Decap CMS vs. Vercel

Netlify CMS is well suited when you have very less frequent updates to your content, maybe once a day and very few people need to access your data. You can connect it to Netlify, GitHub, or any platform and have multiple people access it and do as many updates as you wish, but the process is not well-defined and you need to build your own system for that. It is well suited for projects you need to pull off with very low cost, it is essentially free as the software is open source and free to use, and all you need to do is set up your schema correctly and find a deployment pipeline where you can build your static site/API to redeploy whenever the content changes. I personally used a GitHub Login -> Netlify CMS -> next app consumer of content -> GitHub pipelines to run next SSG -> GitHub Pages to deploy the built static site. It might not be appropriate for large teams where users themselves need no-code tools to modify the schema of the content.

Incentivized

For me personally, Vercel was the best choice for website deployment. As I said, it automatically detects every push to my GitHub repository and redeploys it. No overhead of manually reconfiguring every setting. The cloud features are limited but good. The scenario where I would say it lacks is the option to deploy one's backend. Engineers like me mostly prefer to deploy their frontend on Vercel.

• Storing content data in customized schema without a database
• Full control over your content and infrastructure where it is deployed and stored
• Very low-cost way for building your own CMS and CDN

Incentivized

• Static Hosting
• Serverless Functions
• Deployment
• Integration
• Developer Experience

Incentivized

• Linking between different schema types, i.e. having some relations between content
• Better ways to define content schema, like how TinaCMS would handle using a JSON

Incentivized

• Interface Revamp
• Cost reduction

Incentivized

Most of the website deployment work is handled by Vercel, especially for the frontend. It currently lacks backend code hosting, which makes me look for additional infrastructure or cloud providers that may not be as generous as Vercel and can be costly. This is the reason for an 8-out-of-10 rating.

We really can't compare it to full-fledged CMS software, like WordPress, which has a lot of community and support with widgets, plugins, and whatnot. It's not built for that, but you can compare it to Contentful, Ghost, Strapi, etc., which provide similar functionality to a headless CMS with custom schema options, but even among them, it still lacks a lot of functionality, ease of use, and support. But Netlify CMS pros would be of the opinion that compared to other platforms where most schemas need to use their own tools and frameworks, it's very cost-effective. Something new called TinaCMS has come up to compete with Netlify CMS by covering most of its shortcomings, but it's something new being built by the same team that built Forestry CMS and comes with many modern features, yet currently only supports NextJS SSG.

Incentivized

Vercel beats Heroku and DigitalOcean by a mile with pricing. Since Vercel uses serverless infrastructure, we don't pay for servers that don't get used, which is great for smaller platforms. Vercel Support is also very quick to respond, unlike DigitalOcean who took a while to get back to me after they didn't honor platform credits they sent me.

Incentivized

• Helped us inject dynamic content into existing site very quickly
• Wasted a lot of time to implement when something complex, such as querying content, was needed

Incentivized

• Good clients.
• Faster delivery.
• Less overhead of DevOps.