Top 5+ Headless CMS for Ecommerce Sites

This topic aids in informed decision-making for selecting the optimal headless CMS for ecommerce sites. Helping business owners understand the key features and strengths of various headless ecommerce platforms empowers users to make strategic choices aligned with their business requirements.

Benefits of Headless CMS 

Headless e-commerce CMS offers several advantages that can greatly benefit businesses.

• Flexibility: With a headless approach, you can use any frontend technology (such as React, Angular, or Vue.js) and connect it to your eCommerce backend. This flexibility allows for a more customized and modern user experience.
• Omnichannel Support: Headless CMS facilitates content delivery to various channels like the web, mobile apps, IoT devices, and more. This is crucial for businesses aiming to provide a seamless experience across different platforms.
• API-driven: The backend of a headless CMS typically exposes APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that enable communication between the frontend and backend. This API-driven architecture allows for easier integration with third-party services and applications. 
• Scalability: Headless eCommerce systems are often more scalable as they allow you to scale the frontend and backend independently. This is beneficial for handling increased traffic or expanding your digital presence.
• Faster Development: Developers can work on the frontend and backend concurrently, leading to faster development cycles. This is particularly useful for businesses that need to adapt quickly to changing market conditions.
• Personalization: A headless CMS enables personalized content delivery based on user behavior and preferences, contributing to a more engaging and targeted user experience.

These benefits empower businesses to deliver exceptional user experiences, optimize their operations, and stay ahead in the ever-changing e-commerce landscape.

6 Best Headless CMS for Ecommerce Sites 

When choosing a headless eCommerce CMS, consider your specific business requirements, the technology stack you prefer, and the scalability needed for your project. Let’s explore the top 6 headless eCommerce CMS platforms including:

Strapi 

Strapi is an open-source headless CMS that allows for rapid API development. It provides a solid foundation for developers seeking a customizable and extensible solution for their headless eCommerce projects.

Key Features

Flexible Content Management and Publishing

Strapi excels in providing a dual capability for e-commerce projects. Its flexibility in content management empowers users to create diverse categories, sections, formats, or flows, meeting the unique needs of e-commerce content structures.

Simultaneously, content managers benefit from the platform’s publishing flexibility, allowing them to build a highly adaptable publishing experience. This combination promotes agility and autonomy, enabling dynamic page creation on the fly to cater precisely to evolving content requirements.

Media Management

The Strapi Media Library is a user-friendly feature, that allows users for the management and optimization of media files such as images, videos, and files within the Strapi admin panel. It offers an intuitive user interface for uploading, editing, and also deleting media files, ensuring quality maintenance throughout the process. 

SEO Optimization Capabilities

Strapi offers robust SEO optimization features, allowing easy management of metadata through repeatable fields. The Media Library enhances SEO by providing options for captions, notes, and custom filenames for optimized media assets. 

Data Management with Built-in Sorting and Filtering

Handling large datasets is simplified with Strapi’s built-in sorting and filtering capabilities, enabling efficient management of thousands of entries without manual effort.

Headless CMS Functionality

Strapi’s headless CMS approach enables the creation of APIs while managing content structures through a user-friendly admin panel. Simultaneously, developers can access and manually edit API files as needed.

API Customization

Strapi’s flexibility extends to the API, enabling developers to effortlessly customize the code within their preferred code editor, ensuring the API aligns precisely with project requirements.

Multi-database Support

Strapi supports multiple databases, including SQLite, MySQL, Postgres, and MariaDB, offering the freedom to choose the database that best suits your needs.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Customizable API Development
• User-Friendly Interface
• Multi-Database Support
• Scalability
• Robust Content Modeling

Cons

• Learning Curve for Complex Configurations
• Limited Built-in eCommerce Features
• Potential Performance Overhead in High-Traffic Scenarios

Pricing 

Self-Hosted Option

For self-hosted deployments, Strapi provides an Enterprise Edition tailored to meet security and compliance requirements. The pricing details for this option are available upon inquiry.

Cloud-Based Plans

Strapi offers a cloud-based solution with two distinct plans:

Pro Plan – $99:

• Fully managed platform.
• Designed to enhance team velocity.
• Specific features and limitations aligned with the pro plan.

Team Plan – $499:

• Fully managed platform.
• Geared towards team collaboration and efficiency.
• Comes with distinct features and limitations catering to the team plan.

Contentful

Contentful is a cloud-based headless CMS that facilitates content management and delivery across multiple platforms. It supports a variety of programming languages and offers a content infrastructure with APIs.

Key Features

Content Type Design Automation

Efficiently construct content models using the AI Content Type Generator. It interprets user-provided descriptions, generating content types for streamlined design and build processes.

