Contentful Blog
contentful.com · Company blog · on HN since 2013
The company blog of Contentful, a headless CMS vendor, covering product news, funding, hiring, and developer topics.
What HN saysHN commenters mostly mention Contentful as a headless CMS suggestion, with a free developer tier suited to static sites, and in job postings.
73HN people shared it
50linked it in comments
68stories submitted
426story points
5 months agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Contentful: an API-first approach to content management42 people · 18 points · first shared 2013 · 3 comments on HN
- 2Contentful is hiring – help us modernize how content flows4 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 3Principles for building developer products: a CTO’s perspective3 people · 13 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 4ES6 modules support lands in browsers: is it time to rethink bundling?3 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 5Contentful closes series C funding of $28M2 people · 8 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 6Seamlessly managed serverless containers using Kubernetes and AWS Fargate2 people · 5 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 7The singleton pattern: evil or just misused?2 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 8Jobs2 people · first shared 2013
- 9Contentful series b2 people · first shared 2016
- 10A Kubernetes operator to sync secrets from AWS Secrets Manager1 people · 68 points · first shared 2020 · 30 comments on HN
- 11Scaling Down Gracefully with AWS Lambda and HAProxy1 people · 65 points · first shared 2016 · 14 comments on HN
- 12Making S3 More Resilient Using Lambda Edge1 people · 64 points · first shared 2019 · 23 comments on HN
- 13Reducing the attack surface with static sites1 people · 39 points · first shared 2018 · 28 comments on HN
- 14The understated innovation of static site generators1 people · 15 points · first shared 2018 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Setting up a static blog in 9 minutes with Roots and Contentful1 people · 12 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
shaqbert · 2018-03-25
You need a headless CMS like Contentful[0]. They have a free developer tier which is great for static sites, especially when you pair it with the super awesome React based static site generator GatsbyJS[1].
[0]: https://www.contentful.com/
[1]: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/gatsby-starters/
nvus · 2018-03-25
1. You sound like an advertiser.
2. When I first discovered Ghost (last year) and I heard it's using NodeJS I was expecting a beautiful, responsive, SPA blog engine that is fast. After reviewing it and even trying to use it as a platform for a newspaper I found that (It's just wordpress and it's not using the power of javascript to it's full extent.)
Fast => I could and I did built a faster wordpress site.
SPA => Nope
Customizable => Nope.
For me it's not worth the extra capabilities instead of a static blog.
I found gatsby(1) great for all my use cases and with some extra work[2] is more dynamic that ghost.
1. gatsby - https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby
2. netlify + contentful - https://www.netlifycms.org/ + https://www.contentful.com/
(I would love to see a CMS that embraces SPA/PWA. On the other side I would hate to serve 1mb of JS just to show 4 paragraphs and 1 picture)
at-fates-hands · 2017-01-02
All good recommendations here, but I'd add a few more. .
I say take a look at Keystone CMS (http://keystonejs.com/) - it's a Node based CMS and is really easy to work with and has tons of options to customize as you need it.
My other recommendation would be to use Spike - (https://www.spike.cf/) (from the same guys who built Roots) along with rooftop CMS (https://www.rooftopcms.com/) or Contentful CMS (https://www.contentful.com/)
hungryblank · 2016-02-01
Contentful - https://www.contentful.com - Berlin, Germany (VISA)
We are hiring for the following full time positions:
1. Senior Rails/Ruby Developer -
https://contentful.workable.com/jobs/193878
2. Marketing Designer - https://contentful.workable.com/jobs/151891
3. Head of Technical support -
https://www.contentful.com/careers/
fiatjaf · 2015-11-04
This is great.
I don't know why would one use it (why on earth would I want to share a list?), but it is a very well done thing.
Maybe this great interface could be used to power: public forms, enterprise data, a CMS like http://contentful.com/, a general purpose customizable CRUD app for small businesses.
ryantownsend · 2015-09-25
I agree with the above. That said, even if you are doing something new, you don't need to reinvent the wheel – it may be worthwhile taking a look at https://www.contentful.com/ (not affiliated, just an interesting service) and utilising their API to build an application which purely delivers the added value.
