20 Best Headless CMS for your website

Do you know what is the most influencing thing for a business and organization that has a digital presence? It’s the marketing. Specifically, content marketing. Content is what attracts the customers, and Content is something that you need to build a brand, have a digital presence, become a leader, and dominate your industry. 

The creation and distribution of content along with proper content marketing strategy can generate an awe-inspiring digital experience. Whereas a poor one can be a nightmare for you and an obstacle for your customers. Therefore, it is a foremost priority for every business to deliver quality content in order to sustain and remain competitive in their respected businesses. 

Managing content on an organizational level is challenging, especially in the era of omnichannel marketing, where content is created and published to multiple channels and devices.

To serve the content and manage it effectively, a modern Content Management System is on the rise. Headless CMS is a popular trend in the market that seems unstoppable in the upcoming years. But there are lots and lots of Headless CMS options available in the market and choosing the best headless CMS for your business is really tough.

So, we at OpenXcell have decided to curate a list of the top 20 best headless cms for websites.

• Strapi
• Contentful
• Agility CMS
• Zesty
• Storyblok
• Bold
• Sanity
• Magnolia
• Netlify CMS
• dotCMS
• ContentStack
• Kontiko Kontent
• Craft CMS
• Butter CMS
• Graph CMS
• Core DNA
• Ingeniux
• Directus
• Ghost
• PimCore

But before we dive deep into the list of best headless cms, let us understand what a headless CMS means.

What is Headless CMS

The term “ Headless “is self-explanatory. That is the lack of a head or only the presence of a body. Here, the Headless CMS means a content management system consisting of only the back-end and no front-end attached. In simple terms, a Headless CMS is that CMS in which a Head that is its frontend is chopped off and separated from its body that is its Backend. 

Headless CMS is capable of publishing the content to web services and delivering it to any channel and device (Smartphones, Laptops, Smartwatches, Digital Banners, Digital Boards, etc.) at a time via API. Therefore, a Headless CMS can easily fulfill the lacking of the frontend. 

The basic functioning of a Headless CMS is to call API and execute the content into a webpage. This is a preferable option for functioning rather than integrating the content (frontend), and the backend of the system like traditional CMS such as WordPress does.

Besides that, there is no requirement for hosts in the Headless CMS. Therefore, maintaining a Headless CMS is easier than maintaining a non-headless CMS. 

Now that you are familiar with what a headless CMS is, let us look at the best Headless CMS available in the market. Most of them are quite popular Headless CMS and have top-rated clients from different industries. This will help you to choose from so many headless CMS options. So, here is the list of Top 20 Headless CMS for your website.

20 Best Headless CMS For Your Website in 2024

1. Strapi

Strapi is a leading open-source headless cms in the industry. It is primarily dependent on Node.js for all the developers’ content management and API needs. 

By using Starpi, you can have an API within minutes and concentrate on software development without worrying about any CMS complexities. The Entire customization API makes it the perfect fit and best headless cms for any business/organization. 

It manages your backend most efficiently. Thus it is a one-stop solution for editors, writers, publishers, project managers, E-commerce sites, C-suite employees, and business leaders.

Starpi Pricing: 

Community – $0, free forever

Bronze – $29, Per Month Per Project (Annual Billing)

Silver – $299, Per Month Per Project (Annual Billing)

Gold – Quote Based (Contact Strapi team form here)

Top Companies Using Starpi – AllDadsTalk, Hackdoor, Beshak

Official Website – Strapi.io 

2. Contentful

Contentful ranks among the most popular headless CMS under the G2’s ‘Best Headless CMS’ category. It is considered as one of the next-generation platforms to build digital experiences at scale. 

Contentful headless cms have the largest network of partners that makes it reach integrations and innovate. Thus it is the best headless cms for enterprise-level newsrooms, and it offers high security, reliable infrastructure, and 24 X 7 X 356 customer support.

Contentful Pricing:

Community – $0, free forever

Team – $489, Per Month 

Enterprise – Quote Based Custom plan (Contact Contentful team from here)

Top Companies Using Contentful – PubNub, Samsara, Hims & Hers

Official Website – Contentful.com

3. Agility CMS

Agility CMS is named as one of the most popular headless CMS in the market. It has all the features of a Headless CMS, and it is also familiar with the authoring tools that marketers know and love to use. 

With Agility CMS, you have full power and control over the content and entire CMS. It is very simple and easy to use as it takes a content-first approach to structure and delivers your digital content.

