Are you searching for the best CMS for NextJS to pair with your next epic project?
You’re not alone!
I’ve been there, too, digging through the vast ocean of content management systems, trying to find that one gem that syncs flawlessly with NextJS.
In this article, we’ll explore the best CMS options for NextJS. Whether you’re building a blog, an eCommerce site, or a full-fledged web application, I’ve got you covered.
From small to large apps, I’ve included something for everyone.
I’ve spent hours researching, testing, and comparing to give you a comprehensive guide to the best available tools.
By the end of this article, you’ll have all the information you need to make the right decision and elevate your NextJS projects to the next level!
This post covers:
The Best CMS for NextJS
Choosing the right CMS for your NextJS project is crucial. It’s more than just a checkbox on your to-do list—it’s about making your development process smoother and empowering your content team to excel without technical hurdles.
Key considerations include seamless integrations, a user-friendly interface, and robust scalability to grow with your project.
It’s all about making your life easier and your website more powerful.
1. Strapi
Strapi is a leading open-source headless CMS that’s revolutionizing the developer landscape. Built entirely with JavaScript, Strapi offers a highly customizable, developer-first experience.
With Strapi’s intuitive interface, you can minimize time spent on setup and focus more on creating rich content types effortlessly.
The customization options in Strapi are extensive. Whether you’re adjusting APIs or refining data structures, Strapi allows you to tailor your CMS to precisely fit your project’s requirements.
Strapi excels in flexibility. Its Content Type structure is adaptable, offering a wide range of fields and configurations to suit diverse project needs.
Integration is seamless with Strapi. It works flawlessly with any client including React (see best CMS for React), Vue, Angular, mobile apps, or IoT devices, utilizing REST or GraphQL APIs. Additionally, webhooks and auto-generated documentation enhance the development experience.
Strapi also provides dynamic content management with robust authentication and permissions. Its internationalization features allow for the creation of multilingual websites or applications with localized content.
Key Features of Strapi:
- Back-end-only content management system that integrates with the NextJS front-end via RESTful or GraphQL APIs, offering greater flexibility in front-end design.
- Extensive customization options including API modification, data structure adjustments, and admin panel alterations.
- Supports multiple databases such as SQLite, MySQL, Postgres, and MariaDB.
- Auto-generated documentation aids in maintaining and scaling applications efficiently.
- Supports webhooks for automatic triggers, ideal for dynamic content updates in NextJS projects.
Best For: Strapi is ideal for developers and teams needing a flexible, customizable CMS focused on JavaScript, with seamless integration with NextJS for dynamic, API-driven web projects.
Pricing: Strapi is a free and open-source CMS. It also offers various packages for enterprise projects and cloud solutions starting at $99/month.
2. DatoCMS
DatoCMS is a comprehensive solution and a valuable technological asset for teams managing content creation and distribution. It’s designed to significantly enhance workflow efficiency, reducing the time from idea to market to hours rather than months.
This headless CMS centralizes your content management, allowing effortless updates and instant deployment across all digital platforms. Its omnichannel capabilities ensure content consistency and future-proofing.
With DatoCMS’s flexible content model, you can quickly iterate and prototype, providing a repeatable architecture for diverse projects. Its speed is unparalleled, supported by a global delivery network that spans over 200 cities in 90+ countries. This ensures content security, performance, and scalability with minimal architectural complexity.
DatoCMS seamlessly integrates with NextJS, complementing its agility and scalability.
Key Features of DatoCMS:
- Centralized content management hub, ensuring consistency and ease of access across digital platforms.
- Supports real-time content updates, reflecting changes instantly on your NextJS site.
- Designed for omnichannel content delivery, providing a seamless user experience across various platforms.
- Accelerates content-to-market processes with fast iterations and prototyping capabilities.
- Scalable architecture to handle increased demands, including a robust CDN for optimal performance.
Best For: DatoCMS is ideal for teams and developers seeking a user-friendly, scalable headless CMS that integrates with NextJS for managing and delivering content across multiple channels.
