Frequently Asked Questions

Competition & Comparison

How does Hygraph compare to Sanity?

Hygraph and Sanity are both popular headless CMS platforms, but they differ in several key areas. Hygraph offers capabilities required by non-developer stakeholders, such as content stages, audit logs, and the ability to choose datacenter location. Sanity lacks these features and requires separate hosting for the editorial interface. Additionally, Hygraph provides a native GraphQL mutations API, while Sanity relies on its own GROQ query language and has limitations with its GraphQL API. For a detailed comparison, visit Hygraph vs. Sanity and G2 Crowd.

What makes Hygraph a better alternative to Sanity?

Hygraph is designed to meet the needs of both developer and non-developer teams. Unlike Sanity, Hygraph provides content stages, audit logs, granular permissions, and the ability to choose your datacenter location. Hygraph also offers a native GraphQL mutations API, backend agnosticism, and does not require separate hosting for the editorial interface. These features make Hygraph more suitable for enterprises with complex content management needs. Source: Why Hygraph is a better alternative to Sanity?

What challenges might you face with Sanity that Hygraph solves?

Sanity users may encounter challenges such as limited UI capabilities for non-developer teams, the need to host the CMS separately, lack of audit logs, and limited permission controls. Sanity also does not offer custom content stages, batch operations, or the ability to connect to third-party APIs. Hygraph addresses these challenges by providing an intuitive interface, granular permissions, audit logs, content federation, and seamless third-party API integrations. Source: Challenges you are likely to face with Sanity.

Features & Capabilities

What are the core features of Hygraph?

Hygraph offers a wide range of core features, including cloud hosting (SaaS), custom regions, GraphQL Content and Management APIs, public API permissions, API playground, frontend agnosticism, image delivery and transformation API, migration tools, granular user permissions, webhooks, global CDN, advanced cache invalidation, environment management, and the ability to connect to third-party REST and GraphQL APIs. For a full list, visit Hygraph Features.

Does Hygraph support advanced content modeling?

Yes, Hygraph supports advanced content modeling features such as schema builder, field validations, components, nested components, filters, flexible content modeling, localization (i18n), pagination, required fields, saved queries, searchable content, sortable relations, sorting, unique fields, and versioning. Source: Content Modelling.

What editorial and content management features does Hygraph offer?

Hygraph provides batch overwrites, batch operations (editing, publish/unpublish, delete), asset picker, booleans, color, date and time, enumeration, float, integer, JSON editor, map, markdown, multi-line text, references, rich text editor (WYSIWYG), single line text, custom metadata, custom roles, custom stages, global content CDN, GraphQL unions, image editor, project cloning, rich editing interface, SEO-friendly features, and static site generator compatibility. Source: Editorial Features and Content Management.

What digital asset management capabilities does Hygraph provide?

Hygraph offers asset transformations, integration with assets from Facebook, Google Drive, Instagram, system, and URLs, digital asset management (DAM), the ability to add fields to the default asset model, global asset CDN, and SEO-optimized asset management. Source: Digital Asset Management.

What integrations does Hygraph support?

Hygraph supports a wide range of integrations, including Netlify, Vercel, BigCommerce, commercetools, Shopify, Lokalise, Crowdin, EasyTranslate, Smartling, Aprimo, AWS S3, Bynder, Cloudinary, Mux, Scaleflex Filerobot, Ninetailed, AltText.ai, Adminix, and Plasmic. For more details, visit Hygraph Integrations.

Does Hygraph provide an API?

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

Pricing & Plans

What is Hygraph's pricing model?

Hygraph offers a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans. Additional API operations and asset traffic are available at incremental costs. Plans are available in both EUR and USD, and pricing is determined by project. For more details, visit the Hygraph Pricing Page.

Does Hygraph offer a free plan?

Yes, Hygraph offers a free forever community plan for developers. You can sign up and get started at Hygraph Signup.

Security, Compliance & Support

What security and compliance certifications does Hygraph have?

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

What support options are available for Hygraph customers?

Hygraph offers 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance. All users have access to detailed documentation, video tutorials, and a community Slack channel. For more information, visit Hygraph Contact Page.

How does Hygraph ensure data security?

Hygraph provides enterprise-grade security features such as SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, sandbox environments, advanced firewall rules, and the ability to choose your datacenter location. These features help protect sensitive data and meet regulatory standards. Source: Hygraph Security Features.

Use Cases & Benefits

Who can benefit from using Hygraph?

