Headless vs Hybrid vs “Universal” CMS: Which Model Fits Multi-Team Delivery?

Strapi has recently emerged as one of the most talked-about players, especially among developers and product teams looking for flexibility, control, and future-proof architecture. But what exactly makes Strapi the new talk of the town?

At its core, Strapi is an open-source, Node.js-based headless CMS that allows you to build your backend exactly the way you want. While traditional and SaaS-based CMS platforms like Contentful, Sanity, Ghost, and even headless WordPress off er varying degrees of
convenience and structure, Strapi flips the equation. It gives you the tools, then gets out of your way.

This blog breaks down how Strapi stacks up against some of the most prominent CMS competitors in the market. We’ll explore performance, developer experience, customization capabilities, pricing, content modeling, and more; so you can make an informed decision based on your project’s technical needs and business goals.
Let’s dive into the comparisons and see where Strapi truly shines—and where it may not.

Strapi is an open-source project that you can run on your own servers or in Strapi’s cloud. Contentful is known for its enterprise-grade cloud platform. This fundamental difference (open-source vs. SaaS) influences many aspects of the comparison:

Performance & Scalability:

Strapi’s performance depends largely on how you host it. With the right setup (e.g. load-balanced Node.js servers, caching, a robust database), Strapi can handle heavy traffic. Strapi Cloud also provides a tuned infrastructure with CDN caching for users who opt for the hosted service. Contentful leverages auto-scaling Kubernetes clusters, multiple CDN layers, and a multi-region setup to ensure fast global content delivery.

Developer Experience:

Both platforms appeal to developers but in diff erent ways. Strapi is developer-centric in that it gives you complete freedom to shape the backend. You get an admin panel to design content types visually, but under the hood you have full code access to extend API endpoints, integrate middleware, or modify functionality. This is powerful for teams that need custom business logic. Contentful, on the other hand, offers a streamlined developer experience in terms of integration: you consume Contentful’s APIs with your front-end of choice, and Contentful handles the backend maintenance. There are robust SDKs, and the documentation is comprehensive. The trade-off is less flexibility: you work within Contentful’s framework and cannot alter how the CMS itself behaves.

Content Editing and UI:

Contentful’s web app is polished for content editors (marketing teams, etc.). Its interface is known for being clean and user-friendly for non-technical users to create and edit content. Strapi’s admin UI is also quite user-friendly and allows editors to manage content, but it’s more minimal out-of-the-box (which can be a pro or con). Strapi focuses on giving developers the tools to build the exact content structures needed, and editors get a generic content manager for those structures. Contentful, by comparison, provides more marketing-centric features (like built-in localization management, rich text editors, and predefined workflow features).

Customization & Extensibility:

This is arguably the biggest differentiator. Strapi is highly customizable; you can install or code plugins to add features, override the API responses, or even fork the core since it’s open-source. If you need a custom provider or integration, you can write controllers or middleware within Strapi to do it. Contentful is not customizable at the core level. You cannot change how Contentful’s backend works; you can only extend it in limited ways (for example, using Contentful’s App Framework to add custom sidebar widgets in the editor, or using webhooks to trigger external scripts). For organizations with very unique requirements (say, custom authentication flows, complex data processing on the CMS side, or integrations that require new backend logic), Strapi offers that freedom. Contentful might require you to implement such logic outside the CMS (e.g. in a separate service that listens to webhooks or processes content after it’s published).

Pricing:

Strapi’s open-source nature means you avoid license fees (a big advantage if you have budget constraints or prefer CapEx (your own servers) over OpEx). Running Strapi yourself is essentially free aside from infrastructure costs. In contrast, Contentful is a premium SaaS product. While it has a free tier, serious usage quickly leads to paid plans. Contentful’s Basic plan (for small teams) is about $300/month, and enterprise plans can cost significantly more (often negotiated case-by-case, running into thousands of dollars monthly for large-scale usage).

Content Modeling & API:

Both allow flexible content modeling, but with different approaches. In Strapi, you defi ne models in the admin panel (or via config files) and the system creates database tables accordingly. Contentful uses a similar concept of content types and fi elds definable in its web interface. When it comes to API, Strapi auto-generates endpoints and even documentation. Contentful has distinct APIs (Content Delivery API, Content Management API, GraphQL API). Also, Contentful imposes rate limits on API usage based on plan, whereas self-hosted Strapi is only limited by your server capacity.