Pricing: DatoCMS offers a free trial. Paid plans start at $162/month for the Professional plan.
3. Ghost
Ghost is like finding a hidden gem in the CMS world, especially suited for NextJS projects. It emphasizes simplicity and efficiency, making it an excellent choice for content management.
With its sleek, user-friendly interface, Ghost allows you to focus on content creation without requiring extensive technical expertise. Its JavaScript foundation makes it a perfect match for NextJS, creating a seamless integration experience.
Ghost excels in SEO performance, ensuring higher visibility and better rankings. Its speed is another notable feature, providing quick content load times and an enhanced user experience.
Additionally, Ghost includes robust membership and subscription features, making it ideal for building community-driven or subscription-based platforms.
Key Features of Ghost:
- SEO-focused design, automatically managing meta tags, permalinks, and sitemaps for improved search visibility.
- Fast performance with quick loading times, aligning well with NextJS’s rendering capabilities.
- Intuitive content management interface, reducing the learning curve for content creators and developers.
- Built-in membership and subscription tools for creating content platforms with integrated NextJS projects.
- Over 100,000 users have utilized Ghost for creating their websites.
Best For: Ghost is perfect for bloggers, content creators, and developers who prioritize SEO, performance, and ease of use, and are looking for a JavaScript-based CMS to enhance their NextJS projects.
Pricing: Ghost is free and open-source. Alternatively, the paid managed solution starts at $9/month, with prices increasing based on the number of users. For more affordable options, consider Ghost hosting services.
4. Contentful
Contentful is where simplicity meets sophistication. This headless CMS allows you to organize and manage content across different brands, use cases, or regions, making it adaptable and reusable. It provides a streamlined approach to publishing, enabling you to deliver personalized, high-quality content that enhances your NextJS project with engaging user experiences.
With features like the Visual Modeler and AI Content Type Generator, Contentful offers intelligent tools for planning, building, and iterating your content models. For those concerned with data compliance and security, Contentful provides an EU data residency option, ensuring robust security frameworks and governance.
Contentful combines efficiency, innovation, and security, making it an ideal choice for diverse digital projects.
Key Features of Contentful:
- Centralize all your content, including images, text, and articles, into a single integrated content graph for streamlined access and management.
- Delivers high-quality, personalized content experiences across multiple channels with ease.
- Utilizes the Visual Modeler and AI Content Type Generator to plan and build content models effectively.
Best For: Contentful is perfect for developers, marketers, and content editors seeking a flexible, scalable, and omnichannel-friendly CMS that integrates seamlessly with NextJS for large-scale digital projects.
Pricing: Contentful offers a free tier to start. Paid plans include Basic at $300/month and Premium with custom pricing options.
5. Storyblok
Storyblok offers a headless CMS architecture that supports any technology stack and enables publishing across multiple channels. It is designed with powerful APIs, including GraphQL, REST, and Management APIs, making it a developer-friendly option that integrates seamlessly with your tech stack.
Highly customizable and extendable, Storyblok allows you to create tailored content experiences. You can build custom apps, plugins, and field types that fit perfectly with your NextJS project. The Visual Editor enhances your workflow with real-time editing and collaboration features, while the Component Composer and Global Components ensure consistent branding and SEO optimization.
In summary, Storyblok provides all the tools needed to create and scale exceptional content experiences for NextJS projects.
Key Features of Storyblok:
- Integrates easily with various technologies and platforms via GraphQL API, REST API, and Management APIs.
- Highly customizable and extendable with support for custom apps, plugins, and field types.
- Ensures high security and performance standards as a cloud-native CMS, including ISO 27001 certification, autoscaling, and global CDN support.
- Includes integrated discussions and workflows within the Visual Editor for efficient teamwork and component-level comments.
Best For: Storyblok is ideal for developers and content teams looking for a flexible, intuitive, and scalable headless CMS to create dynamic, multi-channel digital experiences with NextJS.
Pricing: Start building your project for free with Storyblok, or choose the Entry plan starting at $108/month.
