The Curious Case of The Headless CMS

Marketing Buzzword?

The Content Management System (CMS) space is crowded. In this red ocean, the struggle for relevance requires marketers to seek differentiation continuously. We’ve seen the rise and fall of many marketing buzzwords in the last ten years. What at first is a differentiated term soon becomes a meme. In the endless cloning, many terms have gained and lost meaning. Take, for instance, “Digital Transformation.” How many times have you heard that one? But what does it mean? Likewise, in the past two years, “Headless CMS” has reemerged. While the term and the tech are relatively ancient at more than 10 years old, the term has taken on new energy.

So what is “headless”?

Traditional CMS setup: content editing, a database, and a rendering engine like HTM are tightly coupled. The basic “headless” CMS disconnects these layers.

Theme	Traditional CMS	Headless CMS
Hosting & Delivery	In-house	In the cloud
Development Mindset	Project-focused	Product-focused
Content model	Built for a single page	Building block for many products
Supported devices	Limited	Limitless
Reach	One-to-one	One-to-many
Workflow	Waterfall	Agile
Updates	Scheduled	Continuous
Backend system	Monolithic, all-in-one	Microservice, best-in-class
Investment	Large up-front cost	Quick proof of concept
Technical debt	Inherent to the system	Managed

Headless CMSs emphasize a number of advantages:

1. Developers have more control over system architecture
2. Front-end developers don’t need to learn the ins and outs of the CMS but instead can rely on more standard API-driven approaches
3. Speed – Headless CMSs have the potential to be very fast when a Jamstack and static file approach is possible
4. Security – Disconnecting systems in a headless approach can limit the connection between systems and therefore increase security
5. Omnichannel – If content and rendering are no longer tightly linked then serving content from a headless CMS to omnichannel is potentially easier.