Common challenges include content silos, slow update processes requiring IT involvement, poor customer experience due to unsearchable or outdated catalogs, and limited flexibility to adapt or scale. According to a survey of 400 tech leaders, 91% considered content siloed and 92% found it difficult to keep data consistent. (Source: https://hygraph.com/resources/future-of-content)
Content silos make it difficult to keep product information consistent, especially when updates must be manually copied between tools or when duplicate content is managed for different channels and regions. This often leads to outdated or conflicting information across platforms. (Source: https://hygraph.com/resources/future-of-content)
Legacy systems often require IT or developer involvement for even minor updates, creating bottlenecks. In a survey, 48% of manufacturers cited this as their top frustration, as changes can only be made by a small group with the right skills. (Source: https://hygraph.com/resources/future-of-content)
Legacy systems can result in slow page speeds, hard-to-navigate catalogs, and unsearchable product information (often stuck in PDFs), leading to a poor customer experience. They also struggle to support complex catalogs, supplementary content, and personalized experiences.
Legacy systems often lack the flexibility to support new use cases, content types, languages, or channels. Making changes can be so complex and risky that teams avoid improvements, hindering business growth and adaptation.
An API-first CMS offers structured, searchable product content, omnichannel readiness, efficient content updates by non-technical users, flexible integrations with other systems, and a modular, scalable architecture. This enables businesses to manage complex catalogs, adapt quickly, and deliver consistent experiences across channels.
Traditional CMSs tie content to specific web pages and templates, limiting flexibility and scalability. API-first CMSs treat content as modular, structured data blocks that can be reused across channels and integrated via APIs, making them better suited for complex, omnichannel product catalogs. (Source: https://hygraph.com/learn/headless-cms/headless-cms-vs-traditional-cms)
Potential downsides include a learning curve for teams used to traditional CMSs, the need for development effort to design content models and integrations, and upfront implementation costs. Migrating legacy data can also be challenging if existing structures are inconsistent.
Key steps include involving cross-functional teams early, using an integration layer to orchestrate backend data, and starting with a small pilot project to prove value and work out challenges before full migration. (Source: https://hygraph.com/case-studies/komax)
Komax set up a GraphQL integration layer to coordinate data between Hygraph and other systems, raising their Google Lighthouse Performance score from 74 to 99 and streamlining content management. (Source: https://hygraph.com/case-studies/komax)
Hygraph enables businesses to update product details in minutes without IT help, provides fast-loading and searchable catalogs, maintains consistency across channels, and integrates with existing and future business systems using GraphQL APIs. It also supports rapid adaptation for new product lines, channels, and markets. (Source: https://hygraph.com/p/product-catalog)
Yes, Hygraph supports omnichannel content distribution, allowing teams to manage product content in one place and instantly update it across websites, mobile apps, portals, and other digital touchpoints. (Source: https://hygraph.com/use-cases/omnichannel-content-distribution)
Hygraph provides editing tools for non-technical users, including workflows, data validations, versioning, and custom roles and permissions, enabling teams to formalize and streamline the update process without developer involvement.
Yes, Hygraph can integrate with ERPs, PIMs, commerce platforms, and custom databases via GraphQL APIs, allowing businesses to orchestrate data from multiple sources and maintain a single source of truth for product content. (Source: https://hygraph.com/docs/integrations)
Content federation in Hygraph allows integration of multiple data sources without duplication, ensuring consistent and efficient content delivery across channels. This is especially useful for global teams managing complex product catalogs. (Source: https://hygraph.com/content-federation)
Hygraph provides comprehensive technical documentation, including API references, schema components, webhooks, and guides for AI integrations. Access all resources at Hygraph Documentation.
Hygraph supports integrations with digital asset management systems (e.g., Aprimo, AWS S3, Bynder, Cloudinary, Imgix, Mux, Scaleflex Filerobot), Adminix, Plasmic, and custom integrations via SDKs and APIs. Explore more in the Hygraph Marketplace. (Source: https://hygraph.com/docs/integrations)
Hygraph offers multiple APIs: Content API (read/write), High Performance Content API (low latency, high throughput), MCP Server API (for AI assistants), Asset Upload API, and Management API. Details are available in the API Reference Documentation.
