When comparing Contentful vs Strapi, the decision comes down to their approaches to content management and identifying which aligns better with your workflows. Both platforms are among the best enterprise CMS platforms, offering great functionalities for businesses of all sizes.
This article provides a detailed comparison of these two leading headless CMS options to help you gauge which one is the best fit.
In brief:
- Contentful delivers an enterprise-ready, fully managed solution with robust APIs and scalable infrastructure.
- Strapi offers open-source flexibility, allowing extensive customization and control over your CMS implementation.
- Contentful excels in security and compliance by handling these aspects within their managed service.
- Strapi requires more technical resources but provides complete control over hosting and security measures.
Contentful vs Strapi: Platform Overview
Let's do a quick dive into what Contentful and Strapi have to offer:
Contentful: Enterprise-Ready Cloud Platform
Founded in 2013, Contentful has established itself as a leading digital experience platform, powering content for global brands like IKEA. The company positions itself as a "platform for intelligent digital experiences," emphasizing its extensive capabilities beyond traditional headless CMS offerings.
Contentful's architecture is built as a cloud-native SaaS solution, offering a comprehensive suite of APIs, including REST, GraphQL, Content Management, Content Delivery, and specialized APIs for images and user management.
For a comprehensive Contentful CMS overview, we have to note its strong API ecosystem supported by enterprise-grade features like content orchestration, multi-brand support, and AI-integrated tools for content creation and modeling.
Its composable architecture allows organizations to build a unified content base that can serve multiple brands and channels without sacrificing consistency and scalability. The platform's technical foundation is strengthened by integrated CDNs such as Fastly and Cloudfront for optimal content delivery and advanced governance tools that support complex enterprise workflows.
Strapi: Open-Source Flexibility
Strapi, first released as an open-source platform in 2015, takes a fundamentally different approach to content management. While it now offers both an Enterprise edition and Strapi Cloud, its core remains open-source, providing developers with maximum flexibility and control over their CMS implementation.
The platform's architecture supports both self-hosted and cloud deployment options, giving you the freedom to choose your infrastructure strategy. Strapi's flexibility extends to its API layer, allowing developers to create custom APIs without coding while maintaining the ability to modify the underlying open-source APIs when needed.
Strapi's technical capabilities center around its collection types and components system, which supports content reusability and custom field creation. The platform's internationalization is handled through the i18n plugin. While not as immediately comprehensive as Contentful's enterprise features, Strapi's open architecture allows you to customize it for specific business requirements.
Key Feature Comparison
How do Contentful and Strapi approach different features? Here's a breakdown by category:
Content Models and Structures
Contentful
Contentful provides a powerful content modeling system through its Visual Modeler and Content Model tab.
If you're looking to get started with Contentful content modeling, you need to understand the variety of field types. You can create content types with up to 50 fields each, supporting various types including:
- Text (Short and Long)
- Rich text
- Number (Integer and Decimal)
- Date and time
- Location
- Boolean
- Media
- Reference
- Array
- JSON Object
While this flexibility is powerful for complex relationships and globalization needs, setting up appropriate content models requires careful planning. Incorrect initial setup can lead to downstream issues, though Contentful does allow you to edit models after creating them.
Strapi
Strapi also offers a flexible content modeling system that allows developers to create and manage content types with ease. Through its intuitive admin panel, you can define both single types for static content and collection types for dynamic content.
Strapi supports a wide array of field types, including:
- Text (Short and Long)
- Rich text
- Number (Integer and Float)
- Date and time
- Boolean
- Media (Images, Videos, Files)
- JSON
- UID (Unique Identifier)
- Enumeration
- Relationships (One-to-One, One-to-Many, Many-to-One, Many-to-Many)
- Password
Strapi's component-based architecture supports reusability and consistency across different content types.
Additionally, you can create custom fields and plugins to extend functionality, making it adaptable to specific business requirements.
The platform's flexibility allows for complex relationships and hierarchical content structures, but like Contentful, it requires careful planning to set up effective content models.
API Ecosystem
Understanding the role of APIs in web development is a necessary step when working with headless CMS platforms like Contentful and Strapi.
Contentful
Contentful offers a comprehensive API suite for developers:
- Content Delivery API for retrieving published content
- Content Management API for content creation and updates
- Content Preview API for draft content review
- GraphQL Content API for flexible queries
- User Management API for team administration
- SCIM API for user provisioning
One technical consideration is API rate limits, which can impact scaling efficiency and potentially lead to budget overages.
Strapi
Strapi provides a customizable API ecosystem:
- Automatically generates RESTful and GraphQL APIs based on your content models.