Agility CMS Pricing:

Developer – $0, free forever

Business – $490, Per Month (Paid Annually)

Pro – $990, Per Month (Paid Annually)

Enterprise – 2500+, Per Month (Contact Agility CMS team from here) 

Top Companies Using Agility CMS – Oxford, VisitOrlando, SCENE

Official Website – AgilityCMS.com

4. Zesty

Zesty.io is one of the best SaaS headless CMS for any size of business or organization. Zesty allows its users to create content and distribute it to multiple channels and devices without relying on developer resources. 

With Zesty, businesses can maximize their IT value, capture valuable user behavior data, optimize marketing efficiency, improve content production and deployment, and chase goals faster. 

This is the reason why Zesty.io is the top headless cms for your website among all the headless cms options.

Zesty Pricing: 

Startup – $475, Per Month (1 User Max)

Silver – $1250, Per Month (3 Users Max)

Business Gold – $3500, Per Month (10 Users Max)

Business Platinum – $8500, Per Month (Custom no. of Users)

Enterprise – Quote Based Pricing (Contact Zesty team from here)

Top Companies Using Zesty – Sony, Epic Games, Rocket League, etc.

Official Website – Zesty.io

5. Storyblok

Storyblok is one of the best headless CMS that comes with a visual editor for dedicated developers, content editors, and marketers. Storyblok headless CMS lets you tell your story and manage your content for every use case, such as mobile apps, websites, e-commerce platforms, helpdesks, smart devices, and screen displays. 

With modern Headless CMS architecture, Storyblok has the user experience of a page builder. This gives an editor a self-explaining interface and freedom to developers. 

Storblok Pricing:

Developers – $0, Free Forever (For Single Developer)

Basic – $7, Per Month Per User (Paid Annually)

Advance – $12, Per Month Per User (Paid Annually)

Premium – $21, Per Month Per User (Paid Annually)

Enterprise – $2999, Per Month (Contact Storyblok team from here)

Top Companies Using Storyblok – Adidas, PizzaHut, Panini, Decathlon

Official Website – Storyblok.com

6. Bold

Bold is a Headless CMS that truly understands your content and its requirements. It separated the presentation layer and the content. This makes it easy to curate content and distribute it to the different screens and screen-less voice-based search devices.

As a SaaS headless CMS, Bold manages the server, security, performance, and updates for its clients so they can focus on creating better content. All the content on Bold can be optimized for social media and SEO. Besides, Integrating third-party apps is very easy. 

Blod Pricing:

Basic – $99, Per Month

Enterprise – Quote Based Custom Plans (Contact Bold CMS team from here)

Top Companies Using Bold – Fortune India, Bloomberg, The Quint, Afaqs, Free Press, etc.

Official Website – Quntype.com (Bold)

7. Sanity

Sanity is the best content management platform for structured content that lets your team build better digital experiences. Flexibility is the core of Sanity. 

Developers can easily customize the environment using React and JavaScript and integrate the backend with the APIs and vibrant data modeling capabilities. 

Sanity comes with full version history, real-time collaboration, live preview, and scalability with the organization’s need for cloud infrastructure and security. 

Sanity Pricing: 

Basic – $0, Free Forever

Team – $99, Per Month Per Project (Max 10 Users)

Business – $949, Per month Per Project (Max 20 Users)

Enterprise – Quote Based Pricing (Any No. of Users)

Top Companies Using Sanity – Nike, National Geographic, Netlify, Cloudflare, Flex, Figma, etc.

Official Website – Sanity.io

8. Magnolia

Magnolia is one of the best Headless CMS for enterprises and modular digital experiences. It provides scalability and high performance, flexible integrations, and ease of use. 

With Magnolia, you can manage content in any form, distribute it to multiple devices and channels, and connect data from various sources. Magnolia offers the highest flexibility among the content management systems and lets you choose and integrate any system you want. This makes it cost-efficient in the long term.

Magnolia Pricing:

Enterprise – Quote Based Pricing, Licensing Annually (Contact Magnolia team from here)

Top Companies Using Magnolia – American Express, BMW, The New York Times, CNN Philippines, Al Arabiya News Channel, etc.

Official Website – Magnoliacms.com

9. Netlify CMS

Netlify is an open-source headless CMS built as a single-page React app. It is used with any static site generation and delivers more flexible and faster web projects. 

Netlify is based on Client-side javascript, Prebuilt Markups, and Reusable APIs. Compared to server-side CMS like WordPress, Netlify delivers better security, performance, flexibility, better developer experience, and a lower cost of scaling.