Hygraph features high-performance endpoints designed for low latency and high read-throughput, actively measures GraphQL API performance, and provides best practices for optimization. (Source: https://hygraph.com/blog/improvements-to-high-performance-endpoint, https://hygraph.com/graphql-survey-2024)
Hygraph is ideal for manufacturers, retailers, and enterprises with large, complex product catalogs, as well as teams seeking to modernize workflows, improve consistency, and deliver omnichannel experiences. (Source: https://hygraph.com/case-studies)
Customers can expect improved operational efficiency, accelerated speed-to-market, cost efficiency, enhanced scalability, and better customer engagement. For example, Komax achieved a 3x faster time-to-market, and Samsung improved customer engagement by 15%. (Source: https://hygraph.com/case-studies/komax, https://hygraph.com/case-studies/samsung)
Yes. Samsung built a scalable, API-first application; Komax managed 20,000+ product variations across 40+ markets; AutoWeb increased website monetization by 20%; Voi scaled multilingual content across 12 countries. See more at Hygraph's case studies page.
Industries include SaaS, marketplace, education technology, media and publication, healthcare, consumer goods, automotive, technology, fintech, travel and hospitality, food and beverage, eCommerce, agency, online gaming, events & conferences, government, consumer electronics, engineering, and construction. (Source: https://hygraph.com/case-studies)
Hygraph eliminates developer dependency with an intuitive interface, enables non-technical users to update content, and streamlines workflows, reducing bottlenecks and delays. (Source: Hailey Feed - PMF Research.xlsx)
Implementation time varies by project complexity. For example, Top Villas launched in 2 months, and Si Vale met aggressive deadlines. Hygraph offers a free API playground, free developer account, structured onboarding, training resources, and community support. (Source: https://hygraph.com/case-studies/top-villas-case-study#why-hygraph, https://hygraph.com/case-studies/si-vale-case-study?)
Customers praise Hygraph's intuitive UI, ease of setup, and ability for non-technical users to manage content independently. Some users note a learning curve for less technical users, but overall feedback is positive. (Source: Hailey Feed - PMF Research.xlsx, https://hygraph.com/try-headless-cms)
Hygraph addresses developer dependency, legacy tech stack modernization, content inconsistency, workflow challenges, high operational costs, slow speed-to-market, scalability issues, complex schema evolution, integration difficulties, performance bottlenecks, and localization/asset management challenges. (Source: Hailey Feed - PMF Research.xlsx)
Hygraph offers three main plans: Hobby (free forever), Growth (starting at $199/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing). Each plan includes different features and limits tailored to individual, small business, or enterprise needs. (Source: https://hygraph.com/pricing)
The Hobby plan is free forever and includes 2 locales, 3 seats, 2 standard roles, 10 components, unlimited asset storage, 50MB per asset upload, live preview, and commenting/assignment workflow. (Source: https://hygraph.com/pricing)
The Growth plan starts at $199/month and includes 3 locales, 10 seats, 4 standard roles, 200MB per asset upload, remote source connection, 14-day version retention, and email support. (Source: https://hygraph.com/pricing)
The Enterprise plan offers custom limits on users, roles, entries, locales, API calls, components, and more. It includes scheduled publishing, dedicated infrastructure, global CDN, security/governance controls, SSO, multitenancy, backup recovery, custom workflows, dedicated support, and custom SLAs. (Source: https://hygraph.com/pricing)
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant (since August 3, 2022), ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant. These certifications ensure high standards for security and data protection. (Source: https://hygraph.com/features/secure)
Hygraph provides granular permissions, audit logs, SSO integrations, encryption at rest and in transit, regular backups, and dedicated hosting options. It uses ISO 27001-certified providers and offers a process for reporting security incidents. (Source: https://hygraph.com/features/secure)
Hygraph, as a GraphQL-native API-first CMS, offers greater flexibility, scalability, and integration capabilities than traditional CMS platforms, which are often limited by monolithic architectures and REST APIs. Hygraph's content federation and modular design enable efficient management of complex catalogs and omnichannel delivery. (Source: https://hygraph.com/content-federation)