6. Sanity
Sanity is a highly customizable headless CMS that excels in providing dynamic content workspaces. Its real-time collaboration features and intelligent image handling make it a great choice for content teams working with NextJS.
Sanity’s APIs are integral to creating a composable content architecture, enabling precise content queries and seamless interoperability with your tech stack. The platform’s Content Lake offers cloud-hosted, fully managed storage with intelligent caching and robust interfaces, ensuring your content is both secure and performant.
From limitless landing page compositions to data-driven customer experiences, Sanity covers various needs with ease. It is particularly effective for optimizing personalized buyer journeys and managing content across different channels.
Key Features of Sanity:
- Highly customizable Sanity Studio for tailoring content workspaces to fit business needs.
- Real-time collaboration capabilities for simultaneous work on documents by multiple users.
- Cloud-hosted, fully managed infrastructure providing robust content delivery with intelligent caching and a global CDN.
- Supports diverse industries, including marketing, eCommerce, media, and support.
Best For: Sanity is ideal for developers, content creators, and teams across various industries seeking a highly customizable, scalable, and collaborative CMS to enhance NextJS-based projects.
Pricing: Start with Sanity for free. Upgrade to the Growth plan starting at $15/month for additional features.
7. Suncel
Suncel is more than just a CMS; it’s a comprehensive creative hub designed to elevate your NextJS experience. Its drag-and-drop editor allows for high-precision design and multi-language support, making it suitable for global audiences.
With features like version control, publishing access management, and automatic sitemap generation, Suncel ensures you never lose changes and enhances your SEO efforts by improving site navigation and indexing.
Suncel’s ease of integration with Next.js and its powerful component library offer developers and content creators a user-friendly yet flexible solution for building and managing content.
Key Features of Suncel:
- Drag-and-drop visual editor for precise and easy layout design.
- Reusable components within the editor to enhance efficiency and consistency across your NextJS project.
- Automatic sitemap generation for new pages and updates to improve SEO and facilitate search engine indexing.
- Access to previous versions of content to ensure no changes are lost.
Best For: Suncel is ideal for developers and content creators who value precision, efficiency, and multi-language support, and seek a user-friendly CMS with customizable components and innovative workflow features.
Pricing: Start building small projects with Suncel free of charge. Upgrade to the Start plan for $29/month when you’re ready to expand.
8. Prismic
Prismic is a versatile CMS that integrates seamlessly with NextJS, offering an engaging way to manage your web content. Its standout feature, Slices, acts as customizable building blocks for creating dynamic and visually appealing content layouts.
The Slice Machine is Prismic’s local development tool, allowing developers to configure and optimize their content setup efficiently. This tool bridges the gap between developers and content creators, ensuring that your design and content are perfectly aligned.
The Prismic Editor enhances content management with its user-friendly interface, enabling creators to assemble and manage content effortlessly. It also offers robust content versioning and scheduling features for better control over content publication and revisions.
Key Features of Prismic:
- Slices serve as customizable building blocks for content, making it easy to create unique and engaging layouts.
- The Slice Machine tool streamlines local development and configuration of Prismic’s content structure.
- User-friendly content editor for intuitive content creation and management.
- Advanced content versioning and scheduling capabilities for precise content control.
Best For: Prismic is ideal for developers and content creators who need a modular, intuitive CMS for integrating and managing dynamic, multi-language content within their NextJS projects.
Pricing: Prismic offers a free tier for personal websites or proof-of-concept projects. For additional features and options, consider the Pro packages starting at $100/month.
9. Enonic
Enonic offers a streamlined CMS experience that integrates smoothly with NextJS, making content creation, editing, and publishing efficient and straightforward. Its intuitive workflow and real-time content validation simplify daily tasks for editorial teams.
Enonic’s collaborative features include issue creation, commenting, and email notifications, which enhance team communication and workflow. Additionally, its smart image handling ensures optimal presentation of visual content across various devices.
With advanced localization features, Enonic allows you to tailor content for different markets using its unique layers functionality and inheritance model. The visual page editor offers drag-and-drop functionality, enabling precise content customization.
