In the real world, being “headless” isn’t always a good thing. If you’re an 18th century French aristocrat, for example, it’s very likely a bad thing. You could say the same for “decoupled” if you’re a Hollywood Millennial describing your relationship status. If we’re talking about digital content, on the other hand, “headless” and “decoupled” get much more interesting. 

When taking your first steps into the wonderful world of content management, there’s a good chance you're feeling a little confused about the glossary of terms we use to describe the software and tools that shape the landscape. Don’t worry: we can help!

Perhaps the most significant step on your content journey is deciding on the content management system (CMS) that you’re going to use to manage content within your tech stack. That’s where headless and decoupled come in; they both refer to different types of CMS architecture, and both can help you create very different experiences for your audience. 

In this post, we’re going to explore exactly what we mean by headless and decoupled in the context of content management, the pros and cons of both types of architecture, and where Contentful’s approach to content management fits within that picture. 

Not every content management system is going to work for every organization, but by getting in on the ground level — and working out how a solution will serve your content needs — you’ll go a long way toward ensuring that your content connects with your audiences, and creates the kind of experiences you need it to. 

Some CMS fundamentals

For the absolute beginners among you, it’ll be helpful to get a handle on some fundamental definitions before we tackle the more complicated bits. 

I mentioned that headless and decoupled were different types of CMSes — but what is a CMS?

A CMS is a software application that lets users manage, edit, and publish digital content to a website, or to any online channel, via a user interface. Usually, that involves a technical back end which handles the management functionality of the CMS service (sometimes known as the administrative layer) and a front end presentation layer that controls the content’s appearance, and that is sometimes referred to as the “head.” 

When we talk about digital content, we mean any digital asset, including text, images, video, and audio, that could be deployed online. Content isn’t just the stuff we read and see on web pages, it’s everywhere — it’s in emails to customers and colleagues, press releases, internal memos, video and audio streams, social media posts, store display screens, even the fonts used in text. 

At any given time, network users are moving through a veritable ecosystem of content — all of which needs to be organized and managed by a content management system. 

The problems with traditional CMS architecture

Traditional CMS architecture is monolithic, in the sense that its backend administrative layer is tightly coupled to the frontend presentation layer. In modern CMSes, those layers may be decoupled, or could have their head removed entirely — but we’ll get into what all that means shortly. 

But these traditional monolithic, coupled CMSes are supported by a single vendor, offered as an all-in-one-package, and are intended to provide out-of-the-box functionality to build a website.

In the monolithic architecture of the traditional CMS, content and code are tangled up together, which makes it difficult to make changes in the back end without affecting the front end. If you want to update the layout of a web page, for example, you need to go into the back end, tinker with code, save changes, and then make sure the adjustment hasn’t disrupted the appearance of existing content.

And there’s another problem. If your content strategy changes in the future, a traditional CMS can limit your ability to evolve or grow. Without scope to modify its functionality in the front end or back end (other than that which the vendor provides) — you have two choices: Either take a hit on the quality of your content, or find a new CMS that’s a better fit and embark on a costly replatforming exercise.

Fortunately, digital content management is no longer limited to monolithic CMS architecture and, if you want flexibility for your content’s presentation, you have options — which brings us back to decoupled and headless CMS architecture.

What is a decoupled CMS?

The defining feature of a decoupled CMS is that its back end and front end are disconnected, representing a step forward from the monolithic CMS — but you can still use it just like a traditional CMS if you choose. 

How this works is, a decoupled CMS can offer a standard website setup out of the box, but also has the ability to deliver content via APIs to any other presentation layer. Prime examples are WordPress and Drupal; you can use their default themes for a simple website, or you can leverage their APIs to power a mobile app, for example. This critical separation of content and presentation is what makes them "decoupled."

In most cases, a decoupled CMS is essentially a retrofit of a traditional, monolithic CMS. Both WordPress and Drupal simply added a JSON API to their monolithic architecture to achieve the decoupled effect. In fact, it’s quite difficult to find examples of true decoupled CMS architecture — which would entail both a natively separate back end and front end, connected only via API.     

In any case, we won’t dive into how APIs handle the data transfer between back end and front end here, but if you want to know more, check out our resources on API functionality.  

It’s important to point out that the decoupling of the CMS’s back end from its front end doesn’t get rid of the front end — it’s still there — so a decoupled CMS isn’t headless, and users can make use of a prepackaged presentation layer if they want. 

