalability: Can the CMS handle traffic spikes, global delivery, and future growth?

• Review editorial workflows: Does it support roles, permissions, versioning, and collaboration features your team needs?

• Check API performance and flexibility: Ensure the CMS can deliver content quickly and in the formats your channels require.

Choosing a headless CMS: The CMS feature checklist

When moving to a headless CMS, there are some core headless CMS features that any platform you assess should provide. So, it should ensure that it checks the following boxes:

Content architecture and API designs

As businesses scale, intuitive setup and flexible content models prevent technical debt from piling up. At the same time, API design choices determine how efficiently your team can query, manage, and deliver content.

With GraphQL-native architecture, Hygraph emphasizes predictable queries, write/mutation support, and developer-friendly environments to ensure that brands can adapt quickly without bottlenecks.

Content delivery and performance

Modern brands can’t afford downtime or delays, especially across multiple regions and platforms. Performance-first delivery, backed by caching and CDN integration, enables seamless scaling to meet both enterprise and consumer demands.

General API considerations

A headless CMS that offers flexible management, reliable mutation support, and documentation speeds up adoption and reduces operational overhead. With internationalization, security, and role-based features teams can confidently expand across markets.

With an API-first CMS like Hygraph, APIs are not just delivery mechanisms but a core feature that enables scalable, secure, and future-proof digital experiences.

Editorial features

A headless CMS must balance developer freedom with content team usability, so editors can create, update, and publish content without friction. Faced with trends like omnichannel content, integrated DAMs, and SEO-ready features, editorial tools need to be intuitive yet powerful.

Business flexibility

More than just a technical decision, choosing a CMS is a long-term business investment. Flexible pricing, fair scaling, and transparent SLAs help companies avoid vendor lock-in while keeping room to grow.

Security, compliance, and privacy

In an environment of increasing regulation and global data flows, security and compliance are non-negotiable. From GDPR to SOC 2, customers expect providers to meet strict standards while still delivering high performance.

Auto-scaling infrastructure, encrypted data, and detailed audit logs protect both customer trust and operational continuity. Hygraph’s security features include enterprise-grade security measures and governance to handle secure data and ensure compliance.

Headless CMS picks by business need

​​Not every organization evaluates a headless CMS through the same lens. A publisher, an eCommerce brand, or a university will each prioritize different CMS capabilities.

To help you choose the best platform, we’ve put together tailored guides that highlight the best headless CMS options for specific use cases:

Purpose oriented

• Best CMS for building a website
• Best CMS for SEO
• Best CMS for eCommerce

User oriented

• Best CMS for developers
• Best CMS for publishing companies
• Best CMS for educational institutions

Frequently Asked Questions

What types of headless CMS exist?

There are usually two types of headless CMS. Open-source headless CMS, and Cloud-based (SaaS) headless CMS.

Some headless CMS options are completely open-source software solutions, meaning developers can access the source code if need be. Examples of this are Ghost, Headless WordPress, and Netlify CMS.

Many headless CMS options are cloud-based SaaS solutions that can either be hosted in the cloud or on-site. Popular headless CMS options include Hygraph, Contentful, and Contentstack.

What are common features of a headless CMS?

All headless CMS should first and foremost be API-driven and provide a robust Content API. These can either be RESTful or GraphQL H=headless CMS. They also commonly provide a GUI (Editor interface), act as a Content Hub, provide Content Versioning, Content Taxonomies, and User Permissions.

More advanced headless CMS would provide Digital Asset Management, Content-based Permissions, Webhooks & Integrations, and an SDK to manage content programmatically.

What are the benefits of a headless CMS?

Headless CMS often allow for multi-platform and omnichannel content delivery since they aren’t tightly coupled to the presentation layer or frontend. Headless CMS also give flexibility to developers to use their preferred frontend frameworks and backends, without “locking them in” to a predefined tech stack.

Who uses headless CMS?