Pros of Strapi (vs Contentful):

• Full control over your CMS and data. No vendor lock-in and ability to customize or extend as needed.
• You can tailor everything from the data model to the API responses to the admin UI. This is critical for projects with unique requirements that don’t fi t a SaaS mold.
• Free to use and host on inexpensive platforms. Suitable for startups or projects with limited budget, since you won’t incur Contentful’s high monthly fees.
• Strapi supports SQL and NoSQL databases, allowing you to choose Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, etc. based on your needs. Contentful uses its own managed data store (no choice in backend).
• You can run Strapi locally, develop plugins, and benefit from community contributions. Bugs in Strapi can be fixed by the community or yourself, without waiting on a vendor.

Sanity is a hybrid off ering: it provides a hosted real-time content database (Content Lake) and a customizable open-source editing interface (Sanity Studio). Strapi, by contrast, is a self-hosted application that includes both the database and the content editing UI in one. Here’s how they compare on key points:

Performance & Scalability:

Both platforms can power high-traffic applications. Sanity runs on a multi-tenant cloud infrastructure (backed by Google Cloud) which scales automatically as your content needs grow. You don’t worry about database performance or CDN. Strapi’s scalability depends on your deployment. If you self-host on robust cloud instances with load balancers and a CDN in front, you can achieve scale, but it’s in your hands. One advantage of Sanity is real-time updates: clients can subscribe to content changes over WebSockets, which is great for collaborative editing and live preview scenarios. With Strapi, you’d have to implement a realtime layer yourself (e.g. via webhooks or custom code) since content updates aren’t pushed in real-time to consumers by default.

Developer Experience:

Strapi’s experience is more traditional; defi ne content types (in the admin or via config fi les), and Strapi generates REST/GraphQL APIs. You write any custom business logic in Node.js/JavaScript as needed (controllers, lifecycle hooks, plugins). It’s straightforward if you’re comfortable with Node and want an all-in-one solution. Sanity’s developer experience is a bit unique: you write schemas in code (JavaScript or TypeScript) for your content types and fi elds, and those power the Sanity Studio. Setting up Sanity requires writing some code (for the Studio) where Strapi might have let you click in a GUI. Also, any custom functions (like sending a welcome email on a new user signup content) in Sanity might be done via their serverless functions or webhooks since you don’t run server code directly in the CMS. Strapi would let you implement that logic inside its codebase.

Customization & Extensibility:

Both systems are quite extensible, but in different places. With Sanity, the Studio is extremely customizable; you can design custom input components, dashboards, workflows, and even the overall UI/UX of the editor. The Studio is essentially your app (you can brand it, host it anywhere, integrate third-party analytics into it, etc.). However, the Sanity backend (the content store) is closed, you can’t modify how data is stored or how queries are processed beyond what Sanity’s APIs off er. Strapi’s admin panel is less customizable (it has a fi xed layout, though you can install plugins or tweak it somewhat), but Strapi’s backend logic is fully in your control. Need a new API endpoint that does something special? You can write it in Strapi. Need to enforce some business rule every time a piece of content is saved? You can add that in Strapi’s lifecycle hooks.

Content Modeling:

Strapi gives you relational modeling capabilities (one-to-many, many-to-many relations between content types), and rich field types including JSON, media, etc. Sanity’s content model is non-relational but uses references: you can reference documents in other documents (which works similarly to foreign keys, but the querying is different). Sanity content is stored as document JSON objects; it’s very flexible and can represent hierarchical data (via arrays
of objects, etc.). If you have very complex interrelated data, Strapi’s use of a SQL database might handle relational queries more directly (join tables, etc.), whereas Sanity might require crafting GROQ queries to join references.

API & Querying:

Strapi gives REST and (optionally) GraphQL APIs out of the box. The REST API supports fi ltering and pagination; the GraphQL API (with the plugin) allows quite powerful queries as well. Sanity off ers queries via HTTP using GROQ (its proprietary query language, which can express fi lters, projections, joins on references, etc.), and also off ers a GraphQL API if you enable it. A big diff erence is Sanity’s real-time API: clients can connect and get updates whenever content changes, which is great for live previews or applications that refl ect content updates instantly. In Strapi, you’d typically poll or use webhooks to achieve reactive updates. Performance-wise, Sanity’s queries are executed on their backend infrastructure which is optimized for their data store, whereas Strapi’s queries hit your database (which you optimize or scale as needed).

