Headless vs. composable CMS: Choosing the right CMS for enterprise agility

Highlights

You’ll learn how to choose the right content management system for your business growth.

Key considerations:

• Business fit: Align CMS with current and future digital needs
• Integration: Ensure seamless API and third-party system compatibility
• Scalability: Choose a platform that grows with your business
• Vendor evaluation: Assess the product, pricing and available vendor support

Make the right CMS choice—build smarter digital experiences with Contentstack’s composable CMS solution.

The limitations of traditional CMSes are well-known. They are slow, isolate data and lack flexibility. These tightly coupled, all-in-one solutions treat the back end and front end as one system. While it offers simplicity, it creates bottlenecks for organizations with complex content needs.

Hence, it is logical to consider more flexible approaches, like a headless or composable CMS. A headless CMS separates content management from its delivery. They are front-end agnostic.

A composable CMS uses a modular approach that supports extensive API integration and the use of interchangeable components to customize the entire stack. So, which is the better?

Headless or composable CMS?

Both CMS architectures are a move away from traditional systems. The composable approach is the evolution of the headless technology into a more robust solution, providing building blocks that serve multiple use cases.

Headless CMS vs. composable CMS: A comparison

These technologies share many similarities. They are both flexible, with one offering more granularity.

A composable content management system (CMS) builds upon the benefits of headless content architecture. Both flexible platforms, with composable taking things further. See the points below.

• Integration capabilities: While headless CMS offers API-based content delivery, composable CMS provides more extensive integration. It connects multiple apps and services to form one cohesive system.
• Content orchestration: A headless CMS delivers content to multiple channels, but orchestration is left to those who build and manage the system. A composable CMS aggregates content from different sources and delivers it through a single API. 
• Scalability: Both CMSes are scalable. However, a composable CMS offers more granular scaling. You can independently scale each component based on specific business needs.

How headless CMS drives enterprise value

A headless content management system (CMS) introduces a layer of flexibility that does not exist with a monolithic CMS. Other benefits include: 

• Content delivery flexibility: A headless CMS can deliver content in various formats and localized contexts, as well as to all kinds of channels. It is suitable for websites, mobile apps, digital signage or regional contexts and languages for new audiences.
• Development flexibility: Given that it is front-end agnostic, developers can use their preferred technologies to create front-end experiences. This allows them to choose the tools that are most suitable for a project or team's expertise.
• Lower total cost of ownership: A headless CMS is API-first and supports content reuse, resulting in lower overall costs. This eliminates technical debts and reduces costs on IT resources.

How a composable CMS drives enterprise value

In many ways, a composable CMS is not directly in competition with a headless CMS. It simply builds upon the benefits of a headless approach and extends them further. Here are some of those benefits.

• Collaboration and content ownership: Composable CMS offers a more inclusive structure that enables disparate teams to work together. This allows marketers and developers to work and make changes in real-time.
• Strategic business alignment: A composable CMS supports a best-of-breed approach. You select the most suitable solutions for each specific business capability. This ensures technology investments directly support strategic business objectives.
• Complex enterprise scaling: A composable approach allows you to scale specific components or business capabilities without touching other services.

When to choose a headless or composable CMS

Now the big question. Should you opt for a headless or composable CMS? It depends on your business goals and focus. Here are some pointers to consider.

• Business size and structure: A headless CMS suits mid-sized companies with centralized tech teams, whereas a composable approach is better for enterprise organizations with distributed teams and complex workflows.
• Project complexity: If developer autonomy and flexible content distribution are top priorities, consider a headless architecture. However, a composable CMS is better for business agility and managing integrated digital experiences.
• Integration needs: A headless CMS is an excellent fit for multichannel content needs. However, if you need to integrate and orchestrate multiple customer services, such as logistics and customer data platforms, a composable CMS would suffice.
• Personalization goals: A headless CMS supports basic personalized content via custom front-end logic. A composable CMS supports more advanced personalization via integrated customer data platforms.

Here is a short example. If you are already publishing on the web and need to scale to AR/VR interfaces, a headless CMS can do the job. However, if you are a global retailer that needs to combine best-in-class services for payments, product catalog and search, a composable CMS is ideal.

Selecting the optimal CMS for enterprises

The ideal CMS supports your business goals, and here are guidelines for making the right decision.