- Allows you to customize endpoints and controllers directly from the admin panel.
- Provides the ability to secure your APIs with role-based access control (RBAC).
- Supports webhooks to integrate with third-party services and trigger events.
Since Strapi's APIs are generated based on your content types, they are inherently flexible and adapt to changes in your models. The open-source nature of Strapi means you can fully customize the API logic, middleware, and responses to suit your application's needs.
Customization and Extensions
The flexibility and customization options offered by Contentful and Strapi support a modular approach to web design. (Developers looking to implement such strategies can also benefit from our modular web design guide.)
Contentful
The platform provides several customization options through its API-first approach:
- App Framework: Build custom applications and extend core functionality.
- Field Editors: Customize the content editing experience.
- UI Locations: Extend the platform interface across specific modification points.
- Marketplace: Access ready-to-use extensions for various functionalities.
You can develop custom extensions using Contentful's app framework to meet specific business requirements and integrate with third-party tools through the extensive API ecosystem.
Strapi
Strapi excels in customization due to its plugin-based architecture:
- Plugins System: Install community plugins or create your own to add new features.
- Customizable Admin Panel: Modify the admin interface using React components to enhance the user experience.
- Middleware and Hooks: Inject custom logic into the request lifecycle and respond to application events.
- Extensions: Override or extend the existing functionality of the core framework.
With Strapi, you have full access to the source code, enabling deep customization of both frontend and backend aspects of the CMS. This level of control allows you to tailor the platform to match your exact requirements, although it requires more developer involvement.
Technical Infrastructure
When managing large-scale CMS operations, it's important to consider factors like infrastructure, scalability, and performance.
Contentful
Contentful's technical foundation includes:
- Multi-region delivery infrastructure
- Advanced caching mechanisms
- EU data residency options
- Command-line interface (CLI)
- SDKs for multiple programming languages
- Static site generator integrations
- Webhook support for content and action events
Strapi
Strapi's technical infrastructure is designed for flexibility and developer empowerment:
- Supports various databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite
- Built on Node.js with Koa.js framework for efficient performance
- Offers a CLI for project creation and management
- Provides SDKs and integrations with popular frontend frameworks like React, Vue.js, Angular, and supports Next.js for dynamic rendering capabilities
- Compatible with deployment on cloud platforms, VPS, or containers like Docker and Kubernetes
- Plugin ecosystem for adding functionalities like email, authentication, and analytics
- Internationalization (i18n) support through official plugins
Because Strapi is self-hosted (unless you opt for Strapi Cloud), you can choose your hosting environment based on your performance, compliance, and budget requirements. This adaptability is beneficial but requires a higher degree of technical oversight.
Hosting & Security
When comparing Contentful and Strapi, their approaches to hosting and security represent two distinct philosophies that impact your implementation and maintenance responsibilities.
Contentful follows a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, handling security as part of their managed service. Their infrastructure includes a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) that ensures fast content delivery while providing built-in DDoS protection.
You'll benefit from enterprise-grade security features like Single Sign-On (SSO), robust authentication, encryption, and automated backups without additional configuration. Contentful maintains ISO 27001 certification for all service levels and offers PCI-DSS compliance at the Premium tier. They also run an active bug bounty program to continuously improve their security posture.
Strapi, on the other hand, offers both self-hosted and cloud options, giving you complete control over your infrastructure. While this flexibility is powerful, self-hosting Strapi requires substantial security expertise and infrastructure management. You'll need to implement and maintain:
- SSL certificates
- Firewall configurations
- Anti-virus and anti-malware protection
- DDoS mitigation
- Encryption systems
- Backup solutions
- API security measures
- Regular security audits
The self-hosted approach means you're responsible for compliance with industry standards and regulations. The total cost of ownership includes not just hosting but all security infrastructure and monitoring tools.
For infrastructure considerations, Contentful's managed platform provides container-based isolation, redundant storage systems, and automatic scaling across multiple data centers.
With Strapi's self-hosted option, you'll need to design your infrastructure to include similar protections, including process isolation, redundancy, and scalability measures. Strapi Cloud alleviates some of these responsibilities but still requires more hands-on security management compared to Contentful's fully managed approach.
Performance & Scalability
When it comes to performance, both Contentful and Strapi leverage the advantages of headless architecture, delivering faster load times through the separation of backend and frontend systems. However, they approach scalability differently, which impacts their enterprise readiness.
Performance
Contentful uses established CDN partners like Fastly and Cloudfront for content delivery, which improves speed. Their system is built for enterprise-scale performance, as demonstrated by successful implementations with major global brands.
Strapi's performance capabilities are more dependent on your infrastructure choices.