Pricing:

Strapi is free for self-hosting (and even Strapi Cloud’s entry plans are relatively predictable fl at prices). Sanity’s pricing is usage-based. Sanity has a generous free tier (great for prototyping or small projects) and then charges based on API usage, bandwidth, and user seats. For example, beyond the free quota, it might be ~$3 per 25k API calls or ~$15 per additional editor user, and the Team plan at $99/month includes higher limits (about 10 users and increased API quota).

Pros of Strapi (vs Sanity):

• You can run Strapi anywhere and even modify its core. This is crucial for projects requiring on-premise deployment or full control for compliance reasons.
• Once Strapi is running, you’re not taxed per user or API call. Costs are fi xed to your hosting. This can make budgeting simpler and potentially cheaper at scale.
• Strapi’s use of SQL databases can be beneficial if your content is very relational (lots of linked records). You can leverage SQL features, and complex queries can be optimized at the database level.
• Strapi includes a user roles and permissions system out-of-the-box (for the API as well as for admin users). In Sanity, content editors are managed in the SaaS (with roles like contributor, developer, etc.), but if you needed a custom user system for content consumers, you’d implement that separately. Strapi’s ability to manage application users (for example, if you’re using the CMS to also handle end-user accounts) can be a plus.
• Strapi’s GraphQL plugin is free. Sanity’s GraphQL API, while available, is subject to the same usage quotas (and some advanced querying may rely on GROQ, which not every developer knows). If your team prefers GraphQL, Strapi might feel more straightforward.

written in JavaScript. Ghost is primarily a publishing platform; think of it as an elegant, streamlined alternative to WordPress, focused on blogs, newsletters, and content membership sites. Strapi is a general-purpose headless CMS; it’s not tied to any one type of site or content. Let’s compare them in relevant aspects:

Performance:

Ghost has a lightweight core and can serve content very quickly. In headless mode (using Ghost’s Content API), performance is still good; you’ll fetch pre-rendered HTML or JSON of posts. Strapi’s performance will depend on your stack and how optimized your API and database are. Generally, for pure content serving, Ghost’s focused use (and internal caching) might give it an edge. However, if using Ghost’s front-end, remember it’s server-rendering pages, whereas with Strapi headless you might have a separate front-end (e.g., a Next.js app) that can leverage static generation or caching to equal or exceed Ghost’s performance. Both are Node.js applications, so they share similar characteristics in scaling (vertical scaling or clustering).

Scalability:

Ghost, when self-hosted, usually runs as a single instance with a MySQL database. To scale Ghost for high traffic, you’d implement similar strategies as scaling a monolithic app: perhaps multiple Ghost instances behind a load balancer, a replicated MySQL or a managed MySQL service, and a CDN for static assets. Ghost Pro (the hosted service) handles scaling for you to an extent (for example, the Business plan of Ghost Pro supports "millions of views" with a CDN in front). Strapi can be scaled by distributing the Node.js processes and using a scalable database (like a managed PostgreSQL that can handle read replicas). One difference: in Strapi, your content is served via API, so your front-end could be completely static (if you pre-build a site) which offloads a lot of scaling needs. Ghost is typically serving live content pages (unless you use Ghost purely headlessly).

Content Structure & Modeling:

This is a major difference. Ghost has a fixed content model: primarily Posts (or Articles) which have a title, body, feature image, etc., as well as tags, authors, and some basic pages for static content. There is no GUI to add new collections or custom fi elds globally (aside from things like the code injection or integration fi elds). You can hack some custom data into Ghost posts using things like the "Koenig editor cards" (Ghost’s editor allows embedding special content cards, which developers can create custom types for, akin to medium embeds) or by using tags in clever ways. But fundamentally, you can’t create a new content type (e.g., an “Event” with date and venue) in Ghost without modifying core code. Strapi allows arbitrary content types; products, events, articles, anything, and you defi ne the schema of each with whatever fi elds you need. If your project needs more than just blog posts (say you also want to manage a list of team members, or a store catalog, or any structured data), Strapi is immediately more suitable. Ghost might be bent to such use cases by simply treating everything as a post with certain tags, but that’s not ideal or clear.

Extensibility and Integrations:

Ghost does not have a plugin system like WordPress. It’s somewhat “what you see is what you get.” It does have an API which allows developers to integrate external services. For example, you could use Zapier or Make with Ghost’s API to automate tasks, or build a custom integration that hooks into Ghost’s webhooks (Ghost can fi re webhooks on certain events like post published). You can also extend it via code: by self-hosting and modifying the source, or building themes that include custom JavaScript. But all of this is more limited compared to Strapi’s ability to insert custom code in the content lifecycle or add entirely new logic via plugins. Strapi’s plugin system (and open code) means if you need something like, say, two-factor auth for CMS users or an integration with a translation service, you could either fi nd a Strapi plugin or create one.

