Wrap your head around “headless”

The headless CMS has been a rising trend over the last several years, but what does it mean? Simply put, a headless CMS is a content management system that manages and organizes content without a connected front-end or display layer. It acts as a central cloud-native content hub with a unified user experience across the marketing technology stack, where all of your content and assets live. This approach is in sharp contrast to legacy CMS solutions that manage content via a discreet, siloed, and proprietary on-premise solution architecture. Without a pre-packaged templatized design, the impact of deploying a headless CMS architecture is compelling and immediate:

• Instead of having to implement multiple, parallel content management system instances, e.g., to support web and mobile channels, a single headless CMS instance can serve unlimited digital channels.
• A single source of content, such as a product description for an online catalog, can automatically adapt to its publishing environment and present itself optimally for its destination.
• The separation of code and content in a headless CMS makes life easier for content editors, who can ignore the code and exclusively focus on the content for which they are responsible.
• Developers, meanwhile, can use all the latest tools and frameworks to bring content experiences to life on any modern platforms, without being locked into a proprietary language or other limitations of a particular content management system.
• Content delivered via APIs is significantly easier to integrate, manipulate, and distribute, reducing the time it takes to create content-driven experiences, including sites and apps.

Moreover, the emergence of the headless CMS offers some significant benefits for firms that are growing into new channels, launching new products and integrations, or simply transact with customers across a range of touchpoints on multiple platforms and devices. If we compare the headless CMS with a traditional CMS side-by-side, there are some significant advantages that headless offers that are not possible through most traditional CMS systems.

Headless CMS Benefits	Explanation
Omnichannel Content Delivery	Headless CMS can power touchpoints across any channel or device. From websites to mobile apps, email marketing, voice-activated digital assistants, Apple Watch, AR/VR, and more. Content lives in a cloud-first content hub, and deployment is simple — nothing to install or manage.
Rapid Content Deployment (via API)	A headless CMS like Contentstack offers an API-first approach that makes it lightning-fast for developers to pipe in content. Using our Content-as-a-Service (CaaS) architecture, you can quickly scale or deploy new channels in an afternoon.
Modular Content and Assets	Because the content that lives in your headless CMS isn’t dependent on any specific front-end display, content becomes modular; it can be managed and deployed across any relevant touchpoint without being duplicated or reformatted.
Limitless Integrations that Power Next-Level Digital Experiences	The headless CMS allows you to connect content to a nearly infinite array of outside services and software. Your content is no longer siloed from systems like CRM, AI/ML, personalization tools, or localization platforms.

If you want to learn more about how a modern CMS makes managing content easier, click here.