Netlify Pricing:

Starter – $0, Free Forever

Pro – $19, Per Month Per Member

Business – $99, Per Month Per Member

Enterprise – Quote Based Pricing (Contact Netlify team from here) 

Top Companies Using Netlify – Nike, Shopify, Verizon, Hindustan Unilever, MailChimp, etc.

Official Website – Netlify.com

10. dotCMS

dotCMS is an open-source content management system with the hybrid model that allows its users to build, manage and deploy content enabling applications like single-page apps, mobile apps, static & dynamic websites, and much more. 

The API approach of dotCMS enables its users to manage content, images, and assets in one centralized location and deliver them to any channel. 

dotCMS also offers the features like multi-language support, low code/no code of traditional CMS, and features like scalability, cloud support, and Restful APIs of Headless CMS. Therefore, using dotCMS gives benefits to both worlds.

dotCMS Pricing:

All Plans – Quote Based (Contact dotCMS team from here)

Top Companies Using dotCMS – TELUS, Junior Achievements, etc

Official Website – dotCMS.com 

11. ContentStack

ContentStack – the top headless cms for websites empowers developers and marketers to collaborate around content like never before. It accelerates the delivery of digital content, websites, and apps to give a new experience to its users. 

ContentStack also offers powerful integration to connect the CMS with the latest technology, Omnichannel content distribution, flexible UI/UX, and effortless team collaboration. 

Famous for its care without compromise, ContentStack is the most satisfactory and popular headless CMS in the market.

ContentStack Pricing: 

Start – $995, Per Month for 10 Users with 2M API calls.

Grow – $3500, Per Month for 10 Users with 6M API calls.

Scale – Quote based pricing (Contact ContentStack team from here)

Top Companies Using ContentStack – McDonald’s, Mitsubishi, Spectator, SHELL, etc.

Official Website – ContentStack.com

12. Kontiko Kontent

Kontiko Kontent is the top headless CMS that simplifies the production of content for marketers. It helps marketers to focus on creating qualitative content without any involvement from developers. 

Kontiko Kontent lets you control your content, process, and security. It also offers guaranteed uptime and 24 X 7 support in its SLA. It also has Multi-Factor Authentication and is GDPR compliant.

Kontiko Pricing: 

Business – $999, Per Month for 10 Users

Premium – $1999, Per Month for 25 Users

Enterprise –  Quote Based Custom Plan (Contact Kontiko team from here)

Top Companies Using Kontiko Kontent – Skoda, Vogue, University of Oxford, Cadbury, Hotels.com, Konica Minolta, etc.

Official Website – Kontent.ai

13. Craft CMS

Craft CMS is the best content management system for developers, web professionals, and designers. It matches their needs perfectly and offers flexibility, control, and ease of use. 

Updating, managing, and storing content becomes very easy with the features offered by Craft CMS. Besides that, the customer care services offered by Craft CMS are really impressive.

Craft CMS Pricing: 

Solo – $0, Free Forever

Pro – $299, Per Project

Enterprise – Quote Based (Contact Craft CMS team from here)

Top Companies Using Craft CMS – iDE Global, Netflix, Oakley, Ikea, etc.

Official Website – CraftCMS.com

14. Butter CMS

Butter CMS is API first CMS that is built for the developers. It lets you integrate your system with Butter’s API in just 60 seconds. Revision histories and scheduling, multi-site and environment support, and content modeling are some of the best advantages of Butter CMS. 

Built-in SEO and the fast content update make it one of the Best Headless CMS. 

Butter CMS Pricing:

Developer – $0, Free Forever

Micro – $83, Per Month (Max 5 pages and 50 blogs)

Startup – $166, Per Month (Max 50 Pages and 300 blogs)

Small Business – $333, Per Month(Max 100 Pages and 600 blogs)

Enterprise + Agency – Quote Based Pricing (Contact Butter CMS team from here)

Top Companies Using Butter CMS – Salesforce, Hims & Hers, IDEO, Contactually, Glovo, etc.

Official Website – Buttercms.com

15. Graph CMS

Graph CMS is one of the first GraphQL based native headless CMS that helps users to deliver a high-quality digital experience across all platforms. 

From marketing websites to high traffic publishing, to interactive mobile apps, to multi-language ecommerce platforms, and voice-based apps, Graph CMS is a solid content infrastructure suitable for all. 

Graph CMS empowers you to streamline workflow, centralize editorial products and marketing content, cut the developer implementation time, deliver a highly personalized digital experience, and serve genuine omnichannel content.