Pricing:

Both are open source and free to self-host. Ghost Pro (official hosting) is relatively inexpensive for small publishers (starts ~$11/month) and scales up by tier (for example, $25/month, $50/month, etc., depending on member count and support level). Strapi Cloud is pricier (starting ~$99/month for small projects) since it’s geared towards business use, not individual bloggers. If you are comparing cost, running a Ghost instance on a $5–10 VPS could suffice for a decent blog; running Strapi on a similar VPS is also possible for light use, but often Strapi projects might require additional infrastructure if they become complex (like separate database hosting, etc.). However, if you need a fully custom site with various content and features, Ghost could end up requiring additional services (because it won’t handle those features), whereas Strapi would let you build them in, which might equalize costs when you consider development eff ort.

Pros of Strapi (vs Ghost):

• Can build any kind of content structure (not limited to blog posts). Better for projects that have varied content (e.g., an app with blogs, events, products, etc. all in one).
• Strapi is a pure headless CMS, which might integrate more seamlessly if you plan to use it strictly as an API. Ghost’s API is great for its content, but outside its domain (blog content) it’s not useful. For a headless e-commerce or multi-purpose app, Strapi is designed for that scenario.
• Ability to extend the backend logic (e.g., add new routes, integrate with external APIs, enforce custom validation); Ghost doesn’t allow that level of backend customization easily.
• Strapi doesn’t impose any front-end or theme; you won’t need to “work around” an existing presentation layer.
• Strapi offers advanced content roles/permissions (especially in enterprise edition, but even the community has some basic user roles). Ghost’s content creation is mostly all-or-nothing for staff users (Admin, Editor roles etc., but not granular per content piece).

WordPress is the incumbent giant in the CMS world. “Headless WordPress” refers to using WordPress’s backend (the admin UI and database) to manage content, but serving that content through APIs to a separate front-end (built with React, Next.js, etc.). Strapi, being a
headless CMS from the ground up, is often compared with using WordPress in a headless manner. This comparison has several facets:

Architecture:

Strapi is API-fi rst by design; it only provides content via APIs (REST/GraphQL) and has no built-in front-end for site rendering. WordPress is originally a coupled CMS (with PHP templating for front-end), but it has added REST API in core and can be used headlessly by ignoring the theme system and just consuming the WP REST or GraphQL API. However, because WP wasn’t initially built purely headless, certain features (like menus or third-party plugins that assume a theme) might require extra work to use headlessly. Strapi’s clean separation can make it simpler to integrate into modern JS frameworks without legacy baggage. WordPress’s API is powerful, but it might expose more than you need (or you might need to write custom endpoints) because it’s essentially a layer on top of a system originally meant to output HTML.

Performance & Scalability:

Out of the box, WordPress can be less efficient in headless usage because every API request goes through the full WordPress PHP application stack and MySQL queries. High-traffic WordPress sites typically rely on caching (object caches, REST API caching, etc.) to meet demand. Strapi, running on Node.js, can often handle a higher throughput for API requests due to its non-blocking architecture, and can also be scaled horizontally easily (multiple Node instances connecting to the same database). That said, WordPress is proven to scale to very high loads as well. The difference is, with Strapi you’d be implementing a similar scaling approach (clustering, CDN, etc.) yourself. It’s notable that Strapi is quite efficient for content API delivery and doesn’t carry the weight of rendering or loading a ton of PHP plugins for each request. On the other hand, WordPress’s decades of optimization and the fact that you can throw highly optimized database and caching solutions at it means either can be performant. If doing a fair comparison: Strapi’s Node.js is asynchronous and often faster in raw API response than WordPress PHP (especially under concurrency). Still, many consider WordPress at large scale to require more careful tuning to avoid slow queries, etc., while Strapi is built with modern ORMs and can use SQL or NoSQL as needed.

Developer Experience:

Here opinions diverge largely based on backgrounds. Strapi appeals to JavaScript developers; if your team is fluent in JS/TypeScript, working with Strapi (which is built with Node and uses a familiar syntax and has a plugin system in JS) will be more pleasant than diving into PHP. You can also have a unifi ed language across front-end and back-end (JS everywhere). Strapi’s code is modern and relatively succinct. WordPress development for headless means writing PHP for any backend customizations (like custom post types or fi elds via code, unless you purely use plugins), and JavaScript for your front-end – a split brain of two languages.