Hygraph is the first GraphQL-native Headless CMS, features content federation, enterprise-grade security, user-friendly tools for non-technical users, and proven ROI with case studies like Komax (3x faster time-to-market) and Samsung (15% engagement improvement). It ranked 2nd out of 102 Headless CMSs in the G2 Summer 2025 report. (Source: https://hygraph.com/case-studies, https://hygraph.com/blog/g2-summer-2025)
Hygraph's GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, Smart Edge Cache, and user-friendly interface set it apart. It enables faster updates, easier integrations, and better scalability than traditional or REST-based CMSs, making it ideal for complex, global product catalogs. (Source: Hailey Feed - PMF Research.xlsx)
Hygraph empowers businesses to create, manage, and deliver exceptional digital experiences at scale, serving as a modern, flexible, and scalable content management system that simplifies workflows and enhances efficiency. (Source: manual)
Hygraph targets developers, product managers, content creators, marketing professionals, and solutions architects at enterprises, agencies, eCommerce platforms, media companies, technology firms, and global brands. (Source: ICPVersion2_Hailey.pdf, https://hygraph.com/case-studies)
Hygraph offers structured onboarding, webinars, live streams, how-to videos, extensive documentation, and a community Slack channel for support and guidance. (Source: https://hygraph.com/docs)
Notable customers include Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Komax, AutoWeb, BioCentury, Vision Healthcare, HolidayCheck, and Voi. (Source: https://hygraph.com/case-studies)
This page wast last updated on 12/12/2025 .
Written by Katie
on May 30, 2025Many companies with large and complex product catalogs, like manufacturers, digitize their catalogs in stages. First is getting information online, often as downloadable PDFs. Next is making product data fully accessible and always up-to-date, which is where teams often encounter challenges with their legacy systems. As these early solutions often lack the flexibility to structure product content to make it searchable and don’t make it easy to keep data consistent across a growing number of channels, languages, and markets.
This article takes a look at the key signs that an organization has outgrown its legacy product catalog management solution, and when a modern Content Management (CMS) is the best choice for leveling up the product experience.
For some companies, the legacy product catalog management system is a specific software like CMS, product information management (PIM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), or a custom-built application. While in plenty of cases the definition is much more vague, with product information being stored and managed using a variety of software, spreadsheets, shared drives, and portals.
Different legacy systems will, naturally, offer different benefits. Your solution might have industry-specific features, be conveniently bundled with other business tools, or have been custom-built around the quirks of your catalog.
However, the universal pro of any legacy system is that it’s already in place. People are familiar with it, the data is stored within it, and considerable cost and effort have been invested in setting it up and maintaining it.
This is a big pro. Even when legacy systems aren’t perfect, the current pain points and the potential benefits of a more modern solution have to be pretty substantial to outweigh the familiarity factor and warrant a migration.
Just like with the positives, each legacy system is going to have its own unique challenges. Considering that you’re reading up on alternative solutions for digital product catalogs, you’re probably well aware of the most frustrating parts of your current setup.
However, if the list below covers the major pain points of your legacy system, then it’s worth considering a move to an API-first CMS. These challenges, which are felt by many companies as they modernize their digital catalog, are ones that a flexible CMS can quickly solve.
It’s hard to keep product information consistent if it’s spread across a patchwork of poorly integrated software and spreadsheets. Especially if teams have to manually copy updates between tools or are managing duplicate content for different channels, regions, and markets.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In a survey of 400 tech leaders on the state of content in their organization, 91% considered content to be siloed, and 92% found it difficult to keep different data and content types consistent (84% and 91%, respectively, for respondents in the manufacturing sector).
With many legacy systems, updating the website is a very IT-dependent process. Often leading to major bottlenecks in getting new product information live, as even small changes have to be done by a developer or are outsourced to an agency.