Headless CMS are first and foremost used by developers, who define the content model and structure the content to be queried based on their use cases. Since headless CMS removes the static frontend delivery of a WCMS, presentation layers must be built before content can be delivered.

Once the structure is set, marketers and content editors begin to work with the CMS. While developers and programmers will likely spend the most time within a headless CMS, marketers, content creators, and content editors still leverage some features within one. In particular, written content and assets still need to be added to the CMS’s content repository.

What are the key features to look for in headless CMS options?

Once you have defined the needs around assets and content for your organization, it’s important to start shortlisting the requirements needed for a CMS. Several teams require extensibility, which headless CMS can easily accomplish. In the case of Hygraph, there are several native integrations, and for services that don’t have a native integration, one can easily be built by leveraging the granular webhooks features.

What are some challenges to consider when choosing headless CMS?

It can be quite tricky to make the transition to a headless CMS when coming from a pure Web-CMS background. Headless CMS doesn’t offer the traditional WYSIWYG feeling to content creation since they aren’t solely intended for managing websites and decouple the presentation layer from the back-end. Another big concern is usually SEO since headless CMS doesn’t offer the plug-and-play comfort of options like WordPress with Yoast. SEO has to be treated as “data”, and the technical foundation of the digital platform is at the hands of the development team.

What are the best headless CMS options for businesses?

Top headless CMS options for businesses include Hygraph, Contentful, Strapi, Storyblok, and Prismic. Each platform offers unique strengths, such as flexibility, scalability, and integration options. Hygraph stands out for its powerful content modeling capabilities, while others like Strapi and Storyblok cater to specific needs like open-source solutions. To explore the best CMS for your business, check out our detailed guide on the 5 best headless CMS options.

How to compare headless CMS options?

Start by defining your goals and workflows. Then compare CMSs based on ease of use, API flexibility, integrations, scalability, and security. Look for platforms that fit your team’s technical skills and long-term growth needs.

What headless CMS options work well with React?

Most modern headless CMSs work well with React through APIs or SDKs. Platforms like Hygraph, Sanity, and Strapi offer strong React support, which allows developers to pull content via GraphQL or REST and build interactive, component-based frontends quickly.

Why choose a headless CMS for digital-first businesses?

A headless CMS allows reusing content across multiple channels, including websites, apps, and emerging platforms through APIs. This makes it easier for digital-first businesses to stay agile, deliver consistent experiences, and scale content delivery as they grow.

Why choose a headless content platform over a monolithic CMS for your project?

Headless platforms separate content from presentation, which gives teams more flexibility than monolithic CMSs. They’re API-first, which means easier to integrate into modern stacks. This reduces bottlenecks, speeds up delivery, and allows content to serve multiple channels efficiently.

84% of companies think their existing CMS is preventing them from unlocking the full value of their data and content, according to a recent survey of 400 technology leaders on the state of content management systems (CMS).

The need to have more flexibility in how content is used, and reused, across the experience is a major reason why companies choose to move to a headless CMS. Instead of creating content that’s only meant to be presented one way on one specific webpage, a headless CMS structures content data so that it can be used in different ways across many channels.

A headless approach gives companies more choice in the data they use to create content and in how they connect the CMS with the rest of their tech stack. However, this flexibility can also bring more complexity. Teams need to go into the CMS implementation process with a good understanding of current needs, potential roadblocks, and future plans for scaling content.

Here are 6 factors to consider for a successful CMS implementation strategy.

1. Total cost of ownership

Calculating the total cost of ownership of a CMS, beyond just the licensing fee, can help you better compare your existing content system with a headless solution as well as properly scope the implementation process.

Costs to account for include:

• Implementation cost: This includes the time and resources needed for creating content structure, developing custom features, auditing and migrating content, data integration, and user training. As well the cost of working with an external CMS implementation partner, if needed.

• Maintenance cost: What parts of infrastructure, performance testing, monitoring, cloud hosting, site backups, and security updates are handled in-house and what is taken care of by the vendor as part of a software-as-a-service license? Do you need to factor in downtime costs for big version changes, or are updates rolling and backwards compatible?

