The best Gatsby CMS: How to know if you're making the right choice?

By Arso Stojović
Read time 8 min
Posted on March 13, 2024
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The best Gatsby CMS

Choosing the best Gatsby CMS? You want your website to load quickly and be scalable, whether a blog, your company's homepage, or an e-commerce website. A modern way to build websites today is with static site generators such as Gatsby.

You can achieve your goals with  Gatsby, but Gatsby cannot do it alone. You need to manage content somewhere- that's where CMS comes in.

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Why does a static site generator like Gatsby need a CMS?

With Gatsby as a static site generator, you can create fast and secure websites from templates and data sources. Gatsby's website pages are pre-rendered as static files and fetched by the server at build time which directly positively impacts SEO. Even more powerful, Gatsby still needs a way to manage and update the content on those pages. This is one of the primary reasons why you need a CMS for Gatsby.

In short, Gatsby covers framework and deployment, but a huge part of the puzzle remains missing—a place to manage content.

Ok, I hope this makes sense - the next question is: Which CMS is suitable for Gatsby?

What is the best Gatsby CMS?

While Gatsby can work with various types of CMS platforms, there are certain characteristics or limitations of some CMS types that might make them less suitable or more challenging to integrate effectively with Gatsby.

Why some types of CMS don't fit Gatsby? (or CMS limitations)

  • Traditional CMS: Traditional (monolithic) CMS platforms often come with a heavy backend and server-side rendering (SSR) architecture. They might rely on server-side databases and generate content dynamically on each request. This architecture contrasts with Gatsby's static site generation approach, which pre-builds pages at build time.

    Learn more: SSG Static Site Generation VS. SSR Server-Side Rendering

    Integrating such CMS platforms with Gatsby may require significant customization or result in performance drawbacks due to redundant server-side rendering.

  • Proprietary or closed-source CMS: Some CMS platforms might not offer the necessary APIs or flexibility required for seamless integration with Gatsby. Closed-source CMS systems may limit access to underlying data or customization options, making integration challenging or impossible without vendor support or specific plugins.

  • CMS with limited API support: Gatsby typically integrates with CMS platforms through APIs, GraphQL, or webhooks. CMS platforms that lack robust API support or have limited customization capabilities may not provide the necessary endpoints or data structures required for Gatsby integration. This limitation can hinder the ability to source content efficiently or may require complex workarounds.

  • CMS designed for Server-side rendering (SSR): CMS platforms optimized for server-side rendering may not align well with Gatsby's static site generation approach. (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Adobe Experience Manager).
    These CMS systems might rely heavily on SSR for content delivery and dynamic page generation, which contrasts with Gatsby's pre-built static pages. Adapting such CMS platforms to work effectively with Gatsby may involve significant architectural changes or performance trade-offs.

  • Complex data models or hierarchies: CMS platforms with complex data models, nested structures, or hierarchical content may pose challenges for integration with Gatsby. While Gatsby can handle structured data, overly complex data models may require additional effort to map to Gatsby's GraphQL schema or may result in performance issues during build time.

  • Limited extensibility: Some CMS platforms may lack extensibility or customizability, making it difficult to integrate them with Gatsby or extend their functionality to meet specific project requirements. CMS systems with closed ecosystems or limited plugin support may restrict developers' ability to tailor the integration according to their needs.

But what about headless CMS? 

Why use headless CMS for Gatsby?

It is a well-known fact that headless CMS represents a strong connection between the backend and frontend, but at the same time gives enormous freedom and flexibility to both sides. There is no difference in concept when it comes to Gatsby either. Headless CMS Gatsby integration represents a well-known and tried-and-tested recipe:

A headless CMS is a decoupled system that separates the content and the presentation layer. This means that the CMS only stores and manages your content, and exposes it via an API. A separate frontend, such as Gatsby handles the presentation layer.

Headless Gatsby CMS features

A headless CMS has features that are a good fit for Gatsby:

  • Frontend Flexibility: With a headless CMS, you gain control over your frontend. You're not confined to specific technologies; rather, you can use any web technology you want, such as React, GraphQL, or TypeScript, and customize your site to your needs.