Hygraph is ideal for developers, IT decision-makers, content creators, project/program managers, agencies, solution partners, and technology partners. It is especially beneficial for modern software companies, enterprises looking to modernize their technologies, and brands aiming to scale across geographies or improve development velocity. Source: ICPVersion2_Hailey.pdf.

What business impact can customers expect from Hygraph?

Customers can expect significant business impacts, including time-saving through streamlined workflows, ease of use with an intuitive interface, faster speed-to-market for digital products, and enhanced customer experience through consistent and scalable content delivery. These benefits help businesses modernize their tech stack and achieve operational efficiency. Source: ICPVersion2_Hailey.pdf.

What customer success stories are available for Hygraph?

Hygraph has several notable customer success stories. For example, Komax achieved a 3X faster time to market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement with a scalable platform, and Dr. Oetker enhanced their digital experience using MACH architecture. More stories are available at Hygraph Customer Stories.

What industries are represented in Hygraph's case studies?

Hygraph's case studies cover industries such as food and beverage, consumer electronics, automotive, healthcare, travel and hospitality, media and publishing, eCommerce, SaaS, marketplace, education technology, and wellness and fitness. Source: Hygraph Case Studies.

Who are some of Hygraph's customers?

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

Technical Requirements & Getting Started

How easy is it to get started with Hygraph?

Hygraph is designed for ease of use, even for non-technical users. Customers can sign up for a free account and access comprehensive documentation, video tutorials, and onboarding guides. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months. Learn more at Hygraph Documentation.

What training and technical support does Hygraph provide?

Hygraph offers 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone, onboarding sessions for enterprise customers, training resources such as video tutorials, documentation, webinars, and Customer Success Managers for expert guidance. For more details, visit Hygraph Contact Page.

Where can I find technical documentation for Hygraph?

Comprehensive technical documentation is available at Hygraph Documentation.

Pain Points & Solutions

What problems does Hygraph solve?

Hygraph addresses operational pains (reliance on developers for content updates, outdated tech stacks, conflicting needs from global teams, clunky user experiences), financial pains (high operational costs, slow speed-to-market, expensive maintenance, scalability challenges), and technical pains (boilerplate code, overwhelming queries, evolving schemas, cache problems, OpenID integration challenges). For more details, visit Hygraph Product Page.

How does Hygraph solve pain points for different personas?

Hygraph tailors solutions for developers (reducing boilerplate code, streamlining queries, adapting to evolving schemas), content creators/project managers (intuitive interface, independent content updates), and business stakeholders (lower operational costs, scalability, faster speed-to-market). Source: Hygraph Product Page.

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

Key metrics include time saved on content updates, number of updates without developer intervention, system uptime, speed of deployment, consistency across regions, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, ROI, time to market, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage. For more details, visit CMS KPIs Blog.

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Hygraph Vs. Sanity

Explore Hygraph as a Sanity alternative

#Why Hygraph is a better alternative to Sanity?

Sanity and Hygraph both are popular choices for dev teams. However, unlike Hygraph, Sanity lacks capabilities required by the non-dev stakeholders in your enterprise.

Sanity’s UI is not the best for non-dev teams and lacks the CMS capabilities needed by them (e.g. content stages). Other downsides include having to separately host the editorial interface, not being backend agnostic, lack of a GraphQL mutations API and other GraphQL limitations.

Lastly, Sanity does not offer audit logs and the ability to choose your datacenter location, which are important capabilities that might be needed.

#Challenges you are likely to face with Sanity

You are likely to face these challenges when using Sanity:

  • The UI is not the best for non-dev teams. For example, it does not allow non-dev teams to create or edit the schema. Non-devs can’t customize how content is listed (create custom views), perform bulk actions on content, and much more.
  • You need to host the CMS yourself, but the data is hosted by Sanity. There are no options to choose from if you are looking to host in your own region.
  • It does not offer GraphQL by default and offers its own query language GROQ. GROQ is not a standard query API in the community, and many developers need to learn it from scratch while adopting it.
  • It also allows you to deploy a GraphQL API, but with limitations. It’s only available for content delivery and you would have to use the REST API for mutations. You would have to make some changes to your schema to make it GraphQL compatible.
  • If you use the GraphQL API, this makes the schema of your content public, so all types and fields will be introspectable by anonymous users.
  • It does not allow you to connect to any third-party API.
  • You can't define detailed permissions. For instance, you can allow a user to access “blogs”, but can’t add a condition (e.g., { "author": "John" }), or define stages or locales.
  • It offers no audit logs at the moment.
  • Lacks depth when it comes to certain content management capabilities. For instance, Sanity doesn’t offer custom content stages, batch operations, in-line or block embedding of content, the ability to create custom views, localized search, location based permissions, the ability to nest components and more.