• Operational cost: 74% of technology leaders say that improving the ability to expose data and content would significantly reduce operational costs. How can you set up the new CMS to eliminate content bottlenecks? What would the productivity savings be for development and marketing teams with these changes?

• Scaling cost: Can the platform easily support increase in traffic and API calls, or will it take substantial development to ensure performance? What effort is needed to add new services, data sources, and channels? Does the CMS vendor have a clear pricing plan to show how costs change as your business grows?

2. Frontend delivery

The core principle of headless content is that it can be delivered to any frontend (the “head”). An early headless CMS implementation step is deciding what frontend framework(s) to use, and understanding the APIs you’ll be using to connect content to frontend channels and other backend applications

Frontend frameworks offer logic and a library of code for efficient development of user interfaces (UI). The choice of framework depends on both your use case and on what technologies your team is already familiar with. Popular frontend frameworks include React, Angular, and Vue.js.

Most headless CMS solutions deliver content with either REST APIs or GraphQL APIs. A more technical comparison of these APIs can be found here, but in general:

• REST API: When information is requested, a REST API will send a full set of data back in a neutral HTTP format and the receiving application then chooses which pieces of data to use and how to use them. This “dumb pipes, smart endpoints” approach was critical to the rise of headless and microservice architectures.

• GraphQL API: GraphQL is a query language that was developed by Facebook engineers when they needed a more efficient way to fetch data for the News Feed section in the mobile app. GraphQL gives data a structure and hierarchy that makes it possible to request just the information needed instead of over-fetching a full set of data.

Both REST and GraphQL have advantages in different use cases. A GraphQL-native CMS, like Hygraph, is particularly useful for companies that use multiple data types and sources to power their content.

When choosing your CMS it’s important that the APIs not only fit your use case but are well documented and easy-to-use, as 92% of technology leaders find it challenging to manage the number of different APIs, standards, and interfaces needed for CMS development.

3. Team capacity and capability

Figure out what additional resources you need to get the system up and running. Does the vendor provide training, implementation guides, and direct support? Does your team have the time and skillset to do everything in house, or will you be working with a CMS implementation partner?

A good implementation plan also includes steps to make sure both developers and content teams are capable of managing the experience once it’s in place. As the most frequently reported challenge that technology leaders have with their CMS is that changes can only be made by a small number of people with the right skills.

This includes steps like involving both sides in the content modeling process, to making sure core features and workflows are in place, to providing clear onboarding and user training.

4. Content structure

To be able to deliver content to any frontend channel, a headless CMS needs to structure data so that it can be easily fetched by APIs.

In Hygraph, this is done by breaking up content into reusable blocks of information, or “content models”. For example, you could create a content model for hero banners, author bios, blog entries, product attributes, product categories, SEO information, or site navigation. Content structure includes a defined set of models, the data they require, and how they relate to one another.

Especially for teams coming from a page-based CMS, headless content modeling can take a whole new way of thinking about content production. It’s important to include developers, content editors, designers, and business stakeholders in this process to see the full picture of technical and marketing considerations and create a practical, scalable content structure.

For a more in-depth look at headless content modeling, check out the essential guide to content modeling in Hygraph.

5. Content migration

Once your content models are defined, you then need to migrate existing content into the new structure. With Hygraph, this is generally done in two ways:

• GraphQL mutations: Mutations are used to migrate assets and content data into Hygraph in a way that allows them to be accessed and updated using the GraphQL API.

• Content Federation: Hygraph uses a novel process called content federation to fetch data from multiple remote sources in a single API call. It allows data to continue to live in the original source, so there’s no duplication, while giving users one place to access and manage all information. Some companies use content federation to connect their legacy CMS with Hygraph, and then gradually migrate data as they step off the old CMS.

For more information, take a look at the developer guide on migrating to Hygraph.