    Moreover, leveraging Gatsby's features like image optimization, code splitting, and progressive web app support ensures your site is not only visually stunning but also lightning-fast and responsive.

  • Improved performance and security: For optimal speed and reliability, a CDN or hosting service, such as Netlify or Vercel, can serve static files from your site. By using a headless CMS, you can reduce the load on your backend server and reduce the risk of attacks on your site.

    Learn more: Headless CMS Impact on Website Security: Key Considerations

  • Simplified content management and delivery: The adoption of a headless CMS simplifies the entire content management process. You can access and update your content from any location, using any device with internet connectivity. Moreover, the versatility of a headless CMS allows you to publish content across multiple platforms, be it your website, mobile applications, or various social media platforms—all through a single, cohesive API.

  • Dynamic content personalization: With a headless CMS, you have the flexibility to implement dynamic content personalization strategies. A more engaging and personalized user experience can be achieved by tailoring content according to user behavior, preferences, or demographic data.

Ok, there is a conclusion Gatsby + CMS = Awesome and powerful features. Next formula that needs to be answered: How to use Gatsby CMS features? 

What can you build with a Gatsby CMS?

The versatility of Gatsby CMS in catering to various content management needs, from static content websites to dynamic applications with real-time updates and interactive features. Gatsby's static site generation capabilities, combined with its ability to integrate with dynamic data sources, make it suitable for a wide range of website and application types.

Gatsby Sites

Gatsby CMS examples: Static content websites

Static Content Websites:

  • Blogs and Portfolios: Content such as blog posts, articles, and multimedia can be managed and organized efficiently through the CMS interface. Gatsby's static site generation ensures fast page loads and optimal performance for readers.

    If you need to build blog website with Gatsby check out the following tutorial: Gatsby blog: Building SEO-friendly blog with BCMS code starter

  • Company Websites (with static information such as about us): Gatsby CMS is ideal for building company websites that feature static information such as company history, team members, services, and contact details. The CMS allows easy management of content, ensuring that the website stays up-to-date with the latest company information. Gatsby's static site generation ensures reliability and scalability, even during high-traffic periods.

  • Landing Pages: Using Gatsby CMS for landing pages ensures fast loading times and customizable designs, enabling marketers to optimize content, perform A/B testing, and integrate with analytics tools for effective conversion rate optimization. Gatsby's static site generation ensures scalability, reliability, and SEO-friendliness, facilitating seamless user experiences and driving conversions.

Variations of static websites are numerous (documentation websites, news websites, podcasts, etc.) and all can be created with the help of Gatsby CMS. What kind of website can be made depends on two things: inspiration and knowledge. I'll leave the inspiration to you (for now :D), but that's why I'm happy to share the knowledge: Gatsby tutorial: Build a static site with a headless CMS.

Gatsby CMS examples: Static websites with dynamic content integration

E-commerce websites: Gatsby CMS can power e-commerce websites by integrating with headless e-commerce platforms or custom backends. The CMS enables efficient management of product listings, categories, and inventory, while Gatsby's static site generation ensures fast and responsive shopping experiences.

Event Websites: The Gatsby CMS is well-suited to creating event websites for conferences, workshops, or community gatherings. The CMS allows easy management of event details, schedules, speaker bios, and registration forms.

Gatsby CMS examples: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

Educational Platforms: Gatsby CMS can be used to create PWAs for educational platforms, offering offline access to course materials, push notifications for updates, and other PWA features. Gatsby's static site generation ensures that educational content is available even when users are offline, providing a seamless learning experience.

For more inspiration, read this blog article: Gatsby sites: ~The ultimate Gatsby websites list in 2024 (with examples)

How Gatsby CMS integration works

Gatsby CMS integration connects a headless CMS platform with a Gatsby site to manage and deliver content. Here are the basic steps:

  1. Setup CMS: First, you choose a headless CMS platform that fits your needs and preferences. Popular options include (more in next heading).

  2. Content modeling: You define the content structure in the CMS, creating content types, fields, and relationships as needed. This step allows you to organize and structure your content in a way that makes sense for your website or application.

