The Headless CMS offers a content management without the head approach where the user interface is unavailable. This Headless approach leads to many content development teams like marketing professionals to opt out of Headless CMS and still prefer traditional CMS although it includes complexity such as redundancy and not so user friendly. To overcome the limitations of traditional and Headless CMS, the emerging CMS called as Hybrid CMS offers the best of both kinds of CMS and caters to the business needs. Again, choosing from the multiple types of CMS for content management at your business might get challenging if you are not well versed with what each of these CMS brings to table. As a business leader, get familiar with the different CMS in the market and choose the right Headless CMS for the business.

 

Pure Headless CMS

 

The Pure Headless CMS is the one that eliminates the head (web page) and uses RESTFUL API services to invoke content on any devices. The Headless CMS offers many benefits that makes the CMS favorite for developers and still not so approved by marketing minds. The major pull back for the Headless CMS is the no WYSIWYG interface. This drawback makes the Headless CMS unreferred by most marketers who like to view the content preview and edits on the UI. For more information on Headless CMS.

 

Hybrid Headless CMS

 

Hybrid Headless CMS is derived from the Headless CMS with an added advantage of user interface for marketers to view content on the UI for editing, content preview, asset management, and author collaboration. Hybrid Headless CMS, also referred as Decoupled CMS, is a perfect blend of both traditional CMS and Headless CMS. This CMS gives the best of both CMS to developers and marketers. The teams can continue to leverage content on multiple devices and get to view, edit, and channelize content on any platforms. Hybrid Headless CMS overcomes the drawbacks of Headless CMS by without totally removing the ‘Headless’ concept. 

 

Advantages

 

1. Preferred by marketers: The CMS offers WYSIWYG that lets marketers to edit, preview, personalize content, and get to view content in the interface. 

2. Preferred by developers: Since this CMS offers all the benefits of Headless CMS, developers use of this CMS continues to be same as Headless CMS. The additional benefit is that developers no longer need to perform content management as marketers themselves manage CMS with added capabilities of WYSIWYG. Thus, saves developers time.

 

Limitations

 

Based on the vendor that offers the CMS, there can be vendor lock in state wherein not all apps and tools that are developed by vendor are usable on the CMS. This limitation might impact the marketing CMS if any tools needed on daily basis for content management are locked. 

 

Headless CMS vs Hybrid Headless CMS

 

With the understanding of Headless CMS and Hybrid Headless CMS, we figure out the key differentiator of these two CMS that helps business to understand which CMS to prefer.

 

	Headless CMS	Hybrid Headless CMS
Content Management	Yes	Yes
REST API Content Distribution	Yes	Yes
WYSIWYG Editing	No	Yes
Content Preview	No	Yes
Workflow Management	No	Yes
Marketing Campaign Management	No	Depends on the vendor
Front End App Building	No	Depends on the vendor
Auto Tagged Content	No	Depends on the vendor

 

Is Headless CMS Approach Suitable for Your Business?

 

Going Headless is no longer dreadful as the Headless approach does not mean giving up marketing team user friendliness to drive the daily workflows. The Headless CMS offers both pure and hybrid Headless that lets business choose the type of Headless CMS that suits the business operation. If the business is looking for developers to work on CMS and invoking content distribution by developers, then, the approach is crystal clear to go with Pure Headless CMS. If a business team is mainly looking for marketers to manage the CMS, then choose the Hybrid Headless CMS that offers WYSIWYG feature and user friendly for the marketing teams to operate on the CMS. In case of Hybrid Headless CMS, be wise to go through the features the vendors offer in the CMS so that main apps are not locked from using on the CMS. In case where both developers and marketing teams need CMS, then such business operation can choose the Hybrid Headless CMS that is a perfect combination of traditional and Headless CMS benefits.

 

Conclusion

 

Drifting towards Headless CMS saves the business from running the rat race and catching up quickly with the current emerging IoT trends and CMS on any devices. There are both Perfect Headless and Hybrid Headless CMS that caters to different business operation modes. Depending upon the business teams that use the CMS and business goals, choose the type of Headless CMS you want to adopt so business benefits maximum with seamless operation on the CMS.