1. Align business goals: Consider the business’s priority to determine if it is geared toward managing content, scaling content to multiple new platforms or orchestrating digital experiences across audiences and regions. 
2. Assess digital maturity: Evaluate current technical capabilities and IT resources to find any gaps. Assess the current digital ecosystem and content delivery needs. Also, consider the experience of the development team in working with cloud platforms, APIs, microservices and integration platforms.
3. Align stakeholders: Gather complete requirements based on the digital maturity assessment. Then, use that to build a business case, and involve stakeholders to get company-wide buy-in.
4. Consider the budget: Analyze implementation costs vs. long-term TCO, training needs, vendor and licensing costs and required IT resources.
5. Market research and RFQ: Research potential content management systems (CMS) vendors to identify those whose offerings align with your business goals and budget. Draft and send RFQ/RFPs to them.
6. Evaluate vendor responses and select CMS: Analyze and score vendor proposals against weighted criteria. Then, conduct demos or interviews and select the CMS that best aligns with your business needs, budget and strategic goals.

How to implement a modern CMS

Deploying a modern enterprise CMS should be a strategic decision. That is, a business must have a clear business case to support its implementation, get the buy-in of key stakeholders and use a phased approach to ensure a seamless transition.

Phased approach

Aside from minimizing potential disruptions, this approach ensures that team members and users can slowly key into the new system. It can be broken up into at least four key processes, as follows:

1. Phase one: Assess your current and future content needs and potential expansion goals. For instance, you may harbor plans to target or deliver content to multiple non-English audiences.
2. Phase two: Start with a specific business use case or content domain. You may want to go mobile-first, replace a legacy system, deliver content to multiple channels or personalize content at scale, among other objectives.
3. Phase three: Start deploying the enterprise CMS. Gradually expand to more channels and content types based on your business case.
4. Phase four: Deploy analytics to track CMS performance and use the data to evaluate and refine the system.

This phased approach enables you to address key needs in the present while you pivot and implement new customer experiences.

Content modeling

Effective content modeling is crucial, regardless of the CMS approach you choose to deploy.

• Break content into reusable, structured units
• Design content models that support omnichannel delivery
• Focus on creating flexible, adaptable content structures

API design strategies

One of the benefits of a modern CMS is that it is built on MACH principles, supporting an API-first approach. This enables seamless integrations and data sharing. Here are some strategies for designing APIs.

• Develop consistent and robust API patterns and standards
• Document the APIs for easy usage in the future
• Ensure the APIs are secure and perform well
• Design flexible and expandable APIs fit for future use

Case studies: Business agility and growth powered by Contentstack

Global enterprise organizations like Burberry and MongoDB struggled with the limitations of monolithic CMSes before opting for Contentstack to transform their content operations.

Burberry

Burberry's legacy monolithic content management and e-commerce platform resulted in a slow time to market and an inability to deliver digital experiences across multiple channels and languages.

They chose Contentstack's CMS as part of a MACH-based strategy. This enabled them to integrate translations and e-commerce. As a result, IT tickets dropped from up to 40 to less than one per week. Translations also become 80% quicker.

"Creating content is quicker and easier with Contentstack. It's a user-friendly tool, making training and onboarding simpler. The integration with our translation and media systems means content can be created and published much quicker than before," Sonia Latoracca said.

Read more to see how Contentstack powered Burberry's CMS transition.

MongoDB 

MongoDB struggled with multiple CMSes, some of which were homegrown, that were difficult to manage and unsuitable for its focus on agility and transformation.

MongoDB chose Contentstack to replace its multiple CMSes. This gave them a single, unified platform to manage and localize content. MongoDB migrated over 250 pages, publishing 5 times more pages per batch with automation. It now supports seven languages with faster translation and publishing speed.

"We can now localize and translate pages without the cumbersome and complex processes we had in the past. Delays in translation are now down to human reviewers rather than the publishing or content extraction processes that used to slow us down." Bill Mitchell said.

Read more to see how Contentstack supported MongoDB's CMS transition.

FAQ section

How do headless and composable differ?

Headless technology separates the content layer from the presentation layer, while composable extends that concept to create modular components throughout the entire stack.

Is headless the same as composable?

No, headless is a component of composable architecture. All composable platforms incorporate headless principles, but a headless CMS may not be fully composable unless it embraces modularity and supports full integration.

What is the difference between CMS and headless CMS?

Traditional CMS combines content management and presentation via a tightly coupled front and back end. In a headless CMS, those concerns are separated, enabling you to build custom front ends.

What is the difference between headless and composable CMS?

The headless approach focuses on separating front end and back end, and delivering content via APIs. Composable CMS extends this with pre-built, customizable components and integration that connect content to multiple apps for faster digital experience creation.

Learn more

Choosing the proper CMS depends on your specific needs, technical capabilities and strategic goals. A headless CMS is suitable for flexible content delivery and multichannel publishing, while a composable CMS offers more agility through its modular approach, advanced integration and alignment with MACH principles.

Contentstack offers you the ideal solution, whether you want to focus on content or entire digital experiences. It is 100% MACH compliant and fully automated, saving you time and money and supporting your global expansion drive. Talk to us today to get started.