  3. Content Creation: Content creators use the CMS interface to create and edit content. They can add text, images, videos, metadata, and other assets to populate the website or application.

  4. API Integration: The CMS provides an API (typically RESTful or GraphQL) that exposes the content to be consumed by the Gatsby site. Gatsby uses this API to fetch content during the build process.

  5. Gatsby setup: In your Gatsby project, you install plugins that enable integration with the chosen CMS and configure them with the necessary API credentials and settings.

  6. Content fetching: Gatsby fetches content from the CMS API and transforms it into static HTML pages using GraphQL queries during the build process. Gatsby nodes represent each piece of content, making it available for querying and rendering in your site's components.

  7. Static Site Generation: Gatsby generates static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files based on the fetched content and templates defined in your Gatsby project. These static files are optimized for performance and can be deployed to any hosting platform.

  8. Deployment: Once the static site is generated, you deploy it to a hosting provider such as Netlify, Vercel, or AWS S3. The hosting provider serves the static files to users, ensuring fast and reliable delivery of content.

Finally, now it’s time to see popular CMS options for Gatsby integration.

Choosing the best Gatsby CMS

According to Gatsby's documentation, if you’re looking for a headless CMS to power your website, there are three main factors you can use to narrow your search:

  • CMS with first-class Gatsby integrations

  • Price point

  • Specialized requirements

I will consider these factors but I will moderate it a little bit. So let's start with the list of the best CMS for Gatsby.

The best Gatsby CMS example: Contentful

Contentful

Without a doubt, Contentful is the most common headless CMS used with Gatsby. According to the Gatsby Plugin Library, gatsby-source-contentful has 181k downloads which really tells us that Contentful is a strong headless CMS for Gatsby sites.

Contentful is a cloud-based headless CMS, with which you can create and manage your content in a flexible and modular way. With Contentful, you get a powerful GraphQL API with a user-friendly interface, as well as a rich content modeling system. 

Many consider Contentful to be the default Gatsby CMS, and if it has many pros, some of the cons say that a large number of people are also reaching for Contentful alternatives.

Contentful pros and cons:

Contentful pros and cons

Pros:

  1. Flexible Content Modeling: Contentful offers a highly flexible content modeling system, allowing you to define custom content types, fields, and relationships to suit your project's needs. This flexibility enables you to structure and organize content in a way that aligns with your website or application's requirements.

  2. API-First Approach: Contentful follows an API-first approach, providing a developer-friendly API (both REST and GraphQL) for accessing and managing content. This makes it easy to integrate Contentful with Gatsby and other frontend frameworks, enabling efficient content delivery and updates.

  3. Rich text support: Contentful provides support for rich text editing, allowing content creators to author and format text content using a familiar WYSIWYG editor. This includes support for various text formatting options, multimedia embedding, and asset management, making it easy to create engaging and visually appealing content.

  4. Real-time content updates: Contentful's real-time content delivery API ensures that content changes are reflected instantly on your Gatsby site without requiring manual rebuilds. This enables seamless content updates and ensures that your site's content is always up-to-date.

Cons:

  1. Cost: Contentful pricing can be relatively high for larger projects or organizations with high content volumes. While Contentful offers a generous free tier, scaling up to accommodate larger content volumes or additional features can result in increased costs.

  2. Limited built-in features: Contentful focuses primarily on content management and delivery, which means it may lack some built-in features commonly found in traditional CMS platforms, such as user authentication, role-based access control, and form handling. While these features can be implemented using Contentful's API and third-party services, they may require additional development effort.

  3. Dependency on third-party services: Using Contentful as a headless CMS means relying on a third-party service for content management and delivery. While Contentful has a strong track record of reliability and uptime, any service disruptions or outages could impact your site's ability to fetch and display content.

  4. Learning curve: Contentful's flexible content modeling system and API-driven approach may have a steeper learning curve than traditional CMS platforms. Developers and content creators may require some time to familiarize themselves with Contentful's concepts.

Ok, maybe Contentful is the most used CMS for Gatsby but for sure is not the only one. Here are some Contentful alternatives that are worth trying.