On the other hand, Hygraph offers the capabilities to solve all of these challenges, making it a strong alternative to Sanity. Sign up for a free developer account to experience the difference.

#API and Core Features

HygraphSanity
Cloud Hosted (SaaS)
Custom Regions
GraphQL Content API
GraphQL Management API
GraphQL Native
Public API
Public API Permissions
API Playground
Frontend Agnostic
Image Delivery and Transformation API
Migration Tools
Simple User Permissions
Granular User Permissions
On premises hosting / Self
Open Source
Webhooks
Global CDN
Advanced Cache Invalidation
Environment Management (Master, Sandbox, etc.)
Connect to a Third-Party REST API
Connect to a Third-Party GraphQL API

Learn more about Hygraph's core features.

#Content Modelling

HygraphSanity
Schema Builder
Field Validations
Components
Nested Components
Filters
Flexible Content Modelling
Localisation (i18n)
Pagination
Required Fields
Saved Queries
Searchable Content
Sortable Relations
Sorting
Unique Fields
Versioning

#Editorial Features and Content Management

HygraphSanity
Batch Overwrites
Batch Operations (Editing)
Batch Operations (Publish/Unpublish)
Batch Operations (Delete)
Content Type: Asset Picker
Content Type: Booleans (Checkbox)
Content Type: ColorYes, plugin
Content Type: Date and Time
Content Type: Enumeration (Dropdown)
Content Type: Float (Decimals)
Content Type: Integers (Numbers)
Content Type: JSON EditorUnknown
Content Type: Map
Content Type: MarkdownYes, plugin
Content Type: Multi-Line Text
Content Type: References
Content Type: Rich Text Editor (WYSIWYG)
Content Type: Single Line Text
Custom Metadata
Custom Roles
Custom Stages
Global Content CDN
GraphQL Unions (Polymorphic Relations)
Image Editor
Project Cloning Unknown
Rich Editing Interface
SEO Friendly
Static Site Generator Friendly

Explore all of Hygraphs capabilities on our features page and docs.

#Digital Asset Management

HygraphSanity
Asset Transformations
Assets from Facebook
Assets from Google Drive
Assets from Instagram
Assets from Search
Assets from System
Assets from URL
Digital Asset Management (DAM)Plugin
Add Fields to the Default Asset Model
Global Asset CDN
SEO Optimized Asset Management

#Community and Resources

HygraphSanity
Examples : Blog
Examples : Gatsby
Examples : Gridsome
Examples : NextJS
Examples : NuxtJS
Examples : ReactJS
Examples : SapperTemplate project
Examples : Svelte
Examples : Union Types
Examples : VueJS
Reference App : eCommerce
Reference App : Events and Conferences
Reference App : Marketing Website
Reference App : Podcasts
Reference App : Travel & Hospitality

Explore more references on our GitHub profile, or view examples created with Hygraph and popular frameworks like Gatsby, NextJS, Svelte, Gridsome, and Vue, amongst others.

#Plans and Pricing

HygraphSanity
Additional API Operations1,000,000/month 10c/10,000 On top$1 per 25k additional API Requests per month
Additional Asset Traffic500GB/month 10c/1GB On top $1 per 100k additional API CDN Requests per month
Content Entries10,000 - unlimitedunlimited Assets, Documents, Bandwidth limited
Custom Pricing
Enterprise Plans
Free forever community plan
Free trial for Premium features
Monthly and Annual Plans
Plans in EUR
Plans in USD
Pricing ByProjectProject
Self Service Plans

Get started with a free forever developer plan or explore our other pricing options to accommodate your scaling needs.

#Security, Compliance, and Support

HygraphSanity
24/7 Infrastructure Monitoring
Advanced Firewall RulesUnknown
Audit Logs
Authentication
Backups
Choice of data center
Community Support
Customer Success
Dedicated Infrastructure
Email Support
Encryption at rest
Encryption in transit
GDPR Compliant Infrastructure
Hosted in Europe
Implementation Partner Network
Login with Github
Login with Socials
Onboarding and Architecture Support
Onsite Chat
Project Backups
Public Slack Channel
SLA Performance
SLA Support
Solution ArchitectsUnknown
SSO Support
User Management

Get started for free, or request a demo
to discuss larger projects