6. Data integration

88% of technology leaders find that managing integrations and middleware is an innovation bottleneck. As tech stacks grow and companies shift towards more composable architectures, data orchestration will increasingly be what makes or breaks digital experience.

Hygraph’s Content Federation is a novel way of connecting data from remote sources that takes advantage of GraphQL’s ability to fetch only the information needed. It removes the burden of having to create custom middleware for content data, allowing teams to efficiently serve data from multiple sources with a single API call. Data continues to live in the original source, with Hygraph acting as an API gateway that grabs the most up-to-date information whenever it’s requested by customer frontends, internal users, or automated systems.

Future-proof content with a headless CMS

80% of technology leaders are concerned about how future-proof their existing CMS is.

A major driver to choose a headless approach is the ability to adapt structured content to new channels and applications without having to rewire the systems, and a good implementation plan helps ensure the content processes you set up today will be able to adapt to tomorrow’s needs.

Of course, the technology selection will also have a big impact on how future-proof your content is. Such as choosing a CMS that supports a composable architecture, where you’re not locked into rigid process or feature sets of a vendor, but can mix-and-match services to create your own tech stack. Or a software-as-a-service offering that takes the responsibility of maintenance and updates off your team’s plate.

To help companies evaluate and compare CMS options, we’ve put together a list of RFP questions for headless content platforms.

As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions about the Hygraph platform, our CMS implementation services, and how we can help solve your specific content challenges.

The diversity of customer needs and complexity of data scenarios that digital content is expected to handle is growing. Yet many teams are stuck on legacy technologies that make it hard to simply update content, let alone scale the experience to meet new needs.

A headless content management system (CMS) structures content data to be delivered to many different frontend applications - or “heads”. By structuring data, companies have the flexibility to adapt their content to a wide variety of channels, use cases, and integrations.

This article examines when a headless CMS is suitable and how companies in different industries use it to enhance their content experiences.

When to go headless?

Each use case for a headless CMS may differ. However, companies typically use headless CMSs for two main reasons:

You need the flexibility to build what you want

A headless CMS allows companies to build what they want to fit a particular use case. In contrast, traditional CMSs can lock developers into using certain frameworks or technologies and don’t allow them to build as they see fit.

The result is developers turn down business requests due to technical limitations. For example, it’s harder to build the mobile app version for the eCommerce store and pull information from the PIM system for swift updates on inventory levels.

On the other hand, a headless CMS allows you to choose your frontend technologies and frameworks, integrate easily with necessary tools (e.g., Algolia for search), and deliver features as per business requirements.

Businesses typically leverage the flexibility of the development process to create eCommerce websites, highly composable websites, and customer portals.

You want to leverage content-as-a-service (CaaS)

Content as a Service (CaaS) is a service-oriented model where the “Service Provider” delivers the content on-demand to the “Service Consumer” via licensed cloud-based subscription services.

This allows content to be created and stored within the CMS and channeled to any platform via APIs. It provides raw content to other systems that further refine the content to be rendered on the end platform.

Through CaaS, businesses can leverage a modular content approach. Modular content can be broken down into small blocks (such as author, title, and captions) rather than larger portions (such as an entire blog post).

This allows content editors to create content that can easily be used across projects. They can generate schema for complex content and reuse it more efficiently across different channels. Video platforms and media products, for example, have complex structured metadata. Headless CMS can store and adapt it to different use cases.

CaaS is used for various purposes, including knowledge management platforms, media platforms, B2B publishing websites, and product catalogs.

8 examples of successful headless CMS adoption

Now, let’s look at 8 examples of successful headless CMS adoption for different use cases.

1. Composable members platform

Industry: Consumer electronics

Use Case: Membership portal

Headless Success: Samsung Electronics Germany (SEG) went from a mobile-only members platform to a cross-channel solution that quickly responds to local needs and boosts customer engagement.

