Choosing a headless CMS is one of those decisions that feels reversible but really is not. The content model you build, the editorial workflows you establish, the integrations you wire up... switching platforms later means migrating all of it. And content migration is never as smooth as the vendor's marketing page suggests.
So it is worth getting this right the first time. But the evaluation process is confusing because every headless CMS checks the same boxes on paper. They all have APIs. They all support structured content. They all claim to be developer-friendly. The differences are in the details, and those details matter a lot once your content team is using the platform daily.
What to Actually Evaluate
Most CMS comparison articles compare features. Feature comparison is almost useless because every mature headless CMS has the features you need. The real evaluation criteria are:
- Content modeling flexibility. Can you model your content the way your business thinks about it, or do you have to bend your mental model to fit the platform's constraints?
- Editorial experience. Will your content team actually enjoy using it, or will they fight it every day?
- API design and developer experience. How easy is it for your developers to query content and build with it?
- Pricing at your scale. Not the starting price... the price when you have the content volume, the API call volume, and the team size you will have in two years.
- Ecosystem and integrations. Does it connect to the tools your team already uses?
Let us go deeper on each of these.
Content Modeling: The Foundation of Everything
Your content model is the schema that defines what types of content you have and how they relate to each other. A blog post has a title, a body, an author, and a category. A product page has a name, a description, pricing, and features. The content model defines these structures.
Where platforms diverge:
- Contentful uses a rigid but predictable content type system. You define content types with typed fields, and entries conform to those types. References between types are explicit. This predictability is a strength for large teams... the structure is clear and enforceable.
- Sanity defines schemas in code (JavaScript/TypeScript), which means your content model lives in your repository and goes through code review. This is powerful for developer-led teams but can be intimidating for content teams who want to modify the model without involving engineering.
- Strapi lets you build content types through a visual builder, which is great for quick setup but can get unwieldy for complex models. The code-first option exists but is secondary.
The question to ask: who owns the content model in your organization? If it is developers, schema-as-code (Sanity) gives you version control and review processes. If it is content strategists, a UI-based builder (Contentful, Strapi) is more accessible.
Editorial Experience: The Make-or-Break Factor
Here is something that gets overlooked in technical evaluations: the people who use the CMS every day are usually not developers. They are content editors, marketing managers, and product marketers. If the editing experience is clunky, slow, or confusing, your content team will hate the platform no matter how elegant the API is.
Things to test with your actual content team during evaluation:
- Create a real piece of content. Not a demo... an actual blog post or product page with real text, images, and references. How many clicks does it take? Where do people get confused?
- Edit an existing piece of content. Can editors find the entry they want to update? Can they see a preview of what it will look like? Is the revision history clear?
- Work with media. Upload an image, crop it, add alt text, use it in multiple entries. Media management is a daily task and bad media UX is a daily frustration.
- Collaborate. Can two editors work on related content without conflicting? Are there workflow states (draft, in review, published) that match your editorial process?
Sanity's Sanity Studio is fully customizable... you can build exactly the editing experience your team needs, but that customization takes development time. Contentful's editing experience is polished out of the box but less customizable. Strapi falls somewhere in between.
API Design and Developer Experience
For your development team, the CMS is essentially an API. The developer experience lives in the documentation quality, the query flexibility, the SDK support, and the local development story.
Key differentiators:
- REST vs. GraphQL. Contentful and Sanity both support GraphQL and REST. Sanity's GROQ query language is a unique third option... a custom query language that is more expressive than REST filters and more concise than GraphQL for common content queries.
- Real-time capabilities. Sanity has real-time collaboration and live content updates built in. Contentful's real-time features require the Content Management API and webhooks. This matters if you need live previews or real-time content updates.
- Type safety. Both Contentful and Sanity can generate TypeScript types from your content model, which catches content-related bugs at build time. This is increasingly important as teams adopt TypeScript for frontend development.
- Local development. Sanity Studio runs locally as part of your project. Contentful's web app is cloud-only. Being able to develop against the CMS UI locally speeds up content model iteration.
Pricing: The Two-Year View
CMS pricing pages show the entry-level cost. The cost that matters is what you will pay when your content scales. Here is what drives costs up:
- Content volume. More entries mean more storage and more API calls. Some platforms charge per entry; others charge per API call.
- API call volume. If you are building pages server-side on each request (SSR), every page view generates API calls. Static builds generate API calls only at build time. Your architecture directly impacts your CMS bill.
- Team size. Per-seat pricing adds up for large content teams. Check whether "seats" means everyone who logs in or just editors who publish.
- Environments. Development, staging, and production environments often count against your plan limits. Running multiple environments (which you should) costs more than running one.
Get a realistic estimate by projecting your content volume, team size, and API usage two years out. The CMS that is cheapest at launch may not be cheapest at scale.
The Migration Factor
No matter which platform you choose, you probably have existing content that needs to migrate. The migration plan should be part of the evaluation, not an afterthought.
Questions to answer before you commit:
- Does the platform have import tools or APIs for bulk content creation?
- Can you script the migration, or does it require manual entry?
- How do you handle rich text? Converting between rich text formats (HTML, Markdown, ProseMirror, Contentful's rich text format) is the most error-prone part of any migration.
- What about media assets? Do images need to be re-uploaded, or can you point to external URLs?
- How do you maintain URL redirects? Your existing pages have SEO value. Losing URLs means losing rankings.
Our Recommendation Framework
After implementing headless CMS platforms across many projects, our shorthand recommendation:
- Choose Contentful if you need a polished out-of-the-box editorial experience, strong enterprise features (SSO, roles, audit logs), and a predictable content modeling system. Best for large content teams in enterprise environments.
- Choose Sanity if you want maximum customization of the editing experience, schema-as-code for developer-owned content models, and real-time collaboration. Best for developer-led teams that want full control.
- Choose Strapi if you want an open-source option you can self-host, need to keep costs low, and have a team comfortable managing infrastructure.
But honestly, the best way to decide is to build a proof of concept on your top two choices with your actual content and your actual team. A day of hands-on evaluation tells you more than weeks of feature comparison.
If you are evaluating headless CMS platforms and want a team that has hands-on experience with all of them, let's talk through your requirements.