To enable the AI Content Type Generator, navigate to the “Spaces” page in “Organization settings & subscriptions”. Once enabled, the feature appears under the “Content Model” tab next to “+Add content type.”

AI-Generated Image Deployment

Leverage the AI Image Generator to deploy images generated from OpenAI onto the Contentful Platform. This facilitates seamless integration into content and marketing strategies.

Brand-Aligned Content Generation

The AI Content Generator produces brand-aligned content, minimizing repetitive tasks and supporting translation in nearly 100 languages, enhancing the diversity of your content.

Content Organization and Integration

Store owners use Contentful spaces to organize and integrate content, allowing teams to structure and manage content across multi-brand, use cases, regions, and channels. This fosters endless reusability.

Experience Builder Canvas

The Experience Builder provides a user-friendly canvas with reusable components, enabling digital teams to create and publish on-brand experiences without requiring coding knowledge.

Live Preview Functionality

Experience real-time content previews adjacent to the entry editor, ensuring immediate visibility of updates within the preview pane, and enhancing the editing experience. This comes with the following features:

• Side-by-side previewing and editing – Edit the entry and preview changes in other same web app page without switching between the tabs

• Live updates – When editing the entry, all changes are shown in the preview pane without refreshing the preview: 

• Inspector mode Click “Edit” to jump to its source field and make the vital changes: 

Preview-Based Publishing

Implement Preview-based Publishing to publish pages and edited references within Live Preview. This grants editors a transparent view of published entries and potential impacts on other entries.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Cloud-Based Content Management
• Versatile API Support
• Cross-Platform Content Delivery
• Multilingual Capabilities
• Extensive Programming Language Support

Cons

• Subscription-Based Pricing Model
• Limited Built-in eCommerce Functionality
• Dependency on Internet Connectivity

Pricing

• Free Plan: Designed for individual projects, the Free plan caters to developers and marketers at no cost.
• Basic Plan – $300/month: Geared towards teams engaged in site and app development, the Basic plan is priced at $300 per month.
• Premium Plan: Tailored for organizations seeking scaled experiences, the Premium plan comes with custom pricing on an annual basis. It includes 2 Intro space licenses.

Sanity 

Sanity is a headless CMS known for its real-time collaborative content editing and structured content management. It provides APIs for developers and a customizable content studio for editors, making it a strong choice for teams working on dynamic and collaborative eCommerce projects.

Key Features

Omnichannel content management

Enterprises handle a vast array of content across numerous channels like websites, mobile platforms, ecommerce, apps, billboards, and smart devices. For optimal performance, a capable CMS should seamlessly integrate with all these channels. This integration empowers teams to provide outstanding omnichannel experiences, ensuring customers receive excellence across various touchpoints. 

Secure experience 

Sanity CMS allows teams to fully access control so only authorized users access sensitive information. It can come with different features, such as  SSO, audit logs, and role-based access control, as well as SOC2, GDPR, and CCPA compliance.

Scalable content

The platform meets the demand of a growing business by allowing the team to push scalable content. The organization You need to avoid excessive effort in every exploration of new markets, audiences, or geographic locations is essential for the organization. 

Customizable Workspaces

The platform provides full customization and composition capabilities. Teams can swiftly configure content workspaces in Sanity Studio and adapt them as needed, offering flexibility for content teams and editors.

Unmatched Developer Experience

Sanity Studio ensures a superior Developer Experience (DX) with straightforward setup and simple, idiomatic APIs in TypeScript and JavaScript. Comprehensive TypeScript coverage, robust documentation, and a UI library ease customization efforts for developers.

SAML and Custom SSO Integration

Sanity offers SAML/SSO integration, automatically granting project access and roles to users logging in through SSO. Streamline onboarding as new users are automatically integrated through their corporate credentials.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Real-Time Collaborative Editing
• Structured Content Management
• Customizable Content Studio
• Flexible Data Modeling
• Scalable Content Architecture

Cons

• Complexity for Non-Technical Users
• Limited Built-in eCommerce Features
• Relatively Smaller Community Support

Pricing

• Free Plan

Designed for individual experimentation or smaller project deployments, the Free plan caters to individual users without cost.

• Growth Plan

Tailored for teams engaged in scaling projects with growing collaboration demands, the Growth plan is priced at $15 per user per month.

• Enterprise Plan

For organizations requiring intricate security, support, and performance solutions, the Enterprise plan offers a customized pricing structure to meet complex needs.

Payload CMS

Focusing on content management with an intuitive admin interface, Payload CMS is a headless CMS designed for developers seeking a balance between simplicity and extensibility.