Samsung Electronics is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer electronics. Samsung’s German membership platform was originally created as a mobile app, but a web version became critical as the loyalty program expanded. The team quickly found it difficult to replicate the app’s functionality using Adobe Experience Manager's rigid templates. Any component that differed from the global AEM templates had to be statically built by an external agency and go through a time-consuming global governance process, which limited the team’s ability to meet local needs.

Moving to a headless CMS allows the team to structure content so that the same experience can be delivered to the mobile app and a single-page application on the web. With Hygraph’s API-first CMS, frontend developers can change the content structure and create features without impacting the global backend infrastructure, allowing them to quickly build and test local solutions.

Using structured content instead of static, hard-coded pages also means that content managers can now easily add and edit content independently. This has cut the time to update pages in half, leading to an estimated 15% increase in user engagement on frequently updated pages.

2. Website with structured content

Industry: Manufacturing

Use Case: Public website & B2B customer portal

Headless Success: Komax moved from a monolithic, on-premise architecture to a composable, cloud-based tech stack, improving site performance.

The Komax Group provides technical solutions for automated wire processing across multiple market segments. As the company expanded its online presence, scaling its on-premise Sitecore CMS solution became hard. It was a monolithic application, so even a small change could impact the entire system, which prevented the team from adding new features or integrating data from other systems. Updates were time-consuming, and content editing often required HTML knowledge, which led to many basic tasks being outsourced to a digital agency.

The team moved to Hygraph headless CMS as part of their overall switch from an on-premise architecture to a cloud-based tech stack by choosing best-fit solutions for content, product, and customer management and using APIs to connect the data and send it to the frontend. This decoupled setup allows developers to adapt to new requirements without having to rewire the entire architecture.

Komax specifically picked GraphQL-based solutions for their new stack because of the efficient way that GraphQL APIs fetch data. This ensures fast content delivery and makes it easier to support different data needs across the public website and B2B portal.

The new setup gives developers more flexibility, allowing the Komax marketing team to update content without worrying about taking down the whole system. Content editors now work with reusable components such as banners, buttons, and text blocks to create and [publish content](https://hygraph.com/docs/developer-guides/content/publishing-content) with no code needed.

3. Robust media platform

Industry: Telecommunications

Use Case: Video streaming platform

Headless Success: Telenor went from manually editing metadata to programmatically adding thousands of videos to their streaming platform every month.

Telenor is a leading Nordic mobile, broadband, and TV service provider and one of the largest telecommunication companies worldwide. The company had created a homebrew content solution to launch its video streaming service. Still, as the service became more successful, the team looked to move to a feature-rich CMS that could free up developers from manually editing thousands of metadata entries each month.

A headless CMS treats all content as structured data, making it a strong solution for metadata management. Telenor now uses Hygraph’s schema builder to define the metadata structure and programmatically adds, edits, and deletes metadata entries in bulk using GraphQL mutations. Developers can use programmatic updates to evolve and localize the metadata schema continuously. At the same time, a friendly UI makes it easy for the content team to work with and manually edit content data.

With GraphQL, data can be given a structure and hierarchy that makes it very efficient to fetch data from multiple sources. This is why GraphQL APIs are a good fit for the high-performance needs of streaming platforms. Telenor uses Hygraph’s GraphQL API to make millions of monthly API calls with less than 100ms latency.

4. Learning management system

Industry: Education technology

Use Case: Learning Management System

Headless Success: 2U uses structured content to efficiently handle the diverse content types and metadata needs of the education providers they partner with.

2U partners with colleges and universities to power online degree programs and courses, providing a Learning Management System (LMS) that gives students worldwide access to higher education. 2U had built a homebrew content solution to support its LMS platform and was finding it hard to scale content as it expanded to new partners, products, and use cases.

Working with a fully hosted, headless CMS makes it easier for the 2U team to work efficiently with their many education partners. As a software-as-a-service platform, Hygraph takes care of content infrastructure, and the UI features that make it easy for a broad range of stakeholders to work with content. It also provides granular user permissions, audit logs, and easy integration with single sign-on (SSO) services that keep partners’ data secure.

