Item: Netlify CMS
Rating: 9
Author: Mani Kumar Reddy Kancharla

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

When there is a very low-cost solution needed for managing content on the website and the users are not really tech savvy, but they have a need for a WYSIWYG editor with some basic features. Many other solutions might exist for this problem but you might also need a customized schema for the content being stored and more control over infrastructure and access to data, and also a free and open-source implementation.

Pros and Cons

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

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

Return on Investment

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

Alternatives Considered

Jekyll, Strapi, Contentful, Ghost, Forestry CMS and WordPress

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.

Key Insights

Do you think Netlify CMS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Netlify CMS's feature set?

Did Netlify CMS live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Netlify CMS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Netlify CMS again?

Yes

Other Software Used

React, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Docker

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Free Open-Source Headless CMS for Your Static Site Generator

Overall Satisfaction with Netlify CMS