According to the Future of Content survey, this is the most common frustration manufacturers have with their legacy CMS, with 48% finding it a challenge that changes can only be made by a small number of people with the right skills.
Updates tend to happen ad hoc when only a small group of people are able to make them, making it very difficult to have a formal process for managing product content. Which can lead to delayed product launches, outdated information staying live on the website, and missed opportunities for marketing and personalization.
Part of the problem is that with many legacy systems the backend and frontend is managed as one big application. So a change to the website can cause unintended errors across the system, which can make even simple updates feel risky and big improvements feel impossible. One of the ways that an API-first CMS helps teams speed up the update process is by decoupling the frontend and backend (more on that later).
When the Marketing team wanted to upload a video, they had to send it to the agency. They would upload it to a platform and send it back with an ID for insertion into the previous CMS. It was very time-consuming.
Digitizing the catalog is meant to make product information easily accessible, and getting it online is just the first step. If page speeds are slow, or the catalog is hard to navigate, or product information is stuck in PDFs and isn’t searchable, then it’s not a convenient experience.
A common issue with legacy systems is that they struggle to keep up as the catalog, and the content that supports it, becomes more complex. They can prevent companies from fully showcasing their catalog (variants, configurations, related products), providing helpful supplementary content (user guides, 3D models, comparison tables), or tailoring the experience to each audience (translations, regional availability, personalized portals).
It’s often hard to get a legacy system to support new use cases. Teams might have good ideas for how to improve the catalog structure, or internal workflows, or customer features, but the effort it would take to make the change prevents them from even trying. Holding back business from improving the existing experience, and making it nearly impossible to scale the system to support new content types, languages, and channels.
A content management system (CMS) is software used to create and publish content across websites, mobile apps, portals, and other digital touchpoints. There is a wide range of CMS solutions on the market that are designed for different use cases, from simple sites with a handful of landing pages to omnichannel applications with thousands of assets.
An API-first CMS sits on the more advanced end of this spectrum and, because of the structured way it handles content data, is the type of CMS that’s best suited for managing complex product catalogs.
With a traditional CMS (Squarespace, Wordpress, Sitecore, etc), you think of content as belonging to a specific webpage. The content model is tightly linked to page templates, limiting the ability to structure content to support integrations, omnichannel, and data-driven use cases. These CMSs might work for managing the product pages of a small and simple catalog, but they lack the database capabilities to handle large amounts of SKUs, variants, and complex product details.
With an API-first CMS content is created as modular blocks that can be used across many different pages and channels. Content data is highly structured so that it can be shared via APIs to any frontend or easily integrated with other systems. This structured approach makes an API-first CMS a good choice for complex use cases and high volumes of content, as it combines the efficiency of a database with the user features that make it easy to create and publish content.
Editor's Note
Product information isn’t managed as static pages but as a database, with companies having full control over the structure of their data. This allows the CMS to handle complex catalogs with thousands of SKUs and makes the product data fully searchable for end users.
An API-first CMS also adds metadata structure to all the content that gives context to the catalog like product images, CAD files, safety sheets, industry guides, and multilingual content. Ensuring this content is always shown alongside relevant products and is also easily findable via search.
A major benefit of structured content is that it can be reused across any digital channel. Teams can manage the catalog in one place and updates will be instantly seen across the website, mobile app, portals, and any other touchpoints. Making it easy to keep product data consistent.
Being able to reuse content doesn’t mean that each channel has to be a carbon copy. Businesses have the flexibility to create their own content model to tailor information to each audience. Such as localized and translated content, regional availability, or custom catalogs on a logged in portal.
An enterprise level CMS is going to have editing tools that allow non-technical users to create and publish content without the help of a developer. As well as features like workflows, data validations, versioning, and custom roles and permissions that help teams formalize and streamline the update process.
The modular structure of an API-first CMS also means that changes to one part of the system won’t disrupt the rest. So product and marketing teams can update content without worrying about accidentally taking down the website, and developers can quickly build and test frontend features without the risk of breaking critical functionality.