Content Modeling:

Both can handle complex content, but the workflow is different. In WordPress, you often rely on plugins like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) or Toolset to visually add custom fi elds to post types, or you write PHP code to register Custom Post Types (CPTs) and meta fi elds. It’s
powerful, but not as unifi ed as Strapi’s built-in content-type builder UI. Strapi gives a coherent UI to create new content types, add fi elds, set relationships, etc., in one place. WordPress’s native UI only covers custom post types via code and some fi eld management via plugins. Relationships in WordPress (linking posts) are usually done either via custom code or by using post types and taxonomy. Strapi has first-class relational fi elds. One limitation: WordPress doesn’t natively support many-to-many relationships between arbitrary content types (you typically would use taxonomies or custom tables for that). Strapi handles many-to-many natively. So for very relational data structures, Strapi may feel more natural.

Security:

WordPress, due to its popularity, is often targeted for vulnerabilities. A headless WP setup may have a smaller attack surface (since you’re not exposing the front-end login or forms), but you still need to keep WP core and plugins updated to avoid known exploits. Strapi being newer has had fewer incidents publicly, but any internet-facing service can be a target. The advantage with Strapi is you control the code and can patch or secure as needed; with WordPress you rely on core and plugin developers to release timely patches (which they usually do, but you must be diligent in applying them). Both can be configured securely with proper measures.

Hosting & Deployment:

WordPress can be easily hosted on countless providers; there’s a lot of specialized WordPress hosting (with automatic updates, caching, etc.). Deploying WP headless might require turning off some caching that is meant for HTML pages, but otherwise it’s the same as hosting a normal WP (PHP + MySQL environment). Strapi deployment is more akin to deploying a Node.js app; you might use Docker or a platform like Heroku/Vercel (for Node) or a VM. If your organization’s infrastructure is more aligned with Node and modern cloud, Strapi fits in nicely; if it’s a typical LAMP setup, WordPress fi ts like a glove.

Pros of Strapi (vs WordPress headless):

• Uses Node.js and JavaScript/TypeScript, which may align better with modern web development practices (e.g., a React/Vue frontend team can also handle backend customizations in JS). It avoids the need for PHP knowledge for teams that don’t have it.
• No legacy front-end to disable, no assumptions of themes; it’s clean and focused. This can mean fewer workarounds and possibly a leaner CMS if you only need headless functionality.
• Easier to create and manage new content types through Strapi’s admin UI, without writing code or adding plugins for fi elds. Relationships and advanced fi elds are handled neatly.
• A fresh Strapi install is relatively lightweight (no decades of backward compatibility baggage). WordPress, even headless, carries some legacy weight (e.g., concepts like “posts vs pages”, the media library tied to posts, etc. might not all be relevant headlessly but are still there). Also, Strapi’s codebase is modular and clean, whereas WordPress’s age shows in parts of its PHP code (e.g., global functions, etc.), which can be a bit off-putting for developers accustomed to modern frameworks.
• It’s easy to have GraphQL with Strapi (just enable the plugin). In WP, GraphQL is only via the community plugin WPGraphQL, which is excellent but is another thing to install and maintain.
• WordPress is MySQL/MariaDB only (unless you do something very custom). Strapi can connect to PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, etc. and even Mongo (v3) if needed. This can be useful if you prefer a certain DB for its features or performance.
• With WordPress, you might end up installing many plugins even in headless mode (for custom fi elds, JWT auth, etc.). With Strapi, many of those capabilities are built-in or offi cially provided (e.g., auth system, GraphQL, etc.), potentially resulting in a more maintainable system with fewer moving parts from disparate sources.

Choosing a CMS today isn’t about ticking boxes on a feature list. Strapi appeals to engineering teams not just because it’s open-source or headless, but because it off ers granular control, extensibility, and a backend that respects how modern apps are actually built. For teams managing multi-channel frontends, integrating business logic directly into the CMS, or operating under tight performance and compliance constraints, Strapi brings the kind of backend freedom that SaaS CMS platforms typically lock away.

At Linearloop, we work with tech leaders who want that freedom but don’t want to start from zero. We help product and platform teams implement Strapi in production-grade environments: tuned for performance, integrated with CI/CD pipelines, hardened for security, and wired into the broader digital architecture (from auth systems to analytics to translation layers). If your CMS is expected to do more than just serve content; if it needs to behave like part of your application logic; Strapi makes sense. And Linearloop makes it work.