Contentful

Contentful is a cloud-based headless CMS and one of the longest-established platforms in the category, used by brands such as Spotify, Vodafone, and Urban Outfitters. Editors manage structured content in a web app, and developers deliver it through REST and GraphQL APIs to any channel: websites, mobile apps, in-store screens, and more.

Content is organised as content models: custom content types with typed fields, references between entries, and rich text that can embed other entries. Localisation handles multiple locales per entry, and spaces and environments separate projects and let teams branch content models the way they branch code, with migrations scripted through the CLI and changes promoted between environments in CI/CD.

Around the core sit a Marketplace of apps and integrations (Vercel, Netlify, Shopify, translation and DAM tools), webhooks for rebuilds and automation, scheduled publishing, workflows, and AI actions that draft, translate, and enrich content inside the editor. The App Framework lets teams build custom fields and sidebars in React.

Contentful is a fully managed SaaS with no self-hosted option. Pricing is a free plan with hard usage caps for learning and small projects, a flat monthly Lite plan that raises users, locales, API calls, and bandwidth, and custom-priced Premium contracts for larger organisations, which is where the cost climbs steeply. Non-technical editors sometimes find its structured interface less intuitive than page-builder CMSs.