BrandonSmith · 2014-05-16
I interpret the groundswell interest in the SSG a testament the CMS does not address all the needs in the content publication pipeline. Some organizations have a focus on content creators. Others on developers. In general, the hacker mindset has an allergy towards ecosystems that remove control. The SSG is about providing a framework for the developer to assert control and regaining flexibility to deliver content independent of coding to a "system".
The CMS is a crutch. It has its place in certain organizations. But it is overkill for many use cases.
In truth, however, we shouldn't be pitting the SSG against the CMS. I believe the next leap of content creation is a mixture of both SSG and classical CMS. Check out the following links:
https://github.com/thyb/contentify
https://www.contentful.com/
https://prismic.io/
There is a convergence about to happen between "dynamic" content and the SSG. It could be called CMS as an API.
vicentereig · 2023-03-16
It's a _headless_ Content Management System. https://www.contentful.com/
They are useful in organizations where the people who author and publish the content aren't the same people who known how to code a website.
thunderbong · 2023-02-16
What are the advantages of using this over Contentful [0] or Directus [1]?
[0]: https://www.contentful.com
[1]: https://directus.io
quriosity · 2022-11-23
found an edge case: https://contentful.com
it returns:
{
"title": "subtract-circle",
"image": "https://contentful.com/favicon-32x32.png?v=da79a33a7fc91be19875cc580fc…
}
arraypad · 2022-08-31
As someone who's been actively looking for a headless CMS recently, I'm curious about how you compare yourselves to Contentful [1]?
From a quick look the key difference is that Payload's backend can be self-hosted, but Contentful is SaaS only.
You've said that you're targeting enterprise customers and mention an SLA in that respect. Does that mean your enterprise offering is also SaaS only?
[1] https://www.contentful.com/
mtmail · 2021-06-19
I believe the category name is 'headless CMS' and you're looking for SaaS, not SASS. https://www.contentful.com/ isn't new but they do regular job ads in the who-is-hiring so you might have seen them there. Their website seems to market to website owners while https://forestry.io/ seems to market to developers.
wimagguc · 2021-05-28
Trying to decide between these:
(a) Wordpress
(b) SquareSpace
(c) https://strapi.io/
(d) https://prismic.io/
(e) https://www.contentful.com/
The output will be a simple website, we already have all pages in HTML, and from the tech perspective we could use any of the above.
What I've seen was: SquareSpace is still rather limited, Prismic and Contentful are around $500 per month in their non-free-tier, and Strapi is just too expensive to find devs for. Plus their editor looks the same as Wordpress's if I'm honest.
On the other hand, Wordpress has a massive community of reasonably priced freelancers, has updates many times a year, and most things you want out of the box (such as SEO, or easy hosting on Heroku or elsewhere). The only thing it doesn't have is the excitement to work with it :)
Is there a good business case for any of the competitors?
leifg · 2021-04-05
At one of the companies I worked for we used the CMS API Contentful (https://www.contentful.com) together with a static site generator.
People can write content through the Contentful dashboard which has a decent editor.Your website would be notified through webhooks about changes and rebuild.
Not sure what exactly you need to do with the list that you get from the public API. If it's as simple as showing the raw content you might get away with a little bit of JavaScript embedded in Wordpress/Webflow.
cpach · 2021-03-05
There are starting to appear lots of interesting tools in that space.
See e.g. https://www.sanity.io/ or https://www.contentful.com/
kaishiro · 2020-07-14
Curious if you've used Contentful (http://contentful.com) or Dato (https://www.datocms.com) yet - and if you have, what your biggest issues were with them.
We've used Contentful extensively basically since it's inception, and have toyed around with Dato enough to know what the offering is. We have our own list of missing pieces for both but am always curious about other's experiences.
crucialfelix · 2020-03-09
https://www.contentful.com/ works well for this.
Content, copy, even menu items, metadata etc can be edited by multiple normal people. Translations too
A static site can be set up to rebuild when someone updates content.
You could also fetch content with JavaScript on the page. That would work if it was just opening hours as in the parent example
dewey · 2020-01-21
I'd go with Ruby on Rails if it's mostly CRUD operations. You'll be very quick to get something up and running to power your frontend.
