The 8 best headless CMSs for maximum ROI [2024 edition]

In this article, we’ll dive into the best-of-the-best headless content management systems, as well as help determine which one is best for you. Whether you’re a digital leader, a developer, a marketer, or you just happen to be weirdly into the topic of headless CMS (hey, no judgement intended 🤓) we’ve got you covered.

What should you look for in a headless CMS?

A quick Google will show you there’s no shortage of headless CMSs knocking about on the market, but it can be difficult to distinguish which platforms are the right fit for you.

To quieten all that noise and help you narrow down your picks, here are valuable features and characteristics we recommend keeping in mind. Especially if you’re a larger business, consider these some non-negotiables to look out for when choosing your CMS:

• An intuitive content management interface: Any headless CMS worth its salt should be accessible to non-technical users, like content editors and marketers, with features including visual editing with drag-and-drop and live previews.
• Omnichannel publishing: We’re talking websites, mobile apps, and everything in between. The headless CMS you’re buying should make publishing to any platform or device your heart desires a snap.
• Scalability (and flexibility): A lot of ilities here, we know. But trust us, you want your headless CMS to be nimble enough to adapt to your business’s growth and changing needs. You don’t want to be reading this article again in a year’s time (as much as we think it’s not half bad).
• APIs and integrations: A good headless CMS will offer robust APIs and easily integrate with your existing tools, from CRM, to analytics, ecommerce, and marketing.
• Advanced analytics: Tying your content efforts to business outcomes can be a tricky beast. A headless CMS that offers insight into content performance, audience engagement and conversions can help you tame that aforementioned beast.
• Digital asset management: Damn (see what we did there?), but do we love us a headless CMS that comes with an integrated DAM. No more headaches when it comes to storing, organizing and reusing images and videos.
• Enterprise-grade security: Those of us with residual 2018 levels of GDPR fatigue won’t want to dwell too much on this one, but you need to ensure your headless CMS sticks to security best practices, can support role-based access control, and yep, complies with the usual data privacy regulations.
• Support: Trust us, you’re going to need to rely on your headless CMS’s customer support. It’s important everyone who’ll be using the system feel heard, taken of, and confident within the platform.
• Cost: Like any product you’re in the market for, your budget is a big deciding factor in which headless CMS you choose. To avoid unexpected add-on costs, read the fine print and check exactly what you get with each pricing plan.

1. Optimizely
   
   

   
   Best for: Enterprises focused on experimentation
   
   You knew Optimizely was going to top this list, didn’t you? 😉 We’re biased because, yeah, this is the Opti blog, but we’d be seriously remiss if we didn’t include ourselves on the list. And that’s because our focus on experimentation really does make us a standout option, especially if you’re a large enterprise looking to finetune pretty much every aspect of your digital experiences. 
   
   For marketers, Optimizely's CMS is super user-friendly, with tools to easily manage and personalize content across multiple channels, plus the ability to test what works best through A/B testing without having to constantly ping the dev team. Developers love it because it’s flexible, with APIs that play nicely with other systems and a setup that’s built to handle more complex projects.
   
   It’s also great for enterprises that want to experiment and tweak their content strategy on the fly, helping boost conversions and engagement. Plus, its strong security and compliance features are perfect for large businesses that need top-notch protection and privacy.
   
   Pros:
   ✅ Built-in personalization, experimentation and A/B testing capabilities.
   ✅ Great if you need to build complex digital experiences. 
   
   Cons:
   ❌ Pricing might feel high for small teams 
   
   Trustradius score: 8.7/10 (300 reviews)
   
   A Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Experience

2. Sanity

   Best for: Collaboration between content and dev teams
   Sanity is probably best known for its collab tools and flexibility for both developers and marketers. That flexibility can be both a strength and a drawback, though, as the platform can be a bit daunting for marketers who aren’t as familiar with a more technical environment. Sanity uses a structured content approach, meaning content can quickly be reused across different platforms and channels (read: you can do some omnichannel marketing with Sanity. Yippee!)
   
   That said, larger enterprises might find the setup process quite cumbersome, especially if they’re more used to out-of-the-box solutions.
   
   Pros:
   ✅ Reliable real-time collaboration tools 
   ✅ Strong developer and marketer collaboration 
   
   Cons:
   ❌ Customizing the platform is time-intensive 
   
   Trustradius score: 8.6/10 (6 reviews)
   
   

3. Strapi

   
   
   Best for: Developer teams looking for open-source flexibility
   Strapi is an open-source, self-hosted headless CMS. Which tends to make it a bit of a developer’s dream, but for marketing teams who can’t tap into that level of technical support, Strapi’s complex platform can be a significant roadblock. And while it’s a great option for small to medium-sized businesses looking for lots of customization potential in a headless CMS, it doesn’t come with the enterprise-grade features (we’re talking advanced security, custom user roles, or built-in collaboration tools) that larger companies need. 
   
   Strapi gets some extra bonus points for its extensive plugin options and GraphQL support, which make it easier for devs to build our custom features and integrate the CMS in with other tools.
   
