Content your team edits,
a frontend that is not stuck to it
A headless CMS separates the place your team edits content from the site that renders it, so a marketer can publish a new page without a developer touching code, and the frontend can be as fast or as custom as the project needs. We model the content first, around what your team actually publishes, then connect it by API.
What it is
A headless CMS stores and manages content, pages, posts, products, locations, through an admin interface and exposes it through an API, with no built-in frontend of its own. Your site, app or Mini App fetches that content and renders it however you want, in whatever framework fits the project. The split means a redesign does not require re-entering content, and a content change does not require a deploy.
When you need it (and when you do not)
It earns its cost when the same content needs to show up in more than one place, a web site and a mobile app, or a site in several languages, or when your content team publishes often enough that waiting on a developer for every page is a real bottleneck. A network of medical centres we built content infrastructure for needed exactly this: one content source feeding a marketing site that kept growing over a year.
It is the wrong tool for a five-page brochure site that will not change again this year; a traditional CMS or a hand-built static site is less setup for the same result. And if your team has no one who will actually use an editor interface, decoupling the content from the code just adds a layer nobody needed.
How we build it
We start with content modeling: sitting down with what your team actually publishes, a blog post, a location page, a product listing, and defining fields for each, not a generic “rich text block” that puts layout decisions back in the editor’s hands. Good modeling is most of the value here; a CMS with a bad content model is just as painful as no CMS.
The CMS is set up with role-based permissions so an editor can publish without touching settings, and a media library that is actually searchable once it has more than thirty images in it. The frontend connects through the CMS’s API, REST or GraphQL depending on which CMS fits the project, with preview mode so an editor can see a draft exactly as it will render before making it public.
For projects already running in another CMS, we migrate content programmatically: map old fields to new ones, run the migration, and check counts and spot-check content before the old system is retired, rather than asking anyone to copy-paste pages by hand.
What to watch
A content model that is too rigid forces editors back to screenshots and “can you just add a field for this” requests within a month; we build in a few flexible fields up front for exactly that reason, without going so flexible that the frontend has to guess what might show up. Vendor lock-in varies by CMS: a self-hosted option like Strapi keeps your data fully in your control, a hosted SaaS CMS is faster to start but ties you to its pricing and export options, which we lay out honestly before you pick one. And image and media handling needs real optimization built in, a CMS with an unoptimized media library quietly becomes your site’s biggest performance problem.
Price and timeline
| Option | Price | What it covers | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMS setup on an existing site | from $2,000 | Content model, CMS setup, API connection, editor training | 2 to 4 weeks |
| New site on a headless CMS | from $4,500 | Everything above plus full frontend build | 4 to 7 weeks |
Running cost is $0 to $300 a month depending on whether the CMS is self-hosted or a paid SaaS tier, scaled to your content volume.
Related
This pairs with multilingual site with hreflang when content needs to exist in more than one language from the same model, and with Next.js app with server rendering as the frontend most of our headless CMS projects render through. See the development service page for the build process and the setup and integrations page for how editor accounts and hosting get set up. For real examples, see the medical centres marketing rebuild and the five-language Montenegro real estate site.
Have a content team stuck waiting on developers to publish? Get in touch and we will map out a content model for your actual pages.
FAQ
How much does a headless CMS setup cost?
From $2,000 for content modeling, CMS setup and a frontend connection on an existing site, 2 to 4 weeks. A full site build on top of a fresh headless CMS runs with our standard site packages, from $1,500 for the site plus the CMS setup.
Which CMS do you use?
Depends on the project: Sanity or Contentful for marketing sites with rich content types, Strapi when you want to self-host and own the data layer outright, or WordPress in headless mode when a client's editorial team already knows the WordPress admin and we just swap what renders the content.
Can editors publish without breaking the page layout?
That is the point of content modeling: editors fill in fields (headline, body, image, call to action) rather than editing layout directly, so the page structure stays consistent no matter what they write. Preview mode lets them see the real result before it goes live.
Who owns the content and the code?
You. The CMS account, the content model and the frontend repository are all set up in your name, and we hand over a guide for both editors and whoever maintains the code after us.
Can we migrate from our current CMS?
Yes, this is common. We map your existing content types to the new model, migrate the actual content programmatically rather than copy-pasting by hand, and verify nothing is missing before cutting over.