You could also use some hosted services like https://firebase.google.com / https://www.contentful.com but that depends on your use case and if you want to be dependent on someone in return for being a bit faster.
tiborsaas · 2019-10-06
Netlify is exactly that with Gatsby, I have two blogs running on them.
Many themes have now deploy to Netlify buttons:
https://github.com/netlify-templates/gatsby-starter-netlify-cms
Many themes support https://www.contentful.com/ as a backend.
The only thing that's a little concerning to me is the separation of domains: Hosting on a freemium service which deploys me a Node/React based static site generator that can connect to a third party headless CMS. That's why I still use markdown as the source of the content.
Too many moving parts, but at the same time if one goes down for good, I can fix it quite easily.
huy-nguyen · 2019-05-25
You can have a static site and WYSIWYG editor. For example, you can use GatsbyJS (https://www.gatsbyjs.org/) as the static site generator and Contentful CMS (https://www.contentful.com/) as the editor.
PudgePacket · 2019-04-11
I guess they're going after the people who don't need a db first, then add features to support some kind of "db-lite" functionality later. They're competing with wordpress/squarespace, not gcloud or aws (mostly..) :)
See addons: https://www.netlify.com/products/
Also services like this allow you to have a "cms" which is the typical use of a db for _most_ websites: https://www.contentful.com/.
You are correct, heavy db users probably wouldn't go with a service like this :)
navs · 2019-04-10
https://forestry.io/ (hugo)
https://www.contentful.com/ (used this with jekyll)
harrisonjackson · 2019-03-07
How do you position yourselves against someone like https://www.contentful.com ? Seems like a similar product, though less targeted directly at Wordpress Devs.
Geee · 2019-02-07
You seem to confuse things. JAMstack doesn't try to replace SPAs, it's trying to replace Wordpress. It's simply a better choice for websites and blogs than either SPA or Wordpress. It really is a different concept than SPA.
In pure JAMstack, APIs are used only at the build step, and you don't have to expose them. You get your content such as blog posts from the API, render them to html and store on CDN.
Monolithic architecture refers mostly to Wordpress. With JAMstack you separate your CMS from your frontend, and you can manage your content with a service like https://www.contentful.com/ that doesn't define how the content gets rendered.
realityking · 2019-01-30
Medium has a great low barrier to entry but if you're a developer looking to post your own content or are setting up a site for someone I seriously recommend looking into a static site set up.
With services like GitHub and Netlify (for hosting) and Contentful (as a content editing GUI) the day-to-day experience is seamless, you don't have to worry about security issues like you have with a traditional CMS, and you can make use of amazing tools like Gatsby.js (React based static site generator).
My colleague Khaled made a great tutorial specifically about Gatsby.js: https://www.contentful.com/blog/2018/02/28/contentful-gatsby-video-tut…
Full disclosure: I work for Contentful
pknopf · 2018-04-14
> but seriously, just use Hugo or Jekyll!
Both of those lack support for custom "sources", instead of just markdown files.
A lot of people like Contentful (https://www.contentful.com/), which static site generators like Gatsby support.
This doesn't really address your remark about webpack though.
However, I have been using Gatsby and I haven't had any issues with it. It is completely internal and hidden from the end user.
darkseid · 2018-03-21
I'm using Contentful's (https://contentful.com) free plan to power the docs and blog for my website (https://resurfaceapp.com/docs/)
jbergstroem · 2017-08-14
I'm happy with the abstraction that https://www.contentful.com/ provides; be it a personal static site or more complex integrations which involves multiple content feeds. You get to define a content model and then just create away [within the limits of said model]. Their pricing is fair too (read: free for most).
Edit: Downside(s) would include that $webmaster has to figure out whether to render content at browser or though "ssr".
thangngoc89 · 2017-07-11
surfin · 2017-04-18
What are your requirements in terms of editing / updating (e.g. adding new blogs) content once your site is live? If you expect non-technical person being able to author the content, you may consider headless CMS like Kentico Cloud (https://kenticocloud.com/) or Contentful (https://www.contentful.com/) to store and manage your content and then pull it to your template via technology of your choice.
Eventually, you could feed that content to static web page generators like Hugo and serve only generated pages.