   Pros:
   ✅ Fully open source 
   ✅ Good community support for developers 
   ✅ Free to use (with paid enterprise options) 
   
   Cons:
   ❌ Lacks enterprise-grade features out of the box 
   ❌ Heavy reliance on developer for building as well as maintenance 
   
   Trustradius score: 9.6/10 (4 reviews)

4. Storyblok

   
   Best for: Mid-sized businesses with relatively simple content management needs
   Some of the standout features of Storyblok include its visual editor and component-based content structure, which make it accessible to both marketers and developers. That said, the platform's API-first approach offers a fair amount of flexibility, while still giving us non-technical users a digout with a simple drag-and-drop interface. 
   
   Bit of a caveat with this one, though: while Storyblok’s visual editor is pretty nifty, some of its more advanced features, like custom workflows or integrations, will call for (more than a sprinkling of) developer help. We still think it’s a goodie for mid-sized businesses, but we’d recommend steering clear if you’ve got more enterprise-level needs and need to cater to complex workflows or large-scale content strategies.
   
   Pros:
   ✅ User-friendly interface with a visual editor 
   ✅ Content can be easily reused using modular content blocks 
   ✅ A great option for small teams 
   
   Cons:
   ❌ More advanced features call for custom development 
   
   Trustradius score: 9.6/10 (26 reviews)
   
   

5. Prismic

   
   Best for: Small to mid-sized teams needing a simple, flexible headless solution
   Another API-first headless CMS option, Prismic is particularly strong when it comes to content scheduling and publishing features. Its Slice Machine (which just *sounds* satisfying to use, doesn’t it?) allows content creators to quickly rustle up reusable content sections that can be put anywhere on your site, meaning marketers can create more dynamic layouts without bugging the development teams.
   
   A word to the wise: Prismic’s user-friendly interface works well for small teams who don’t have very complex content needs. Enterprise businesses handling high volumes of content across multiple regions or channels would find it restrictive (plus, the platform doesn’t offer more granular customization without a whole lot of heaving coding). Perfect for small to mid-sized orgs, though, we reckon.
   
   Pros:
   ✅ Excellent resources for developers
   ✅ “Slice” feature makes creating reusable content sections a snap 
   
   Cons:
   ❌ Better suited to design and development teams 
   ❌ Limited scalability for larger enterprises

6. Contentful

   
   Best for: Developer and IT teams at large organizations
   
   Like a few others on our list, Contentful is a flexible, API-first headless CMS that works well for large enterprises with more complex content needs. It integrates well with various third-party tools, making it appealing for developers. However, marketers and content teams often find it less intuitive due to its steep learning curve and reliance on technical expertise for content updates.
   
   Another downside? As businesses grow, costs with Contentful can quickly take on a life of their own. And, unlike other options on the market, essential features like A/B testing and advanced personalization aren’t included out of the box. While Contentful’s customization is a definite plus, the added complexity and cost make it less of a draw for many enterprise businesses.
   

   Optimizely vs. Contentful 🤔 Which one is right for your team?

   
   Pros:
   ✅ Decent API and third-party integration support.
   ✅ Robust content modeling features. 
   
   Cons:
   ❌ Costs can add up as you scale and/or add new features. 
   ❌ Requires technical expertise for initial setup. 
   
   Trustradius: 48 reviews, 8.1/10
   

7. Contentstack
   

   
   Best for: Developer and IT teams at large organizations 
   
   Contentstack is a user-friendly headless CMS that works well for both marketers and developers, offering easy collaboration and content management across platforms. Its intuitive workflows and tools help streamline the process. However, for businesses looking to scale or requiring complex customizations, Contentstack can get pricey pretty quickly.
   
   And, not to pile on Contentstack or anything, but it doesn’t offer the built-in experimentation and personalization features that larger enterprises might need, which usually means customers end up paying extra for third-party tools.
   

   Optimizely vs. Contentack: A head-to-head comparison ⚖️

   
   Pros:
   ✅ Good customer support and documentation 
   ✅ Workflows for content approvals 
   
   Cons:
   ❌ High cost for enterprise features 
   ❌ Requires technical experience to use the platform 
   
   Trustradius reviews: 8.3/10 (25 reviews)

8. Wix Headless

   

   
   Best for: Smaller businesses who already use Wix’s website builder
   Wix, better known for its website builder geared towards small businesses and freelancers, is a bit of a dark horse on this list, but they have recently come out with a headless CMS of their very own (the imaginatively titled, er, Wix Headless).
   
   With Wix Headless, developers can leverage APIs to integrate Wix’s content management system into various platforms, providing that bit more omnichannel content delivery while still being able to use Wix’s simple visual editing tools.
   
   Pros:
   ✅ A lovely combo of Wix’s easy-to-use interface with headless CMS flexibility. 
   ✅ Affordable pricing tiers for small to medium-sized businesses. 
   
   Cons:
   ❌ Limited features compared to enterprise-level headless CMS platforms like Optimizely. 
   ❌ They’re working on expanding out their customization options, but they don’t go quite as deep as other developer-heavy platforms, like Strapi.

Alright, so what headless content management system should you go for?

We totally get it, the process of choosing the right headless CMS for your team and website is a big endeavor. And it’s not a decision to be made quickly, or lightly. We hope this list of the best headless CMSs has helped you better drill down into your team’s challenges and outline your needs. Now that you’ve hopefully narrowed down your list of contenders, we recommend having a read of our enterprise CMS buyer’s guide next.

(Or, you can skip the process and just go with Optimizely, which we know you’ll love. Jkjk 😉)