Key Features of Enonic:
- Streamlined workflow for efficient content creation, editing, and publishing, including review and approval processes.
- Interactive and responsive previews, including a device emulator, for viewing content on various devices.
- Advanced localization with inheritance model and content layers to adapt content for different markets.
- Organize sites and content collections into distinct projects for better management.
Best For: Enonic is suited for teams and developers using NextJS who require a flexible, collaborative CMS with advanced image handling, localization, and multi-project management features.
Pricing: Start using Enonic for free. For production deployments, pricing starts at $990/month.
10. Agility
Agility CMS stands out with its powerful marketing features, giving you complete control over your content’s appearance on any device. It excels in delivering a seamless content management experience with user-friendly authoring tools and advanced preview options.
Agility’s comprehensive feature set includes robust page and module management, multi-site support, and SEO optimization, ensuring your content strategy is perfectly executed. It simplifies content sharing, scheduling, and workflow management, and supports analytics, unlimited version history, and digital asset management.
With multilingual capabilities and custom roles, Agility is well-suited for global content management. Its API-first approach allows developers to build exceptional digital experiences using any programming language or front-end framework, offering limitless flexibility for content delivery and integration.
Agility combines marketing prowess with developer-centric tools, focusing on performance, scalability, and ease of use, making it an excellent choice for diverse digital projects.
Key Features of Agility:
- Robust content management tools including page, module, sitemap management, multi-site support, URL routing, SEO fields, and content previewing.
- Flexible and extensible architecture supporting any programming language, custom content fields, omnichannel delivery, Restful API, multiple front-end integrations, content sync SDK, and WebHooks.
- Content delivery network (CDN) ensures fast and reliable access to APIs and digital assets.
Best For: Agility is ideal for developers and marketers in fast-paced, growth-oriented organizations needing a robust, scalable, and flexible CMS for managing diverse, multi-channel NextJS projects efficiently.
Pricing: You can try Agility CMS for free, but for advanced features and extensive capabilities, consider the elite plans starting at $1,249/month.
11. Hygraph
Hygraph offers an exceptional content management experience with its flexible content modeling, reusable components, and advanced referencing capabilities. The platform’s user-friendly interface and SDK support provide a powerful solution for both developers and content teams.
Editing with Hygraph is straightforward, enhancing productivity with tools designed for large-scale content creation and collaboration. It allows seamless integration of content from multiple systems through a unified GraphQL endpoint and supports detailed role-based permissions and custom workflows.
Hygraph’s ability to manage and publish content in various languages from a central location makes it a strong choice for international projects. Its scalable infrastructure supports rapid development of omnichannel digital experiences, handling high traffic volumes effortlessly.
Hygraph combines structural flexibility, advanced editing, and robust security features, making it an ideal CMS for complex NextJS projects requiring extensive localization and content management capabilities.
Key Features of Hygraph:
- Advanced editing features and tools for efficient large-scale content creation and collaboration.
- Integration with other systems and unification of multiple APIs into a single GraphQL endpoint for streamlined content management.
- Compliance with SOC 2 Type 2 and GDPR standards, with hosting on ISO 27001 certified infrastructure for robust security.
Best For: Hygraph is best suited for developers and content teams who need a scalable, flexible CMS with advanced editing, localization, and security features for their complex NextJS projects.
Pricing: Hygraph offers a free plan for personal and small-scale projects. For more advanced needs, the Self Service solution starts at $299/month and up.
What Is The Best CMS For NextJS
When selecting a CMS for your NextJS projects, consider these top options:
- Strapi is a headless CMS that integrates seamlessly with NextJS, providing developers full control over their content API and allowing extensive customization and scalability.
- DatoCMS offers easy integration with NextJS and a user-friendly content management interface with a GraphQL-based API for efficient content delivery.
- Ghost excels with its simplicity and speed, offering a lightweight CMS that integrates well with NextJS, ideal for bloggers and publishers focused on fast, SEO-friendly content delivery.
