StackCMS

Choosing a headless CMS

A headless CMS separates content from presentation, so your team publishes across every channel while we build the front end on modern infrastructure. The hard part isn't the concept. It's picking the platform that fits your team, your governance needs, and where you're migrating from.

What "headless" actually changes

A traditional CMS binds content and presentation together; a headless CMS stores content as structured data and delivers it by API to any front end: website, app, in-store screen. That decoupling is what lets a modern front end be fast, and lets your editors work without waiting on developers. But it also moves a decision onto your plate that monoliths hid: which platform, and why.

How we decide with you

We don't start from a ranking. We start from four questions, because the right answer changes completely depending on the answers:

What are you migrating from? Escaping a legacy DXP (Sitecore, AEM) is a different project from decoupling a WordPress you're happy with.
Who edits, and how much autonomy do they need?Marketing teams that want visual editing point one way (Storyblok); developer-led teams point another (Sanity, Payload).
What governance does procurement require? SSO, audit logs, data residency, SOC 2. These rule platforms in or out before features matter.
Is it really a content problem, or a product-catalogue problem? If it's the latter, the decision starts with PIM, not CMS.

Below are the platforms we actually evaluate, grouped by that decision rather than alphabetically. The ones with a full write-up get our detailed take; the rest are here in brief and expand when there's demand.

Platforms, by decision

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Enterprise DXP: what teams are migrating from

Expensive, complex, and the most common starting point for a rebuild conversation.

AEM: the real cost of stayingFortune-500 territory: the heaviest DXP in the market, with the license, implementation, and operations bill to match. Here's an honest read on when the Adobe stack justifies AEM, and when AEM is really just running a web estate that a composable stack would run for a fraction of the cost.Magnolia CMS: where the Java DXP fitsThe Swiss Java DXP: a visual page editor over a content repository, with REST and GraphQL delivery alongside it. Here's an honest read on where that hybrid model earns its keep (Java estates, multi-brand governance, hard data-residency rules), and when Magnolia is just an expensive way to run a website.Optimizely: keep the experiments, move the websiteThe Nordic enterprise standard, now a full suite of CMS, experimentation, and commerce. Here's an honest read on which parts still earn their keep, and why teams increasingly keep the experimentation product while moving the web CMS off the monolith.Sitecore: who still needs the full DXP?The enterprise DXP our clients most often migrate away from. An honest read on where Sitecore still fits, where its cost and complexity stop paying off, and what a move to a composable stack actually involves.

Contentstack: the governance-first headless CMSThe governance-first pick among the modern headless platforms: approval workflows, granular roles, and EU data residency. Where it separates from Contentful, Storyblok, and Sanity is the review process around content, not the editing surface.

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