The global pandemic forced organizations to adopt a digital-first strategy, requiring your teams to rethink content creation. Your content management system (CMS) is the heart of your organization’s ability to deliver more with less, but what CMS method is right for your organization: traditional, headless, or a hybrid between the two?

Ultimately your goal is to enable your teams to create, store, and deliver digital content at high speeds so that they can better serve your customers, while also allowing them to be innovative and account for the ever-growing number of digital channels, such as mobile phones, smart devices, IoT, etc.

What Is Traditional CMS

Traditional CMS is a content management platform where the front-end and back-end are connected. This means whenever you make changes in the back end it will immediately change in the front end as well.

Pros

Easy to manage content
Changes on the backend will be immediately reflected in the front-end

Cons

More complex to publish content across multiple websites, product feeds, and marketing channels
Without API access to content, it also becomes more difficult to consume across many channels

What Is Headless CMS

A Headless CMS is a type of back-end content management system where the content, the “body”, is separated from the front-end, the “head.” This means that a headless CMS allows you to manage your content in one place while still being able to publish the content across any front end that you want.

Pros

More freedom when creating what type of content you want to publish
Ability to create content modules that give you more ways to create content
Allows you to integrate content into any system, software, or website that you want.

Cons

Requires full involvement for website maintenance and updates
Requires developer skills

What Is Hybrid CMS

What if I told you that it is possible to get the best of both worlds? With a hybrid headless CMS, you do not have to make the difficult decision of choosing between traditional CMS and headless CMS In a hybrid CMS, users can create and store content in a database, and then deliver it through the existing front-end rendering layer or retrieve it through a separate front-end layer using APIs.

Pros

Provides flexibility to deliver content through any digital channel, including future ones
Serves traditional and headless needs at the same time
Allows users to build digital experiences without prior technical knowledge

Why Is Finding The Right CMS Important

Content powers our digital world and it is the front door that allows brands to connect and introduce themselves to customers across every device and channel. This is why finding the right CMS is important to the success of your content marketing campaigns.  You can have the best content in the world, but if you do not have a good CMS that can display and manage your content then your content will not reach its full potential.

Learn From the Experts

Join us at the Spiceworks “Best CMS” Webinar and hear from our very own Dan Persson and other experts from Acquia about:

Key differences between traditional and headless CMS and the benefits of each in delivering digital experiences
How Acquia Site Studio enhances the experience of traditional CMS authoring
How progressively decoupled sites deliver an innovative CMS experience
How to leverage the best of both worlds with a hybrid CMS approach