The best Gatsby CMS example: Sanity

Sanity

Sanity is a headless CMS that allows you to manage and create content completely customized. Developers can quickly build customized sites using Sanity's seamless integration with Gatsby. The Gatsby Source plugin from Sanity lets developers preview their sites in real-time during production.

Sanity is considered a good CMS for Gatsby for several reasons:

 Sanity pros and cons: 

Sanity pros and cons

Pros:

  • Highly customizable

Since Contentful comes with a pre-configured interface, it cannot be customized, and certain pages of the studio cannot be deleted. Sanity is designed to be fully customizable by developers, and the studio is simply a React application that developers can edit.

Sanity's "Structure Builder" allows you to configure how you segment and navigate your content by tailoring it according to your product's theme and requirements.

  • Flexible content modeling

Sanity's query language (GROQ) provides powerful querying and filtering capabilities, allowing you to retrieve and manipulate content with precision. Sanity can be queried with GROQ, GraphQL, and REST, whereas Contentful can only be queried with GraphQL and REST.

This enables you to build complex queries to fetch exactly the data you need for your Gatsby site, optimizing performance and reducing unnecessary data transfer.

  • Built-in backup

One of the most appreciated features is Sanity's built-in backup and restore feature. Using Sanity, you can view the change history of any document and restore any previous version instantly, so you never have to worry about losing old content.

Cons:

  • Learning curve

Sanity's highly customizable nature and unique query language (GROQ) may have a steeper learning curve compared to more traditional CMS platforms. Developers and content creators may require some time to familiarize themselves with Sanity's concepts and terminology.

  • Third-party dependency

While Sanity has a strong track record of reliability and uptime, any service disruptions or outages could impact your site's ability to fetch and display content. Sanity lacks a more advanced webhook integration tool, which with third-party services can be more difficult than on other platforms.

  • Maintenance

Sanity's maintenance requirements may be higher than other platforms due to its extensive flexibility and customization options, which can lead to more intricate configurations requiring ongoing updates and management. Features like versioning and revision history, complex querying capabilities, and dependencies on third-party services also contribute to maintenance needs. While these aspects offer powerful capabilities for content management, staying current with updates, optimizing queries, and managing dependencies are important for ensuring the long-term stability and performance of a Sanity-powered Gatsby site.

The best Gatsby CMS example: Strapi

Strapi

By integrating Strapi with Gatsby, users can create static or dynamic sites and apps with Rest and GraphQL APIs. Providing an easy-to-configure Rest or GraphQL endpoint it can be virtually plugged into any framework without a lot of trouble.

 Strapi pros and cons:

Strapi pros and cons

Pros:

  • User-friendly interface: Strapi provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface for content management, making it easy for content creators to create, edit, and manage content without requiring technical expertise. This enables efficient collaboration between content creators and developers, streamlining the content creation process.

  • RESTful and GraphQL APIs: Strapi exposes both RESTful and GraphQL APIs out of the box, giving you the flexibility to choose the API format that best suits your project's requirements. This allows you to seamlessly integrate Strapi with your Gatsby site, enabling efficient content retrieval and updates.

  • Role-based access control: Strapi includes built-in role-based access control (RBAC) capabilities, allowing you to define user roles and permissions to restrict access to sensitive content and features. This enhances security and ensures that only authorized users can access and manage content within the CMS.

  • Authentication and user management: Strapi provides authentication and user management features out of the box, including support for various authentication methods such as email/password, JWT, OAuth, and more. This enables you to secure your Gatsby site's content and restrict access to authenticated users as needed.

Cons:

  • Limited database migration: Strapi has limited support for database migration, as content type creation or updates are managed transparently within the database without generating migration files. This necessitates manual handling of database migrations across multiple environments, such as when adjusting permissions for entities.

  • Limited TypeScript support: For those seeking TypeScript support, Strapi's JavaScript-centric nature requires the use of an external package to convert existing models into TypeScript code, particularly relevant for larger content systems.

  • Frequent updates: while Strapi's frequent updates contribute to its ecosystem's vitality, they may pose challenges for production systems with large content repositories, as updates sometimes introduce breaking changes, necessitating thorough end-to-end testing before upgrading. 

