Netlify CMS vs. Terminalfour Digital Engagement and Web Development Platform

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

It's an extremely flexible solution. It can be a nightmare to work with if not properly planned out or fantastic if well thought out. If you have a team and an application owner with a plan it's a great option.

Incentivized

• 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

• Ease of use
• Nice interface
• Web-based site manager

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

• It can be a bit buggy with media library management.
• The html editor can act pretty wonky sometimes with the html it translates things into.
• The navigation builder tool is pretty confusing.

Incentivized

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

I was not part of the decision process, but I was very happy with the choice to use TerminalFour.

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

• Increased employee efficiency.
• Happier internal customers because changes are much easier than they used to be and we can often empower them to make their own changes to their websites.
• For our application owner it's become a huge project that consumes all of his time. Not ideal but it's working for now. Knowledge sharing the more intricate pieces can be really difficult.

Incentivized