For self-hosted implementations, you'll need minimum specifications of 2+ CPU cores, 4GB+ memory, and 32GB+ disk space. While these requirements might seem substantial for smaller projects, they keep your performance stable at scale.
Scalability
Contentful's SaaS model handles most infrastructure concerns but comes with certain limitations on asset sizes, user counts, and API calls, particularly in lower-tier plans. These restrictions become more flexible at the Premium level, which is suitable for enterprise needs.
Strapi offers more control over scalability through its flexible deployment options.
The platform supports multiple database systems, including Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, and SQLite, allowing you to personalize your database infrastructure.
For enterprises requiring managed scaling, Strapi Cloud provides a middle ground, though it's not as comprehensive in service capabilities as Contentful's offering.
Both platforms support API architectures—Contentful provides REST and GraphQL APIs with specialized endpoints for content management, delivery, and preview, while Strapi offers customizable APIs that can be modified without coding, plus open-source APIs for custom implementations.
Pricing & Total Cost of Ownership
When evaluating Contentful and Strapi, understanding the total cost of ownership (TCO) goes beyond comparing their base pricing plans. Let's break down the real costs you'll encounter with each platform.
Evaluating Initial Pricing Models
Contentful offers three tiers: a free plan for small projects, a Basic plan starting at $300/month, and a Premium plan with custom enterprise pricing. The pricing structure is straightforward but can increase significantly based on bandwidth usage and feature requirements.
Strapi provides more flexible pricing options. For self-hosted deployments, you can choose between the free Community edition or the Enterprise plan with custom pricing. If you prefer cloud hosting, options range from the Pro plan at $99/project/month to the Team Cloud plan at $499/project/month, with a Custom Cloud option for enterprise needs.
Hidden Costs and Infrastructure Requirements
With Strapi's self-hosted option, you'll need to factor in several additional costs:
- Infrastructure and hosting expenses
- Security implementation and maintenance
- Development resources for customization
- Regular system updates and monitoring
- Integration costs with third-party services
Contentful, being a fully managed solution, includes most infrastructure costs in its pricing. However, you should consider:
- Additional bandwidth charges for high-traffic sites
- Development resources for API integration
- Potential costs for advanced features and integrations
Special Considerations for Enterprise
For enterprise deployments, Contentful offers a more comprehensive out-of-the-box solution with powerful security features, including ISO 27001 compliance, EU data residency options, and PCI-DSS certification at the Premium level.
While the initial cost might be higher, it can result in lower TCO for large organizations due to reduced maintenance overhead.
Strapi's enterprise offering requires more initial setup and ongoing maintenance but provides greater control over your infrastructure and data. This can be advantageous for organizations with specific compliance requirements or existing infrastructure investments.
Making the Decision
Choosing between Contentful and Strapi depends heavily on your organization's specific needs, resources, and technical capabilities.
For a broader perspective on choosing a headless CMS, consider factors like your team's expertise, budget constraints, and project requirements. Here's a clear breakdown to help you make an informed decision:
Contentful is your best choice if:
- You need a robust, enterprise-ready solution.
- Your team prefers a managed service with minimal technical overhead.
- You're managing content across multiple channels and brands.
- Budget isn't a primary constraint.
- You require built-in governance and workflow tools.
For further comparison with other enterprise solutions, see our detailed analysis of Contentful vs AEM.
Strapi makes more sense when:
- You have strong technical capabilities in-house.
- Custom functionality is a key requirement.
- You want complete control over your hosting environment.
- Cost efficiency is important.
- Your development team prefers working with open-source solutions.
When evaluating technical requirements, consider your team's expertise with Node.js or API-first architectures (for Contentful).
Strapi demands more hands-on server management and maintenance but offers deeper customization possibilities. Contentful, while more expensive, provides a more streamlined experience with built-in scalability and content delivery networks.
For growing organizations, factor in not just current needs but future scalability. Contentful's managed infrastructure handles growth seamlessly, while Strapi requires proactive scaling planning and implementation.
The Next Steps
Both Contentful and Strapi offer powerful solutions for modern content management, but they serve different needs.
Contentful excels as a fully managed, enterprise-ready platform ideal for organizations seeking scalability without infrastructure overhead. Strapi, with its open-source nature, provides maximum customization and control, though it requires more technical resources to maintain.
For a broader CMS platform comparison, you might also consider how Contentful and Strapi stack up against other options like Storyblok and WordPress.
Need help implementing the right headless CMS for your project? Webstacks specializes in both Contentful and Strapi implementations, ensuring you get the most out of your chosen platform. Download our headless CMS implementation checklist to get started.
