The 7 best Contentful alternatives for modern content management

Highlights

You’ll learn about the major advantages of Contentful alternatives, like:

• Flexibility and integrations: Seamless integration with CRM, inventory management and DAM, allowing developers to use any front-end framework
• Enhanced localization: Manage multiple language variants effortlessly
• API support: Other CMSs offer flexible APIs tailored to your customers’ requirements to provide a smoother workflow
• Higher security: The decoupled front end and back end enhance security and provide multiple layers of protection against cyberattacks
• Performance: Maintains performance during high loads
• Affordable: As Contentful lacks flexible pricing, you need an alternative with balanced setup and maintenance costs

Explore the best Contentful alternatives to improve your productivity and modernize your content management.

Keep reading to learn more!

The headless content management system (CMS) continues to make waves in the CMS space. The flexibility, agility, and scalability it offers make it a better alternative to traditional CMSes like WordPress, especially for enterprise content needs. However, while a headless CMS should be your go-to as a large enterprise with complex content needs, headless CMSes are not born equal.

If you have been in the market for one, you must have heard of Contentful. An established name in the headless CMS space, Contentful offers customization features, a high-quality API, workflow management, and flexibility, given that it is cloud-based. 

However, there are many reasons why it may not be the best choice for you. Its interface is not the most friendly one around. It also struggles with scalability and integration. You cannot customize the front-end framework where your data is hosted, which increases latency. Also, if you need to customize your platform, you’d have to depend on developers.

The issues highlighted are reasons to consider contentful alternatives, such as Contentstack, Storyblok, Sitecore, Adobe Experience Manager, Sanity, Optimizely, and Acquia-Drupal.

Top Contentful alternatives today

This is a list of incredibly robust and flexible CMSes with unique features that could transform how you manage content.

Contentstack

Contentstack is the premier headless CMS tailored for enterprise-scale applications, offering unmatched flexibility. Here are some features that make Contentstack the best alternative to Contentful:

• Flexibility: Contentstack is an ideal headless CMS for enterprise organizations with complex content needs. With features like modular content blocks, users can create and manage content. This platform supports complex content structures, version control and high-volume digital experiences, making it perfect for large organizations.
• Advanced rich-text editing: Contentstack’s rich-text editing capabilities allow users to effortlessly produce high-quality content. Incorporating various media types and formatting options ensures that your content is engaging and professional.
• Real-time live preview: Another feature of Contentstack is the availability of live previews. Your teams can see real-time changes in their edits, giving them an understanding of how the final product appears across multiple platforms. The real-time preview feature enhances your workplace collaboration and content accuracy.
• Integrated automation: Contentstack provides you with numerous integrated automation hubs and customization options. From ready-made extensions and one-click integrations to end-to-end automation with Contentstack Launch, the platform simplifies cross-stack integrations and manual routines, enhancing efficiency.

Case study: Why did a community platform prefer Contenstack over Contentful?

A community platform vendor faced issues with Contentful’s CMS and sought a headless CMS with good support. They narrowed down a few different systems and decided to go with Contentstack because of its intuitive design and easy integration. The onboarding process allowed the community platform to switch to Contentstack in less than one month.

They improved the publishing velocity by over 75% and conducted nearly 40% more content refreshes using Contentstack. The content output also increased by 50%.

After using Contentstack, the director of content said: 

“The versioning feature has been beneficial. ... I like how fluid it is when switching over to Spanish and then plugging everything in. Because we’re a bilingual site, the language capability is critical, and Contentstack shines in that regard.”

Read the full case study here.

Storyblok

Storyblok is another headless CMS with a visual editor that you can use to create any content. Due to Storyblok’s modular approach and granular access control, you can reuse elements. 

Storyblok also offers a user-friendly interface and visual editor, making it an ideal choice for content creators and editors to manage and preview content. Editors can enjoy working independently, while developers can control the system with its composable architecture. However, it is more expensive than many of the options on this list, and most of what it does well is mainly suitable for marketing teams.

Sitecore

Sitecore merges content management capabilities with marketing automation and personalization tools. This makes Sitecore a compelling option for large enterprises looking to optimize their digital strategies. Its visual tools remain popular, and moving to the cloud has made it more flexible. However, the platform’s complexity and high costs can limit its use, especially for small teams. There are also reports that its onboarding process is tedious, and making quick updates can be difficult.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)

Adobe Experience Manager integrates with other Adobe products, providing advanced analytics and personalized content delivery. It offers features like cloud scale and security, content intelligence, and adaptable content experiences. However, its complexity often overwhelms smaller teams. And while developers may love it, the AEM is not as easy to use or as flexible for marketers. Its operational costs may also be quite high. 

