📦 What is Contentful?
Contentful is a headless CMS (Content Management System) that lets you manage content independently of how or where it’s displayed — making it ideal for modern web and mobile apps.
✅ “Headless” means it provides only a backend (via API); the frontend is up to you.
🚀 Key Features of Contentful
Feature | Description |
---|---|
🧩 Headless CMS | Manage structured content without dealing with layout |
🌐 API-First | REST & GraphQL APIs to fetch content |
🔒 Roles & Permissions | Control who can edit or publish content |
🔄 Localization | Built-in multi-language content support |
📱 Flexible Frontend | Use with React, Vue, Next.js, Nuxt, iOS, Android, etc. |
🧠 Content Modeling | Define content types like “Blog Post”, “Product”, “Page” |
🧱 How Contentful Works
Create a space → Your project’s content database
Define content models → e.g. BlogPost, Author, Page
Add entries → Like creating blog posts in WordPress
Fetch content via API → Use REST or GraphQL
Display it → In your frontend using React, Vue, etc.
⚙️ Example: Fetch Content with REST API
js
fetch('https://cdn.contentful.com/spaces/your_space_id/entries?access_token=your_access_token')
.then(res => res.json())
.then(data => console.log(data));
⚛️ Example: Use with React (via GraphQL)
Install SDK:
bash
npm install contentful graphql
Query content:
graphql
{
blogPostCollection {
items {
title
body
}
}
}
🆚 Contentful vs Other CMSs
Feature | Contentful | WordPress | Sanity | Strapi |
---|---|---|---|---|
Type | Headless | Traditional + Headless | Headless | Headless |
API | REST + GraphQL | REST (GraphQL plugin) | GraphQL-native | REST + GraphQL |
Hosting | Cloud (SaaS) | Self-hosted or SaaS | SaaS | Self-hosted |
Best For | Structured content, scalability | Blogs, marketing sites | Devs & editors | Devs, open source projects |
💰 Pricing
Plan | Price | Suitable For |
---|---|---|
Community | Free | Small personal projects |
Team | Paid (~$300/mo) | Growing teams with multiple environments |
Enterprise | Custom | High-traffic sites, large orgs |
✅ When to Use Contentful
Use Case | Contentful? |
---|---|
Blog or static site | ✅ Yes (with Next.js, Gatsby, etc.) |
Multi-language website | ✅ Yes |
Mobile app backend | ✅ Yes |
Dynamic web app with structured data | ✅ Yes |
Self-hosted, open-source needed | ❌ No (choose Strapi or Sanity) |