Hygraph (previously GraphCMS) is a native GraphQL Headless Content Management System (CMS) and now evolved as a Federated Content Platform, enabling teams across the world to unify, structure, enrich and distribute content from anywhere to anywhere.
$299
per month
Netlify CMS
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Netlify CMS is an open source Git-based CMS for static site generators. it runs 100% in a browser.
N/A
Sanity
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Sanity from the company of the same name in San Francisco is a platform for structured content that comes with an open-source editing environment called Sanity Studio that users can customize with JavaScript and a real-time hosted data store.
I would recommend GraphCMS to anyone who is also using Gatsby to build their website. If not, I would recommend them to consider GraphCMS but also consider other options. GraphCMS is a tool in which you are responsible to make the most out of it, but sometimes this requires more time and knowledge than a normal engineer may be able to handle. But with more time and attention, the reward of off-lifting content creation from the developers is a huge time saver in the long run.
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.
Customization and creation of CMS are almost limitless. Building and customizing the platform is facilitated by a wealth of documentation and video content. As opposed to graphql and traversing rest APIs, Sanity's query language is a breath of fresh air. It really helps you if you want something lightweight but at the same time you want it to be scalable then I think Sanity is your best option.
GraphCMS is very expensive at the enterprise level.
GraphCMS requires deep knowledge of the system and requires lots of time to be efficient with it (especially around creating specific data patterns/relationships).
Multiple times a day, the system will give us errors when attempting to save something but the errors are unclear as to what went wrong (can be irritating).
We picked GraphCMS since it used Graph API and easily integrated it into our Gatsby website. It was also cheap (free) and easy to test out the product, making it easier to prove to our company we should pay for the product in the long run. Lastly, it seems to have a bunch of support from other developers which makes us confident will be around for a while (and we won't need to replace it anytime soon). Note: I also looked at Directus and DatoCMS but these were not options within TrustRadius
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.
