A comprehensive guide to Next.js Content Management Systems

By Ikius Team

January 8th, 2024

Next.js is a React-based web development framework for building highly optimized, scalable and composable websites and apps. It is an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes because it allows you to build fast content-rich websites coupled with a Headless CMS.

However, with countless of Headless CMS options available, it's hard to make the right choice, especially when it comes to allocating your company's resources and making sure that the choice you make supports your growth for years to come. Not to mention, Headless CMSs may get extremely costly, depending on the scale of your project. 

To spend your money, time and effort wisely, you'll most likely be evaluating multiple options based on criterion that are important for your use case. It’s hard work, but after you’ve done with it, you can unlock the full potential of Next.js to create a website system that's scalable and optimized for performance and SEO.

Here, we will share a curated list of what Headless CMS we would recommend in 2024, and how to get the most out of them with Next.js.

In this post:

Headless CMS demystified

Going headless may sound scary if you've used WordPress as your CMS. But rest assured, the term "Headless" is a lot less scary than it sounds.

A traditional CMS like WordPress manages content and the front-end within the same platform and codebase. In WordPress, the content you edit will directly reflect on the front-end code that's delivered to users on the browser. This is called a monolithic architecture.

WordPress is a monolithic system. Content, code, and all assets live within a single instance. Changes within the instance affect what's being served to users in Web Browsers.

While this approach may be good for some companies, especially smaller ones, it’s often inefficient in the long run. If you want to scale your website (and business), add new content and modifications while keeping your website maintainable and optimized, WordPress is often a bottleneck, as it was never designer to manage huge amounts of complex content.

Having this kind of a monolithic architecture where content and code is bundled as one is not often a great idea when talking about technical architecture. With a Headless CMS, you may improve your content editing experience and front-end performance by separating the data- and presentation-layers.

How a typical headless CMS implementation works

A Headless CMS is a platform designed to store, edit, and manage content. It doesn’t have a “head” or presentation layer, meaning you can use it as a kind of a database for content — but with additional features such as authentication, composable UI and features that generally make the lives of content editors and developers easier.

Because it’s decoupled, you can go for your preferred technology for the front-end. The Headless CMS connects your content with the front-end usually with a REST or GraphQL API. This bring multiple benefits, some of which are listed below.

• No technology and vendor lock-in: With a decoupled and composable architecture, you're not tied to one specific technology or vendor. If you need to change your front-end framework, you don't have to change your CMS.

• All-in-one data source for multiple front-ends: Often companies have multiple platforms where content needs to be available. With a Headless CMS you can easily bring your data anywhere, whether it is another sub-brand, mobile application or a smart-watch.

• Enhanced security: Decoupling the front-end from the CMS eliminates a lot of the security issues common in systems like WordPress. Without a monolithic architecture you don't have to rely on 3rd party plugins and you can easily limit access to relevant stakeholders where needed.

Why should I use Next.js?
Can't I just build a site with WordPress?

According to the "State of Frontend 2022" report by The Software House, 43.1% of the surveyed frontend professionals have used and liked Next.js.

Such an enormous acceptance, eclipsed only by React, comes from developers, technical leaders, marketers and business users.

Also, Next.js is the preferred choice of many developers, and not without reason, as it goes with the Composable Web principles as peanut butter and jelly. It simplifies front-end development and delivers measurable business benefits with less effort.

Next.js’ technical benefits

• Better developer experience: With Next.js, you're not constrained to plugins or templates, contrary to what you have with a WordPress website. Instead, you have the freedom to build custom components as you wish.

• Security: When coupled with a headless CMS, Next.js sites are virtually impregnable to cyber attacks.

• Optimized for performance: Next.js provides a lot of optimization features out of the box. These include image optimization, bundle splitting and server-side rendering.

• Optimized for SEO: Server-side rendered applications built with Next.js make it easy for Google crawlers to read the page and identify its content, helping it rank higher.

• Static site generation: Next.js can pre-render your pages at build time to ensure they load fast, and can be deployed anywhere in the world without compromising performance. Static sites also handle traffic spikes much better than WordPress.

Next.js is an excellent tool for companies that need performing sites capable of handling thousands of visitors simultaneously. You can use it to build medium to large websites, progressive web applications, or anything in between with an incredible developer experience.

