Throughout 2019 the headless CMS trend showed no signs of slowing. In 2020 you can expect the trend to grow beyond buzzword popularity as more and more brands turn to headless options for their content management.

We can’t say that headless CMSs, and JAMstack for that matter, are all the rage now in web development but they are pretty close to becoming mainstream tech. A serious contender to LAMP stack dominance if you will. All thanks to amazing ideas and work that’s done and already investor-recognized by the first among equals Netlify and Gatsby.

When we talk about static websites, the first thing that comes to mind is a bunch of web pages coded using HTML and CSS. Just plain text and graphics-based interface with no interactive features and real-time processing whatsoever to facilitate the visitors.

Fortunately, that’s not the case for static websites of today.

Static websites have evolved to embrace innovative technologies and today they can do things such as handling real-time requests, processing payments, managing customer accounts, carrying out full website searches, and a lot more. That’s why we don’t call them static anymore, we now call them JAMstack websites.

OK. This might be an overstatement considering the discussions and debates we currently have about the terms we use on a day-to-day basis.

Why Go the JAMstack Route?

JAMstack: Modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup. - Mathias Biilmann, Netlify co-founder.

With the advent of JAMstack, we now don’t need to divert our focus on specific web technologies in terms of operating systems, web servers, frameworks, database development, management, and backend development. JAMstack bridges the gap of functionality between static and dynamic websites while keeping the key advantages of a static website intact.

JAMstack has brought a completely refreshing method of building websites as well as apps that delivers enhanced development, maintenance, and operational efficiencies not only for the enterprise sector but individuals as well.

Headless CMSes, What Are Those?

Traditional CMSs like Drupal and WordPress are hosted and served with the website every time a request for a page is made. This basically means that the traditional CMSs are built with back-end and front-end bundled into a single application that is web-first.

Headless CMS, on the other hand, decouples content management from the presentation layer.

What is meant by headless CMS?

A headless CMS is a back-end content management system separated from your front-end presentation layer. This means that your content management functionalities (like creation, management, and storage of content) are separate from your front end allowing you to deliver content beyond websites and apps. It allows you to repurpose your content from multiple front-ends making them a perfect fit for JAMstack builds.

With so many brands focusing on repurposing their content on multiple front ends, the growing demand, and the number of headless CMS solutions, should not come as a surprise. Especially when you look at all the benefits a headless CMS brings to a table:

Hosting is delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). And since there is nothing to maintain, security is also delivered as SaaS.

Most headless CMSs have an SLA (service-level agreement) in place which gives you peace of mind in terms of the uptime for example.

Content exists as a separate component altogether and is used when needed through an API request.

Headless CMS gives you complete control over how your content will appear and presented. No forced reliance on themes and templates.

You can reuse and repurpose the same content over and over again.

It doesn’t matter what programming language or framework you are using, headless CMS integrates with any codebase.

Does Your Business Need Headless CMS?

Honestly, no one but you can answer that question. Right now headless CMSs are considered future-proof mainly because of a clear distinction between the content and presentation of it.

However, only understanding your short-term and long-term content goals can help you choose which content management model will best serve your business.

With over 50 different JAMstack projects under our belt what we can do for you is share our experience with the best headless CMSs we used so far. So, treat the following as such ie pros/cons we’ve been able to muster up from the builds we did and problems we’ve come across.

If you don’t have the time right now to check every CMS we’ve reviewed, we’ve prepared a FREE DOWNLOADABLE 📄 pdf file of this post for you. Scroll down to the end of this page to get your free copy.

Let’s dive in.