Having all content and functionality shared via APIs makes it easy to integrate the CMS with other systems like an ERP, PIM, CPQ, commerce platform, or custom database. Businesses can quickly integrate the CMS with existing tools to get up and running, with the flexibility to add and replace data sources over time as needs change.
Data can continue to live in your existing systems but teams can access and manage that data directly in the CMS. Providing a single source of truth for product content without having to duplicate data.
In an API-first CMS functionality is broken up into discrete services. Each service communicates with the rest of the system using APIs and can be independently updated or even replaced. This modular design allows businesses to quickly adapt the CMS as needs change and as the catalog becomes more complex.
It also makes it easy to scale the system. New features can be built without having to start from scratch, and both content and infrastructure can be reused to quickly support new channels or launch into new markets.
Overall, this type of CMS supports a composable approach to software architecture. Where businesses have the freedom to “compose” their own tech stack of best-of-breed tools that are designed to easily integrate with others. Rather than being stuck in the traditional replatform cycles of a monolithic system, companies can continuously add, expand, and swap out the components of their stack to quickly adapt to new needs. Making a composite approach a much more future-proof setup.
If teams are used to working with a traditional CMS, switching to thinking about content in a modular way can take some getting used to. Training for content creators and developers should be factored into any migration plan and, if in-house teams aren’t familiar with headless development, it can be useful to work with an implementation partner to set up the system.
The flip side of offering complete flexibility over the content experience is that an API-first CMS doesn’t have an out-of-the-box data structure or website templates. It does take development effort to design the content model, set up integrations, and build out the frontend experience.
One part of the implementation process that can be particularly tricky is migrating legacy data, as it likely won’t match 1:1 with your new content structure. Especially if product information is currently spread across different systems without a universal structure.
An API-first CMS is going to come with upfront costs for implementation and, depending on your legacy system, might have a higher licensing cost.
The total cost consideration should also include the potential savings a more modern system could bring such as hours saved on maintaining infrastructure, updating content, having sales hunt down product information, and any bottlenecks the new system can eliminate. Along with potential revenue opportunities the new CMS makes possible such as expanding to new markets and attracting new customers.
Having spoken with many teams that have successfully made the move from legacy systems to an API-first solution, here are 3 of the most frequently offered pieces of advice.
Building the content model will take an in-depth understanding of the catalog and all its quirks, as well as a big picture view of the full lifecycle of product content from how it’s created, to who maintains it, to how it’s used by customers and internal teams.
Putting together a core team of representatives from different departments (product, development, operations, marketing, etc) to give input and feedback helps to ensure the model is comprehensive and to identify potential roadblocks early on. Plus, this team can be good advocates for the new system and help train others on how to use it.
A big benefit of headless architecture is the ability to bring together data from multiple sources into one frontend experience. A common way to facilitate this is using an integration layer to orchestrate backend data
This layer decouples the frontend from the backend, so companies can immediately start to use the latest frontend technologies to quickly improve the customer experience while modernizing the backend at a more gradual pace.
When Komax, the equipment manufacturer moved to a headless architecture they set up a GraphQL integration layer to coordinate data between their new API-first CMS, Hygraph, their existing solutions for product and customer data, and a modern frontend built using Nuxt. With this approach, Komax was able to raise their Google Lighthouse Performance score from 74 to 99.
The modularity of an API-first CMS means you don’t have to move off your legacy system in one big bang migration effort, but can step away in stages.
Many companies start with a small pilot project, like using the new CMS to manage a specific product category, brand, or regional site. Allowing them to learn the system and work out the kinks on less business critical areas, then steadily expand the new solution while gradually retiring the legacy one.
A pilot project that can solve a pain point of your current system is also a great way to quickly prove the value of the new solution and gain momentum for change.
Hygraph is an API-first CMS that gives businesses the tools to:
Ready to level up the product experience? Learn more about why Hygraph is the best solution to modernize and scale complex product catalogs.
Blog Author
Katie is a freelance writer based in Amsterdam who talks a lot about B2B SaaS and MACH technologies. She’s always looking for good book recommendations.
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