Key Features

Robust Field Types

Payload CMS distinguishes itself with a comprehensive array of field types that surpass competitors. Dynamic options such as Arrays and Blocks unlock unparalleled potential, while purpose-built fields like Relationship and GeoJSON offer exceptional flexibility in data modeling. This feature ensures a superior level of adaptability in structuring and managing content.

Custom React Component Integration

Payload CMS allows seamless integration of your own React components within the admin panel. The design philosophy prioritizes minimalism for easy customization, offering control over entire views or specific fields. This feature facilitates the addition of new views, ensuring flexibility without introducing versioning concerns.

Secure and Adaptable Authentication

Payload provides a secure and customizable user authentication system by default, enabling users to authenticate themselves with confidence within the Payload environment.

Deep Localization Support

Payload offers robust field-based localization support, making it effortless to maintain multiple locales. This feature is opt-in by default, ensuring a straightforward two-step process to enable localization for tailored content management.

Efficient File Management

With a focus on comprehensive file management, Payload equips users with everything necessary for seamless file upload, storage, and control directly on their servers. This includes robust file access control mechanisms for enhanced security.

Automated REST API Generation

Payload automatically generates a fully functional REST API from Collection and Global Configurations. This ensures a streamlined and efficient process for handling data through RESTful endpoints.

Versatile Field Types

Fields serve as the foundational components in Payload, shaping the data structure for both Collections and Globals. Payload offers an extensive range of field types, encompassing both simplicity and complexity, providing users with versatile options for data modeling.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Simplicity in Admin Interface
• Extensibility for Developers
• Efficient Content Management
• Fast Development Cycle
• Intuitive Data Relationships

Cons

• Limited Built-in eCommerce Features
• Dependency on Developer Proficiency
• Smaller Ecosystem of Extensions

Pricing

• Standard Plan – $35/month: The Standard plan for PayloadCMS is priced at $35 per month, offering essential features for users seeking a budget-friendly option.
• Pro Plan – $199/month: For users with more extensive requirements, the Pro plan is available at $199 per month, providing advanced functionalities beyond the Standard offering.
• Custom Pricing: PayloadCMS offers custom pricing to cater to unique and specific needs. For businesses requiring tailored solutions, this option allows for a flexible and personalized arrangement based on individual requirements.

DatoCMS

Known as a cloud-based headless CMS that prioritizes structured content management, DatoCMS provides APIs, a visual editor, and supports various data types.

Key Features

Images Processing API

DatoCMS excels in image processing through its API, achieved via a seamless partnership with Imgix. Optimize, resize, crop, rotate, and watermark images dynamically by adding custom parameters to the image URL.

Data Integrity Management

DatoCMS prioritizes clean and timeless data, ensuring peace of mind by handling factors that can compromise the health and longevity of your content.

Real-time Updates API

With DatoCMS’s Real-time Updates, new data is instantly pushed to the API consumer, eliminating the need for them to wait until their next query for the latest information.

Dynamic Layouts with Modular Blocks

You can empower content creation by building dynamic layouts with modular blocks. Moreover, define reusable custom components for crafting dynamic layouts tailored to landing pages, micro websites, case studies, and testimonials.

GraphQL in Headless CMS

Leverage the power of GraphQL in combination with DatoCMS’s robust headless CMS for faster responses, a comprehensive API description, and enhanced developer tools.

Video Encoding and Streaming API

This feature enables your content team to produce and serve fast, high-quality videos to any device using DatoCMS’s API. The HLS Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) streaming ensures viewers always receive the right video size for their device and connection speed.

Structured Content Editor

DatoCMS’s structured content editor combines a powerful rich-text editor with a portable JSON format for content storage. Offering a Notion-like editor designed for focus, it includes slash commands, markdown/keyboard shortcuts, and drag & drop functionality, providing an efficient and distraction-free content creation experience.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Cloud-Based Structured Content Management
• Visual Editor for Non-Technical Users
• API Support for Flexible Integrations
• Multilingual Content Capabilities
• Diverse Data Type Support

Cons

• Pricing Tiers Based on Usage
• Limited Built-in eCommerce Features
• Potential Learning Curve for Advanced Features

Pricing

• Professional Plan: Starting at €149/month annually or €199/month, this plan provides comprehensive features for professional digital projects.
• Enterprise Plan: Tailored for scaled experiences, the Enterprise Plan offers premium features, high-touch support, and advanced compliance.
• Custom Pricing: For personalized solutions, DatoCMS provides custom pricing options, payable by credit card or wire transfer.

Wrapping Up 

After thoroughly reviewing the top 6 headless ecommerce CMS options, I’ve gained a clear understanding of their functionalities and how they contribute to business growth. Now, it’s time to make a decision and select the most suitable headless ecommerce CMS for my specific needs.

FAQs