Sanity

Sanity outperforms many other CMSs in custom content models and real-time collaboration, making it the first choice for agile development teams. Creating special content structures depending on your project requirements is easy with Sanity. Users can also customize content and collaborate in real-time. Its GROQ query language and framework integrations also make it adaptable. However, working with Sanity requires significant effort from developers, including time and resources, which leads to dependency. 

Optimizely

Optimizely is a CMS platform that helps you experiment with and optimize your content. It also helps your teams test and personalize your content. Thanks to its powerful features, you can run A/B tests, multivariate tests and more, making it easier to make data-driven decisions that boost user engagement. However, the depth of its capabilities can overwhelm small teams without a solid technical background. Also, users have reported issues with updates and its steep learning curve.

Acquia-Drupal

Acquia-Drupal is another content management system for those who require a flexible and customized option. Although the platform offers strong content management features, learning and maintaining them can be challenging. Acquia-Drupal’s versatility means a steep learning curve and maintenance issues requiring dedicated resources and expertise.

Key features to look for in a Contentful alternative

Flexible integrations

Look for Contentful alternatives that offer seamless integration with other tools. Easy integration is a boon for developers and marketers, helping them use CMS with other platforms like CRM, inventory management and digital asset management (DAM). Using any front-end framework of your choice gives your developers freedom.

Content localization

For international companies, content localization helps manage multiple language variants of the same site. With a localized authoring interface, your content team can choose their preferred language to share content. 

Flexible APIs

Developers who adopt a headless architecture need API versatility to produce applications or web pages to clients’ specifications. Strong and stable API support enables efficient work with fewer disruptions and the opportunity to unlock extra tools and functions.

Security

Another benefit of using a Contentstack content management system is that it’s hosted entirely on a different platform and infrastructure, away from the front end. Decoupling the front end and back end enhances security by requiring criminals to attack multiple systems and infrastructure to gain control of your website. Cyberattacks become minimal because each actor has a security protection layer, and breaking into each is extremely time-consuming. 

Performance and scalable nature

Performance and scalability are key factors in designing any system or application. Performance is about how well a system can carry out tasks under different conditions, while scalability measures the CMS’s ability to manage increased loads or grow when needed. A well-optimized system responds quickly while maintaining performance even when more users or transactions occur. 

ROI considerations

Consider the initial setup and ongoing maintenance expenses when choosing a headless CMS. Your CMS should balance out these costs while delivering superior content creation, management and distribution. When choosing alternatives to Contentful, know the following costs:

• Initial setup cost, including annual and monthly software licensing, hardware cost and implementation cost
• User limits
• Monthly API calls
• Specifications for ongoing hosting and support

Ease of use and developer-friendliness

The ease of use and developer-friendliness of a tool increase workplace productivity and spark creativity. A user-friendly interface, clear documentation and intuitive design help your developers create custom software. Plus, streamlined workflows and strong support communities can enhance the development experience. A developer-friendly CMS enables your developers to focus on creating innovative solutions, rather than worrying about complicated processes.

FAQs

Who does Contentful compete with?

Contentful is a competitor of headless CMS platforms like Contentstack, Storyblok and Sanity, along with traditional CMS solutions like WordPress and Sitecore.

What is the difference between Contentstack and Contentful?

Contentstack offers better workflows, a cloud-native headless CMS, better multi-cloud support and more customization than Contentful. These features make Contentstack a preferred choice for enterprises seeking a CMS with scalable and secure features. 

What type of CMS is Contentful?

Contentful is a headless CMS. It decouples your content management layer from the content presentation layer. The headless architecture provides flexibility in delivering content across various digital platforms.

Learn more

A headless CMS is the ultimate tool for enterprise organizations with complex content needs. It offers more flexibility, scalability, and agility than you could ever get from traditional CMS. However, each headless CMS platform offers unique features and capabilities that may be suitable for specific use cases. In making your decision, try out several platforms and discuss them with your team to make an informed decision. 

While there are many Contentful alternatives to choose from, Contentstack stands out as the ideal choice for enterprise organizations. It offers robust APIs and SDKs, and a headless architecture that gives you complete control over where to publish your content. It is also easy to use and built on MACH principles from the ground up, making it future-proof. If you are searching for a flexible, scalable Contentful alternative, talk to us today to see how Contentstack can modernize your content management workflow.