The best Gatsby CMS example: Hygraph

Hygraph

Hygraph pairs well with Gatsby as both are GraphQL-native platforms. One GraphQL API can query content quickly in a secure environment, which makes Hygraph an ideal CMS solution for a Gatsby website.

Hygraph pros and cons:

Hygraph pros and cons

Pros

  • Seamless integration: Hygraph integrates with Gatsby's GraphQL data layer, streamlining data sourcing and facilitating the creation of dynamic, data-driven websites effortlessly.

  • Content Federation feature: With Hygraph's Content Federation feature, teams can merge content from numerous sources into a unified GraphQL endpoint without the need for data duplication, expanding its API capabilities to access data from diverse systems.

  • Granular webhooks: Hygraph boasts granular webhooks that give you the power to watch specific changes to data. These granular webhooks provide a level of customization and flexibility that is particularly useful in complex systems or workflows where precise event monitoring and response are required.

Cons

  • Lack of REST API: This may be a huge disadvantage, especially for those who come from non-GraphQL environments.

  • Data migration limitations: Data migration limitations are a common frustration when transferring data between contexts. This restriction applies to challenges migrating existing data or implementing changes across various contexts.

  • Not suitable for small projects: Hygraph may be complex,and resource-intensive for small-scale projects with simple requirements and may not need advanced features.

The best Gatsby CMS example: Dato CMS

DatoCMS

Dato CMS is a cloud-based headless CMS that shares many features with Contentful but at a more affordable price and with an expansive free tier. It seamlessly integrates with Gatsby, offering functionalities like live previews, incremental builds, and image transformations for enhanced performance.

Dato CMS pros and cons:

Dato CMS pros and cons

Pros: 

  1. GraphQL API: DatoCMS provides a powerful GraphQL API that seamlessly integrates with Gatsby's data layer. This allows for efficient and flexible data sourcing, enabling developers to retrieve content in a structured manner and build dynamic, data-driven websites with ease.

  2. Supports image/file uploads with advanced live manipulations: DatoCMS includes robust image and asset management capabilities, allowing developers to upload, manipulate, and serve images and other media files directly from the CMS. This streamlines the process of managing multimedia content for Gatsby sites, enhancing overall performance and user experience.

  3. Localization support: DatoCMS provides built-in support for content localization, allowing developers to create and manage multilingual content. This is particularly useful for Gatsby sites targeting global audiences, as it enables seamless localization of content across different languages and regions.

  4. Real-time collaboration: DatoCMS includes features for real-time collaboration, enabling multiple team members to work on content simultaneously. This facilitates content creation and editing workflows, ensuring that updates are reflected in real-time on Gatsby sites without the need for manual synchronization.

Cons: 

  • Limited plugin customization: Although effective for simple use cases, DatoCMS plugins have limited functionality. As requirements become more complex, solutions may become less stable and more susceptible to issues. This is because plugins are developed as distinct web applications using the Dato Plugin SDK and an API key, and are integrated as iframes, lacking access to the surrounding page data.

  • Cryptic migration errors: Dato CMS can automatically generate migrations based on your modifications, thanks to its migration support. However, users may encounter cryptic error messages and partial failures when migrations are incorrect.

  • Less hosting control: Dato CMS does not support self-hosting. If you have the flexibility to choose between self-hosting and cloud hosting, the advantages of cloud hosting are significant in terms of avoiding technical responsibilities. However, this convenience comes at a monetary cost.

The best Gatsby CMS example: Decap CMS

Decap CMS

Decap CMS provides developers with an intuitive UI editor, simplifying content creation and page structuring for Gatsby sites. It seamlessly integrates with any static site generator, enhancing project flexibility and speed. Content is stored alongside your code in the Git repository, streamlining version control processes.

Decap CMS pros and cons: 

Decap CMS pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Git-based workflow: Decap CMS stores content in your Git repository, allowing for version control and collaboration among team members. It uses APIs from GitLab, GitHub, or Bitbucket and offers several advantages. This enables developers to track changes, review edits, and revert to previous versions easily, enhancing project management and collaboration.