Next.js CMS explained

Not every headless CMS was created equal. Some are platform-agnostic, yet others favor one or two frameworks and meta-frameworks over others. So, you can find React CMSs and Vue.js CMS, Next.js and Gatsby CMSs etc. Fun and simple, right?

What's great about Next.js is that it's not opinionated how you fetch your data. Practically any CMS that has an API works with Next.js. Take this with a grain of salt though, some Headless CMSs offer better integration and support with Next.js specifically, some do not.

With Next.js and a Headless CMS, you can deliver content at lightspeed to different front-ends and devices using global CDNs and Edge networks for caching. 

Also, some Next.js CMSs come with Next.js website starters to help you develop a Next.js website with a few clicks.

Benefits of using Next.js
with a Headless CMS

You may think that a Headless CMS is unnecessary for your website. The truth is, Next.js is useless without a backend if you want an interactive website with a meaningful and scalable content architecture. In this case, a Headless CMS serves as a no-code backend — it helps your content editors create, manage and edit content without any input from developers.

Next.js can be easily coupled with any API-driven Headless CMS that offers a REST or GraphQL API. With APIs, you can deliver content across multiple channels, from websites to Next.js apps to IoT devices, supporting omnichannel marketing strategies. That’s why Next.js is the perfect framework for companies and brands looking to go omnichannel. 

Also, Next.js is a powerful framework that frontend developers can use to build some of the largest websites and applications, with an incredible developer experience built on top of React –and if you need more help than just components, then Next.js has got your back.

It comes equipped with custom lifecycle methods for working efficiently with many headless CMSs, making building custom digital experiences a breeze.

What makes for a good Next.js CMS?

There are various kinds of CMSs out there: some are primarily self-hosted, while others offer a vendor cloud solution; some are open-source, while others are proprietary; some are git-based, while others are API-based. How to pick one among that many?

Luckily, there’s a list of features a good CMS has to offer:

• Data and content modeling features: Before uploading or authoring content, you need to define how your data is presented. This is often called a Content Model. In some CMSs, you need to model your content with code or markup, while others rely more on UI based low-code workflow. You’ll have to decide which way you like more. Remember that there are many specific entity types and relationships between content — some CMSs support more relationship types than others.

• Live previews: If you’re writing a blog or composing a page out of elements in your CMS, you would probably like to see what it looks like before posting. Here’s when live preview comes in handy. 

• Authentication, SSO and roles: Your front-end has nothing to with authentication for content editors, so it’s is solely on your CMS — and you want it to be secure and manageable. You might want to look for features such as SSO and granular role management, which become almost necessary in larger projects.

• Easy integrations: Some CMSs are completely agnostic of the front-end technology, while others offer specific optimizations via front-end modifications, e.g. slices in Prismic. If your front-end has to be integrated with the CMS, the integration should be easy to handle. Other third party integrations are usually simple to add with APIs.

• Localization: If you offer services in different regions, your CMS has to support different routes for different locales. 

• Multi-tenancy: Do you intend to manage multiple sub-brands or sites within the same core CMS instance? If so, then it might be worth checking the CMS feature list for multi-tenancy support.

Most of the CMSs out there offer all of the aforementioned features to some extent — but at different costs. At the end of the day, your option of choice will depend on the project requirements. Below are some questions you might want to ask when evaluating different options.

• Will you self-host the CMS, or are you looking for a Cloud Hosted SaaS solution?

• How much vendor lock-in are you fine with?

• How fast do you need to set up your CMS?

• Are you planning to use GraphQL or REST APIs?

• Do your CMS users possess technical/coding skills?

• Does the CMS have granular management for roles? Does the CMS have the option to add authentication with SSO?

• What are your budget constraints?

• Does the CSM features support your requirements? (e.g. localization and multi-tenancy)

Best Headless CMS
options for Next.js

1. Sanity.io

Sanity is a SaaS, developer-first CMS and probably one of the most customizable options out there. Sanity makes use of its own variation of GraphQL called GROQ. Also, the CMS has rich plugin support and again, is extremely customizable. 

Sanity comes with an open-source editing environment called Sanity Studio that you can customize with JS-based configs. However, there aren’t many options for customizing the Sanity Studio via UI so you'll have to rely on developers for bigger changes.

Sanity is a good option if you want your CMS to be perfectly suited for your team’s needs, where nothing limits you. But it’s not fast to set up: your developers will spend some time configuring the content models and learning the GROQ query language. It can also be quite costly, depending on your exact feature requirements.