2U already used GraphQL APIs across its tech stack to ensure high performance when streaming education content, so a GraphQL-native CMS was a natural fit. 2U can now structure its partners' diverse metadata and use Content Federation to ensure fast load times of accurate, up-to-date content.

5. eCommerce website

Industry: Consumer goods

Use Case: eCommerce website

Headless Success: Lick created flexible content models that allow marketers to quickly build rich eCommerce pages without developer assistance.

Lick is an online home decor company that helps people transform their space with designer wall paint and modern wallpaper. They were already using a headless CMS to power their eCommerce site. Still, the project was built and managed by an external agency, and the workflow relied too much on the agency developing different content models for every new landing page. Lick wanted a solution that gave the internal team more control over using and reusing content.

Moving to Hygraph CMS was one step in Lick’s shift to composable commerce. They decided to develop the website in-house and chose a modular stack of tools connected by a homebrew REST aggregation layer. After shifting to the new stack, Lick has seen a dramatic drop in bounce rates on product pages, and “add to bag” conversions have increased by 20%.

With Hygraph, Lick developers can create flexible content models for repeating site elements, like product variants or paint colors. Marketers can use these models to build and publish unique landing pages without writing code.

The content models take advantage of GraphQL’s ability to structure complex data, allowing the team to easily define relationships between models and use GraphQL union types to use a single model for various use cases. Lick also sets field validations in models to ensure that content is published with all relevant data and that the customer experience is consistent.

6. Product inventory management

Industry: Consumer goods

Use Case: Product & catalog inventory management

Headless Success: Burrow adopted agile eCommerce with global product inventory management of over 20,000 variations in production

Burrow is a direct-to-consumer eCommerce furniture company from the US. As the company and product line began to scale, the Burrow team sought a backend-as-a-service system that allowed for structured content and was powerful enough to accommodate their ambitious pace of scaling.

By adopting Hygraph, Burrow created highly complex data modeling structures and content with over 20,000 variations of their core product line. The flexible content modeling and GraphQL relation types enabled the team to use Hygraph as a data-rich repository for their catalog content instead of a traditional PIM. In addition to the static website content, backend notifications, shipping notifications, and product availability estimates are also handled via Hygraph.

With Hygraph’s headless CMS, Burrow has built optimized workflows at scale. The development team can migrate content programmatically and update changes to product arrays and inventory, eliminating manual work and ensuring the end user sees the most accurate data. The clean Hygraph UI makes it simple for content managers to quickly update content without involving the development team.

Working with React, BigCommerce, GraphQL, and Express.js, the Burrow team has built a strong foundation for the future as they continue to grow. The Burrow team now has a scalable infrastructure using best-of-breed, MACH-compliant services to complement its business model.

7. B2B publishing platform

Industry: Technology

Use Case: News & publishing platform

Headless Success: BioCentury federates accurate data for biotechnology leaders

BioCentury offers a robust knowledge base for customers like C-level biotech executives and investors. However, the existing infrastructure has grown too complex, preventing BioCentury from delivering more content to customers and improving the user experience.

Previously, the BioCentury website had a monolithic setup. A rigid, template-based publishing process made it difficult for BioCentury to maintain a best-of-class user experience. With the previous CMS, improving content displays that matched their visions would have taken a long time, so BioCentury adopted Hygraph’s headless CMS.

Hygraph empowers BioCentury to create any form of content they imagine using structured content. The content team can now easily publish and maintain content on their frontend, using Hygraph as a headless CMS connected with CRM and eCommerce systems to programmatically create, edit, direct, and deliver content to the necessary places.

The ability to quickly create flexible content models has brought BioCentury closer to its goal of developing a robust content hub. The time from idea to publishing has decreased by 81%. BioCentury’s new website is a high-performing project powered by Angular, NodeJS, ZoneJS, Express, HammerJS, Stripe, and Hygraph. Since its adoption, BioCentury has increased content engagement by 120%.