  • Customizable content models: Decap CMS allows developers to define custom content models using YAML or JSON files, providing flexibility in structuring content to suit specific project requirements. This enables the creation of rich and dynamic content types tailored to the needs of Gatsby sites.

  • Fast web-based UI: Decap CMS boasts a rapid, web-based UI featuring rich-text editing capabilities, real-time previews, and effortless drag-and-drop media uploads.

  • Fully extensible: Decap CMS allows for the creation of custom-styled previews, UI widgets, and editor plugins.

Cons:

  • Limited Customization: While Decap CMS offers flexibility in content modeling, customization options may be limited compared to more advanced CMS platforms. Developers may encounter constraints when implementing complex features or custom workflows, requiring workarounds or extensions.

  • Scaling Challenges: Even fully extensible, Decap CMS may not be suitable for large-scale or enterprise-level projects with complex content requirements. While it can handle small to medium-sized sites effectively, scaling may become challenging as content volume and complexity increase. Developers are needed to implement several tasks, such as registering custom widgets, previews, and editor plugins.

  • Less features: Decap CMS lacks features compared to other popular Gatsby CMSs.

The best Gatsby CMS example: Prismic CMS

Prismic CMS

Prismic CMS simplifies the creation and management of content for static sites, providing developers and marketers with a powerful tool to craft reusable website sections known as Slices. This component-centric approach aligns seamlessly with the needs of developers working on Gatsby static sites.

Prismic CMS pros and cons: 

Prismic CMS pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Slice Machine: The Slice Machine is a distinctive feature within Prismic CMS that revolutionizes the way developers create and manage content components. It offers a visual interface for building and customizing modular content blocks, known as "slices," that can be seamlessly integrated into Prismic projects. With Slice Machine, developers can efficiently create, preview, and deploy slices, empowering them to rapidly build dynamic and flexible content structures for their websites or applications.

  • RESTful API and a GraphQL API: Prismic CMS uses an API-first strategy, offering both a RESTful API and a GraphQL API. Gatsby SSG can effortlessly fetch data from a variety of sources, including Prismic's APIs.

Cons: 

  • Live previews: Live previews for content changes can be unreliable with Gatsby; consider using Next.js instead for better stability.

  • Complex setup: Setting up can be complex due to the requirement of using two separate plugins: gatsby-source-prismic-graphql and gatsby-source-prismic.

The best Gatsby CMS example: Butter CMS

Butter CMS

Butter CMS serves as an API-based CMS and blogging engine, ideal for powering blogs. When paired with Gatsby, it enables the development of exceptionally fast and SEO-friendly websites (focus on the blogs).

Butter CMS pros and cons:

Butter CMS pros and cons

Pros:

  • API-Based: Being API-based allows for flexible integration with various platforms and technologies.

  • Easy content management: Butter's WYSIWYG editor facilitates standard text formatting, encompassing features like headings, links, quotes, code, and text alignment. Additionally, it allows users to upload, crop, and resize images, which are then automatically hosted and delivered through a CDN. Moreover, users have the option to directly edit HTML as required.

  • Blogging Engine: Butter CMS is specifically designed for blogging, offering features tailored to the needs of bloggers.

  • SEO-Friendly: Offers features and tools to optimize content for search engines, improving visibility online.

Cons: 

  • No autosave: Even if it offers an awesome WYSIWYG editor, the absence of an autosave feature can be a drawback because it requires users to manually save their work, which can lead to potential loss of unsaved changes if the user forgets to save or experiences a browser crash or interruption

  • UX bugs: Editor options don’t follow the page on scroll which can disrupt the user experience, especially when working with long-form content or documents. It increases the time and effort required for users to access essential editing features, potentially slowing down the content creation process and leading to frustration.

  • Not scalable: As the site grows, it becomes increasingly challenging to manage and update content effectively, leading to potential issues such as content duplication, inconsistency, and difficulty in content discovery. This can result in a degraded user experience, decreased productivity, and increased maintenance overhead for content managers.

