Contentful: Modern Content Infrastructure Built For the Future of Web Development
January 04, 2019

Contentful: Modern Content Infrastructure Built For the Future of Web Development

Andrew Folts | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Contentful

I use Contentful as a headless CMS to build static websites (with GatsbyJS and ReactJS) for small businesses and startups who need a high-quality, modern, low-maintenance solution. I also use it for my company's primary website.
  • Clean, modern interface (not clunky and outdated, like WordPress)
  • High degree of flexibility (I can structure data any way my clients need)
  • Enables headless frontend (i.e. I can build any frontend I want without having to change my CMS)
  • Contentful uses "references" to allow you to build very modular content. If I have a "slider" content type, I can create a "slide" content type which references a "button" content type, and so forth. This works well, but I occasionally wish there was a better solution for one-off content, like a settings page. Currently, this is done for creating an entire content type called "settings" with a single entry. Not a big deal, but not ideal, either.
  • There are a few quirks with GatsbyJS integration, etc, but these issues are being fixed and improved upon very quickly.
  • A minor gripe, but Contentful does not have a way to organize fields within an entry. Entries with many fields are somewhat tiresome to scroll through.
  • I spend less time maintaining websites, and my clients spend less time worrying about their site crashing or being hacked (i.e. WordPress).
  • Contentful has allowed me to be much more flexible with the types of frontend technologies I can use.
For custom solutions, Contentful blows every other CMS I've used out of the water. Unlike WordPress, there's no clutter to wade through, and you can simply build the infrastructure you need. It's more secure by far, and works seamlessly with modern frontend technologies, like GatsbyJS. In contrast to website builders like Squarespace and Wix, Contentful gives developers (like myself) free range to create high-quality, unique, scalable frontends that aren't limited by preexisting design and layout structures.
Coming from WordPress, Contentful feels like content management as it should be. There's no clutter to get rid of, you can simply start building from scratch, and the end product is perfectly tailored to your or your clients needs.

Contentful Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG editor
8
Code quality / cleanliness
9
Admin section
9
Publishing workflow
7
Content taxonomy
10
Availability / breadth of extensions
3
API
9
Internationalization / multi-language
Not Rated
Role-based user permissions
10