Contentful Alternatives: A comparison of the top platforms

Do you want to know how to find the best Contentful alternatives?

You may find making the right decision for your business challenging because so many options are available. To help you determine whether Contentful is a suitable match for you, this guide compares the top Contentful alternatives.

Well, if you keep reading this guide, you'll be able to handle this daunting task.

We'll examine features, pricing, and user experience for your convenience. A range of platforms are available, from Contentful to BCMS, so let's begin by seeing the most popular Contentful alternatives.

Despite Contentful's reputation as one of the oldest headless CMSs, it has some drawbacks businesses should consider. While Contentful is widely used, many people want easy-to-use software solutions with SEO tools, pre-built templates, and plugins/widgets.

People and businesses are exploring other competing options and alternatives to Contentful because they are seeking a top platform that can provide a better user interface and simpler content-management of big fat websites.

So let's dive into the top alternatives and competitors to Contentful, including the most popular BCMS, WordPress, and Drupal.

Before getting into the details and the comparison, I will first give you a list of the 8 most powerful platforms that can improve your business by switching to Contentful.

Besides these 8 Reasons why BCMS is a strong Contentful Alternative that I wrote about, Headless BCMS is one of the most common choices because it simplifies the process of managing content. It has an easy-to-use interface.

As a result, content teams can focus on managing content rather than having to worry about tools, while developers can focus on developing code. The costs of running your website remain the same regardless of how big it grows. Having more visitors, users, or pages won't increase your costs and definitely won't hurt website performance.

Although it belongs to the group of traditional CMSs, WordPress is still one of the leading Contentful alternatives.

Its drag-and-drop features and minimal setup still make WordPress one of the most popular choices as a Contentful substitute.

Although it can eliminate some of the most common problems that people encounter with Contentful, some important things remain unresolved, such as:

Those are some of the differences between open-source headless CMS and WordPress. To dive deep into those differences, look at this comparison: BCMS vs. WordPress.

Another CMS solution, which is not API-centric but rather designed for presenting web content as a web page within a desktop browser, can do this right out of the box.

Similar to WordPress, Drupal:

What makes Webflow one of the most suitable alternatives is the fact that it is recognized as a platform for building dynamic professional pages with no-code knowledge.

Moreover, Webflow's high level of customization makes it a great choice for those who lack coding knowledge since they can have fully customized websites.

Webflow pricing led to the question: Although efficient, is Webflow too expensive, or is it still worth the cost?

According to G2's user satisfaction survey, Contentstack beats Contentful in every category.

Cloud-based Contentstack uses content delivery network (CDN) APIs and a JSON architecture to manage content. Users can upload, manage, and test media files using the built-in asset manager and admin panel, similar to BCMS. They beat Contentful because they can offer complete control and flexibility.

This API-based headless CMS is becoming a solid alternative to Contentful thanks to hybrid features like Page Management, Sitemap, and URL Management.

Compared to Contentful, Agility is easier for enterprise deployments. This is because Agility separates content that will be shared across multiple pages or properties from content that will only be shown on a single page. Over time, this simplifies the process of managing a large amount of content.

It seems that in the race of Headless CMS vs. Content Platform, Headless CMS is the clear winner. However, Sanity is another CMS that is rated as a more efficient platform than Contentful. One of the reasons why this is so is hidden in the fact that any Headless CMS is easy to set up.

Sanity, as well as many other Headless CMSs, provides an easy-to-use and mobile-friendly interface that is straightforward, simple, and easy to get around. Setting up a headless CMS project is as simple as clicking a button on the getting started page.

In contrast, setting up a Contentful app is more challenging. Configuring your project requires several steps. For example, you must create your "space," create your project, create various types of content within your space, and then select which content types your app will interact with.

Strapi is an open-source CMS like others on our list, which means you can install it on your server and customize the front- and back-end.

By enabling developers to use their favorite tools and providing a customizable API, Strapi helps them build projects faster.

In contrast, content teams use Strapi to publish and manage all types of content across all channels.

How do content management systems beat Contentful's content platform? Let's compare Contentful with its alternatives on the following criteria:

Suppose you choose to self-host your website with an open-source solution such as those that appear above. In that case, you maintain full control over your content, data, and applications, as well as privacy and security.

Unfortunately, Contentful doesn't have a self-hosting option, which hurts the following:

Using open-source Contentful alternatives means you can customize both the backend and admin panel to suit your needs. You can customize anything by editing the generated code files or using the API.

That's how you get:

Contentful may not have the same confusing and overrated pricing plan as Webflow, but it can still be expensive compared to other alternatives.

Contentful's starting price is $489/month. This puts it at the top of the most expensive content platforms since you can easily create a WordPress account with a subscription for less than $30/month. You can also have a free plan which you can find on BCMS's pricing page.

Contentful does not offer much customizability due to its preconfigured interface and inability to delete specific pages from its studio. The core of a headless CMS is that it is fully customizable.

Most Contentful alternatives deliver a highly customizable interface. Using this feature, you can customize your content navigation according to your product's theme and requirements.

Contentful alternatives are more user-friendly not only for the development team but also for content creators and editors. Headless CMSs come with an intuitive user interface that allows editing and publishing content in a simple and non-technical way.

One of the reasons why people want to migrate from Contentful is to avoid a cluttered UX. Contentful becomes increasingly slow to navigate as you add more content. Poor website performance is frustrating your users, and it is hurting your SEO rankings too. To avoid these problems, companies more often choose open-source CMSs solutions.