Monolithic vs Headless CMS: which side you're on?

Every business today is keen to provide a better digital experience to their customers when acquiring products and services online. To not fall behind your competitors, it is crucial to stay up-to-date with current trends, technologies and developments. One way to keep your company in the forefront, build and maintain relationships, generate leads and increase sales is a content marketing strategy. To keep up with uprising customer demand and deliver dynamic digital experiences, Content Management System (CMS) is one of the effective ways to consider when it comes to content distribution. But the question is how to pick the right one to power your content anytime and anywhere?

What is CMS all about?

CMS stands for content management system - computer software or an application that uses a database to manage all content, and for most of the cases to develop a website. The history of CMS began in the 1990s, but the great race of CMS started in 2001, one with Drupal, followed by WordPress appearance in 2003, which is now usable by over 60 million websites worldwide.

As the business focus shifts to providing a digital client experience, content management systems (CMS) are changing dramatically to cope with the companies demand for a perfect solution. Existed Monolithic and Headless CMS market players offer a wide range of technologies, however such wide selection require time to consider which type of CMS fits their business need. Without knowing what is the difference between these technologies make more complications to make a wise choice. 

On the one hand, companies can rely on one type of CMS which will satisfy their need. On the other, it takes time to analyze the best fit for your business, which will save time, money, and headaches down the road. Thus, the first question that comes to mind is, what is the difference and which CMS option is the best one?

Monolithic vs Headless: the difference

Monolithic CMS known as Traditional CMS is a system that incorporates everything required for managing and publishing content to the web. Monolithic means the front-end and back-end are handled and tied together. In case you’re not familiar with these words, imagine Monolithic CMS as a car, where what you see outside is a front-end and what is under the hood is a back-end. Expressly developers team do all website maintenance including content distribution as on the back-end and on the front-end layer. In short, monolithic CMS is a system where front-end and back-end are chained together and offer all-in-one functionality as storing, editing, designing themes and templates and other plugins. 

Headless CMS is a content management back-end only with a focus just on storing and delivering the content via API. Headless itself means removing “the Head” (= the frontend) off the “body” (content repository). At the same time, Headless provides developers with the opportunity to create custom integrations and use many channels and devices to create an omnichannel experience. Compared to the Traditional one, Headless considers being a reactive solution that could get your content to market quickly beyond the limit and capacities of their previous platform. 

So where exactly Monolithic/Traditional CMS fall behind?

One of the strong contrasts between Monolithic and Headless CMS is that a first one creates communication dispute it brings to the company's employees. When it comes to content distribution, the communication traffic becomes more visible between the devs and marketers. Traditional CMS, unfortunately, doesn't provide flexibility to either devs or marketers team. As for the IT/Devs department, so they had to use specific frameworks/coding tools that marketers are not familiar with. Thus, the marketing team cannot fully perform their work without constant communication with developers, and therefore a whole content distribution becomes a big hassle for the company.

Another shortcoming of Monolithic CMS is time maintenance. For many businesses, its time consuming to support employee training and optimise the content delivery process that becomes headaches to your IT/Devs team. Monolithic CMS requires consistent updates on plugins and addons, which means that the IT/Devs department do the maintenance part. Besides, without the help of the IT/Devs department, your marketing team won't be able to upload, edit or make changes to the website content. 

Whereas, Headless CMS, marketers do not need to have the technical knowledge or coding skills to manage, upload and edit the content on their website. Headless CMS keeps the workflow consistent by automating content flow communication between developers and content creators.

Benefits of using Headless CMS approach: 

• If you’re looking for the flexibility Headless CMS offers a cost-effective and customizable experience to customers, publishing content to market quickly;
• Safety and Security - hackers don’t have a ‘door’ to enter as there is no physical web server delivering your static content and files;
• Omnichannel strategy - headless CMS makes this really simple so the content can be stored and sent out to any device, without the developers having to create loads of different versions of the website;
• Marketing team/content creators do not need to know coding skills to upload and edit your content in your website;
• Headless gives your team autonomy and freedom in terms of technology as API enable to choose any technology your prefer;
• Ability to provide customization and personalization to your website.

Multiple brands are currently using traditional CMS that are not build for such digital experiences. Despite the popularity of monolithic CMS, we can still see that they fall behind in providing flexibility, automation and omnichannel strategy. Headless CMS is a more consumer-centric approach that focuses more on the content, ease of use across development and marketing stakeholders, and flexibility to create components that match the go-to-market strategy's needs. A monolithic system does not provide your business and the team with the ability of customization or personalization. 

You might have a question - which CMS does your business need? There is no correct answer to it as CMS depends on every use case. However, if your company is looking for more flexibility, smooth editing experience, autonomy and an omnichannel approach - going Headless is what you might need to consider first.