The best Gatsby CMS example: Contentstack

Contentstack

Contentstack pros and cons

Contentstack pros and cons

Pros:

  • API-first Approach: Contentstack follows an API-first approach, allowing developers to access content via RESTful APIs or GraphQL, enabling seamless integration with various platforms and technologies.

  • Modular Content Modeling: Contentstack offers a modular content modeling approach, allowing users to define custom content types, fields, and relationships to suit their specific project requirements.

  • Multi-Channel Content Delivery: Contentstack supports multi-channel content delivery, enabling users to publish content across various channels, including websites, mobile apps, IoT devices, and more.

Cons:

  • Enterprise budget: Contentstack's pricing may be prohibitive for smaller projects or organizations with limited budgets, as it is geared towards enterprise-level users. This could be a consideration for Gatsby projects with budget constraints.

  • No commerce capabilities: Contentstack is a massive proponent of headless commerce but the platform lacks native commerce capabilities instead of requiring customers to integrate with a third party.

  • Not so flexible content modeling: In Contentstack, content modeling begins at the design phase, meaning that any mistakes made will carry forward to the actual structure of the web application or page. Therefore, without a detailed plan, it can be challenging to create suitable content for your requirements, and modifying content types after creation can prove difficult. Unfortunately, rectifying these errors later on can be cumbersome, often necessitating the recreation of models from scratch.

The best Gatsby CMS example: BCMS

BCMS

BCMS is an open-source headless CMS built on the modern stack that provides easy content modeling for creative Gatsby, NextJS and Nuxt projects.

Recognized as a strong Contentful Alternative, BCMS is a great choice for Gatsby websites because it offers an API that easily integrates with Gatsby. Also, BCMS has code starters available for integrating Gatsby as a data source.

BCMS pros and cons:

BCMS pros and cons

Pros:

  • Open-source software: BCMS is an open-source and customizable CMS, allowing for extensive customization via the API or by editing the automatically generated code files. React-based BCMS's code is available on GitHub and is completely editable enabling complete editability and customization to suit various project needs.

  • Unlimited content types: BCMS offers a media manager with folders, ensuring organized and easily accessible content. This prevents media overload and supports creativity with unlimited inputs, groups, widgets, and templates, eliminating content limitations. More precisely, with no content limitations.

  • Flexible user roles: BCMS features flexible user roles, including contributors, editors, and administrators, each assigned based on authority and responsibilities. This role-based access control ensures both security and ease of use by configuring content accessibility.

  • Self-hosting control: With BCMS, self-hosting provides control, security, cost-effectiveness, and independence. It empowers users with full control over data and applications, ensuring accountability for security and privacy while avoiding ongoing subscription fees and vendor lock-in.

  • Built-in blogging capabilities: BCMS facilitates effortless blogging with its user-friendly interface, offering commonly used features such as formatted headings, image and GIF widgets, video widgets, and code snippets, enabling quick setup and management.

  • Localization: BCMS can manage content in any number of languages - with no limitations. 93 different languages in particular.

Cons:

  • New Product: BCMS is new and still being developed, so there could be bugs that need to be fixed by the developers.

  • Smaller community: Less resources and a smaller community can result in harder ways to find help if you have problems.

The best Gatsby CMS- An overview

The best Gatsby CMS- An overview

Final Thoughts on the best Headless CMS for Gatsby

Gatsby's emphasis on speed, security, and usability makes it a popular choice for building static sites, and there are numerous headless CMS options available to power Gatsby projects. In this article, I explored 10 popular CMS options, each offering powerful tools for content management.

However, the best CMS for a Gatsby site will ultimately depend on the unique requirements of each project. Factors such as scalability, ease of use, collaboration features, and customization capabilities should all be considered when selecting a CMS.

When it comes to choosing a headless CMS for your Gatsby website, the good news is that you're not limited to just one option. Gatsby's capability to integrate multiple sources enables you to work on different sections of your site with multiple headless CMS platforms.

Therefore, you do not lose anything if you choose BCMS headless CMS for your next Gatsby project. Okay, except for maybe 2 minutes to setup BCMS and connect it to Gatsby. So lose those 2 minutes and check out why BCMS is the best Gatsby CMS.

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