8. SEO-friendly websites

Industry: Automotive

Use Case: High-performance website

Headless Success: AutoWeb upgraded the tech stack of its SEO-optimized website that makes 7-digit revenue using Hygraph

AutoWeb was one of the first internet companies in the automotive market to reach consumers across the U.S. Despite this, the technology used back then was not up to the task of delivering a modern digital experience. AutoWeb has, therefore, migrated from an in-house CMS solution to a modern content hosting platform and from the old stack to a Jamstack approach.

Before the change, the old stack did not let the team take a performance leap with the website. Furthermore, Autoweb's rigid backend made creating different templates and other content difficult.

Autoweb chose Hygraph for its ability to change the schemas and the level of customization it offered. Moving to a headless CMS improved Autoweb’s velocity and flexibility. The development team now spends days instead of weeks or months on new components, templates, or content initiatives. This allows AutoWeb to launch a site in half the time it used to. As a result, they increased overall monetization on their website, with the most significant increase being a 20% increase on one of their websites.

Considerations for a successful headless CMS adoption

Moving to a headless CMS means a paradigm shift for many companies. It can seem overwhelming with so many headless CMS vendors to choose from and numerous technology pieces to decide on. Here are some technical considerations to help you succeed in headless CMS adoption:

Content Modeling

A headless CMS usually comes with a blank slate, allowing you to create any schema you need. This enables companies to balance what developers expect from the schema and what editors expect. However, with this flexibility, it’s still possible to make structures too complex and surpass the required needs.

Before moving to a headless CMS, it is critical to assess your content and clearly understand how to map it out in the new system. Setting up an efficient schema is essential to ensuring both developer and editorial productivity. Some headless CMSs offer thorough onboarding processes to ensure your content models are thoughtfully set up. Use these experts to ensure your content models are carefully set up.

APIs

Headless CMSs typically provide RESTful or GraphQL APIs, enabling developers to programmatically retrieve, create, update, and delete content. These APIs enable developers to integrate content from headless CMSs into various frontend frameworks, platforms, and devices, giving them the flexibility to deliver content-rich experiences across multiple channels and touchpoints.

When selecting a headless CMS, it's crucial to consider the limitations of its API. These constraints often include rate limits on the number of requests allowed within a certain time frame, such as the number of requests per minute or hour. Understanding these limitations is vital, as exceeding them can lead to API throttling or temporary service interruptions.

Integrations

A headless CMS should be capable of seamlessly connecting with other components in your tech stack. That means integrating third-party services and tools like eCommerce platforms, marketing automation systems, analytics tools, and more.

For example, Hygraph offers three ways to extend its functionality.

Ready-made integrations: The Hygraph Marketplace is a collection of apps built by either Hygraph or its partners for developers to supercharge your Hygraph projects.

App Framework: Developers can use the App framework to extend Hygraph's UI. They can build apps integrating Hygraph with 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 stack, Remote Sources allow developers 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 and use only one API endpoint on your front end.

Headless CMS unlocks the full value of content

A headless approach helps companies organize, discover, and use their content data to meet diverse needs.

In a survey of 400 technology leaders in the state of CMS, 84% said that their current CMS keeps the organization from unlocking the full value of content. While CMS challenges differed in each industry, as seen in the figure below, the most reported issues overall were that changes can only be made by a small group of people (46%), difficulty adding new data and content types (40%), and difficulty integrating the CMS with other systems (36%).

The 8 examples of success in this article show that a headless approach can help solve each of these challenges.

In the modern era of content management, companies need more than just a headless CMS. They need a robust content platform that can manage content on any channel and integrate with other tools in the Martech stack to manage the digital experience from end to end.

Hygraph is a next-generation headless CMS. In addition to the marketer—and developer-friendly capabilities necessary to create and manage content experiences on any channel, Hygraph easily integrates with other platforms to help businesses orchestrate the entire digital experience.

If you’re interested in learning how headless CMS can unlock the full value of your content, we’d love to have a chat.