Graph CMS Pricing:

Community – $0, Free Forever

Professional – $299, Per Month Per Project (Billed Annually)

Scale – $799, Per Month Per Project (Billed Annually)

Enterprise – Quote Base Custom Pricing (Contact Graph CMS team from here)

Top Companies Using Graph CMS – Telenor, Discovery, Hindustan Unilever, BioCentury, etc.

Official Website – Graphcms.com

16. Core DNA

Core DNA is amongst the world’s Best headless CMS platforms that deliver true multi-tenant digital experience. They offer developer tools, personalization, scaling, performance, scaling, innovation, automation, and a lot more to build best-in-class digital assets.

Core DAN helps to run your business through cloud computing without involving technology headaches. It combines all the web properties into one platform and makes it easy to manage. 

Core DAN Pricing: 

Additional Server requests – $500, Per 100K requests

Single Website – $1250, Per Month Per Site (Paid Annually)

Enterprise – Quote Based Custom Plans (Contact Core DNA team from here)

Top Companies Using Core DNA – Mentoring Minds, Fujitsu, Seek, Frontier, etc.

Official Website – Coredna.com

17. Ingeniux

Ingeniux is the agile web experience management platform for portals, communities, websites, and intelligent content delivery. It shares the highly agile and latest mobile-first architecture built on ASP.NET MVC (Model-View-Controller) technology. 

Ingeniux provides a CMS platform to deliver and manage content to any channel or device. Also, it ensures compliance and proper governance of the content.

Ingeniux can be used as a SaaS CMS platform or an on-premise platform application. This is why Ingeniux is used by hundreds of businesses, organizations, education institutes, government organizations, non-profit organizations, and trade associations. 

Ingeniux Pricing: 

Quote Based Pricing (Contact Ingeniux team from here)

Top Companies Using Ingeniux – Dolby Sound, Lookout, Siff, AIG Direct, etc.

Official Website – Ingeniux.com

18. Directus

Directus is an open-source headless CMS for managing projects of any size. The Directus API allows you to connect easily with SQL databases anywhere, whether native apps, websites, IoT devices, wearable, or Kiosks. 

It allows non-technical users to manage the content easily and lets you connect with your data from anywhere, everywhere. The significant advantage of using Directus is that it is a Headless CMS that can be extended, tailored, and even bypassed if needed.

Directus Pricing:

Self-Hosted – $0, Free Forever

On-Demand Cloud – $49 Per Month for the first 6 months and $99, Per Month thereafter.

Enterprise Cloud – Quote Based Custom Pricing (Contact Directus team from here)

Top Companies Using Directus – Mercedes, Unites States Navy, Tripadvisor, Native Instruments, BOSE, Hearst, etc. 

Official Website – Directus.io

19. Ghost

Ghost is an open-source headless CMS that is easy to use and free for everyone. Though the early architecture of Ghost CMS used to be a standard monolithic web app, it is now a fully headless open source CMS that lets you connect with any frontend. 

Ghost has a default frontend and client, but it can be replaced with your jam stack.

Starter – $9, Per Month (Billed Annually)

Ghost Pricing:

Creator – $25, Per Month (Billed Annually)

Team – $50, Per Month (Billed Annually)

Business – $199, Per Month (Billed Annually)

Top Companies Using Ghost – Apple, NASA, Mozilla, OpenAI, The Standford Review, Tinder, Cloudflare, etc.

Official Website – Ghost.org

20. PimCore

Pimcore is an open-source headless CMS platform with more than 100,000 customers worldwide. It offers product information management (PIM), Digital Asset Management (DAM), Digital Experience Management (DXP), Master Data Management (MDM), digital eCommerce, and multichannel publishing. 

Pimcore empowers to have a single trusted view of information and delivers an extraordinary product experience for the customers across multiple channels and touchpoints. It has a 100% API-driven architecture. 

PimCore Pricing: 

Community Edition – $0, Free Forever

Enterprise Subscription – Quote Based Pricing (Contact PimCore team from here)

Unlimited Subscription – Quote Based Pricing (Contact PimCore team from here)

Top Companies Using PimCore – Burger King, Audi, Intersport, Pepsi, SONY, Vespa, T-Mobile, etc.

Official Website – Pimcore.com

The Final Thought

It is essential to create, manage, and distribute content online for your business to stay competitive in today’s world. In such cases, having a headless CMS that fits your requirement can help deliver an iconic and personalized experience to your audience. We have presented you with the best top 20headless CMS for your website in 2021. However, if you have any questions, then feel free to contact us.