Learn more

2. DatoCMS

Dato is CMS is a really good CMS from, crafted with love. In fact, our website is on Dato CMS. Dato has a simple, yet customizable UI that caters both for developers and content editors. The best use case in our opinion is a website for a small to medium company, with a single tenant and brand.

Dato supports multi-language sites and localization, however setting up multi-tenancy is not really built in.    

With DatoCMS, you can build a static website that serves optimized image previews using GraphQL Content API and React components with a single line of code. Dato also lets you preview your edits to ensure everything looks good before going to production.

Keep in mind that Dato only serves content in GraphQL, and setting up complex queries can get a bit complicated at times.

Learn more 

3. Prismic

Prismic is one of the best known CMS for composable websites. It’s known for its editor-friendly and minimalistic UI. Using Prismic, it's easy to quickly create small, simple marketing sites but it's not limited to smaller sites only.

Prismic employs the concept of slices, or custom-coded blocks, for modeling your UI. There’s the Slice Machine to craft your custom slices. Also, you can reuse slices from page to page. But so far, there’s no way to bulk-update slices used across multiple pages.

Prismic’s guides and documentation are good, and it’s possible to schedule and preview content. But the vendor lock-in may be too much for some use cases.

Learn more

4. Hygraph

Hygraph is a GraphQL-based CMS option for complex Next.js projects where you need flexibility and power in the same package.

With Hygraph, developers can wield Next.js' high-speed server-side rendering, static exporting, CSS-in-JS, and preview mode. It unlocks the benefits of highly performant sites without compromising developer experience.

Learn more

5. Storyblok

Storyblok is a perfect CMS for websites created with Next.js. In fact, you can set a boilerplate Next.js starter in less than five minutes.

Storyblok is suitable for both technical and non-technical users. Its visual editor provides solid tools, including a live preview and point-and-click style page editing.

Its architecture is component-based and can be easily integrated with Next.js. However, sometimes it may require too many front-end changes and constraints for your liking.

Learn more

6. Agility

Editors can easily create and manage pages when using Next.js in conjunction with Agility CMS.

Agility offers content editors and marketers a toolbox full of UI Components integrated with Next.js (i.e., Page Modules and Page Templates).

Once you start with Agility, you'll see how easy it is to compose your pages. Plus, in Agility, editors can preview content changes in real time in a preview environment before publishing. 

Also, Agility supports multi-locale development and comprehensive website analytics. But the pricing gets costly, so it makes sense to go for it with larger projects. 

Learn more

7. Directus CMS

Directus CMS is called this way because it allows you to almost directly modify the database of your choice. Directus encases your new or existing SQL database into a real-time GraphQL or REST API. There’s also an intuitive admin panel for non-technical users.

Directus works seamlessly with Next.js, and with a Discord community with thousands of members, it’s a great option for developers who want to use an open-source option.

Learn more

8. Strapi

Strapi CMS is a fast, open-source Node.js-powered CMS. It offers a flexible content modeling system, customizable APIs, and an intuitive admin panel. It’s easy to set up while having the ability to expand your features pool. Strapi offers both REST and GraphQL support. 

Strapi works seamlessly with Next.js and allows all kinds of users to create infinitely scalable websites, Next.js apps, and shopping websites.

Its main way to specify content types is via GUI, so if you prefer textual configs more than visual, Strapi isn’t your option of choice. 

Strapi has a per-admin-user pricing type, so it may get expensive fast if you plan on having many admin users.

Learn more

9. Payload CMS

Payload is a TypeScript-based headless CMS that is still in its early days but is quite promising. 

One of Payload CMS’ core ideologies is that it does not impose any of its own structure on you as a developer. You give it an Express server to use—not the other way around, providing developers with unparalleled freedom. Documentation has also been consistent so far. 

Pound-for-pound comparison

Closing thoughts

Like most people, you may think that a Headless CMS is unnecessary for your website, especially if you have a great team who can handle content management without extra help. Or maybe you think you don’t need the added expense or complexity of a Headless CMS.

But as your business grows and your content requirements go beyond what you can handle, you will soon realize how much a Headless CMS can help.

We understand there are many use cases and even more options when evaluating a Headless CMS. Choosing your tech stack is a long term commitment and investment, and you don't want to make that decision on a moment's notice.

As an agency that's worked with most commercially viable Headless CMSs, we're able to help you find the right one that matches your unique requirements.