However, by offering an alternative option that demonstrates what’s possible by separating the front end and the back end, the decoupled CMS begins the process of untangling the management of content from the presentation layer.

We can place the monolithic CMS and the decoupled CMS on a scale of increasing flexibility. While the decoupled CMS is a technological step forward, the supply of a preconfigured front end is like a set of guardrails for beginning to explore the full potential of your digital content. 

Those guardrails can be both a help and a hindrance because the decoupled CMS still has to model content in some way in order to make its packaged templates work for all users — and that modeling comes at the expense of flexibility. 

So what’s the next stage in the content management revolution? None other than the headless CMS. 

What is a headless CMS?

A lot of people assume decoupled architecture and headless architecture are the same thing — but the terms aren’t interchangeable. 

While a decoupled CMS separates its back end from its front end, and offers some templates so it can be operated like a traditional CMS, a headless CMS removes the presentation layer completely. Since there’s no option to use a built-in head, developers aren’t locked in to a single vendor, and have complete flexibility as to how they handle their content presentation layer. 

The headless CMS is actually a jump, rather than a step, beyond decoupled on the flexibility scale because it makes no presumptions at all about what users want their content to look like — and so it can shed its preconfigured content modeling baggage.

What does all that look like in practice? Headless CMS architecture allows developers to quickly design frontend experiences with different third-party services, and code using whatever language they prefer. They might opt for interactive JS frameworks such as React, or static site generators such as Next.js or Gatsby — whatever they feel suits the project best. 

As with decoupled architecture, the headless CMS uses APIs to connect backend functionality with frontend content delivery. You can dive deeper into the possibilities with our headless CMS checklist. 

Why opt for headless or decoupled architecture?

If you’ve been struggling with the limitations of a traditional CMS, a decoupled CMS or a headless CMS could be a content management game-changer — but first you need to understand their possibilities and limitations. There’s obviously a lot of crossover between headless and decoupled systems, so let’s look at some specific advantages.

Decoupled CMS benefits

• Content workflow: By opting to use a preconfigured presentation layer, developers can get content workflows up and running quickly, working via a distinct user interface, and publishing content via a set of templates and themes right out of the box.

• Service and support: Decoupled CMSes can offer single-vendor support for both their backend and frontend functionalities. This means you’ll also have the option of working with familiar tools at either end of the tech stack. 

• Time to market: In addition to streamlined content workflows, decoupled architectures enable development teams to work simultaneously on backend and frontend projects. This approach can significantly shorten the development cycle, and make it easier and faster to make upgrades and launch new features. 

Headless CMS advantages

• Omnichannel experiences: Headless CMSes enable you to publish your content to any website, screen, display, or device, and redeploy content effortlessly for different regions, campaigns, and audiences.  

• Cost efficiency: Since you’ll be building your own front end, you can decide exactly what components you need, and build them to your budget. If you find a cheaper way of doing things, you can just swap out your front end tech stack. 

• Scaling: Headless CMSes have terrific scaling potential. When your business grows, and your content needs change, you’ll be able to adjust your frontend functionality to fit your new environment over the long term.

• Versioning: Since a fully headless CMS carries so much less template baggage than a decoupled system — and makes so fewer presumptions about content — versioning is much easier. Editors can make changes to their content repository, or roll them back, without impacting other users or components. 

Headless vs. decoupled CMS

The decoupled CMS and headless CMS are in (reasonably) close proximity, certainly in terms of their function and application within a tech stack — so what could push you toward one over the other? Here are the key considerations: 

Publishing support 

If you opt to use the built-in presentation layer, a decoupled CMS offers out-of-the-box publishing support and you can start pushing content out immediately using the native templates. Publishing support is obviously not native in a headless CMS, but the advantage here is that you’ll have the scope to fully customize your content model, and then your creation and publishing workflow. 

Future-proofing

If you have an eye on your content horizon, the flexibility that the headless CMS provides is going to help your future-proof your website (and digital channels) by making it possible to  integrate new tools into the tech stack when you need to. Decoupled CMS architectures could offer that same longevity, but first you’ll need to spend some effort unpicking the built-in presentation later and bringing in another better suited to your needs.

Security

If a monolithic CMS has a technical failure or security alert with high severity, it’s possible that the entire platform will be compromised. By contrast, since they separate their front end and back end, both the decoupled CMS and headless CMS have a narrower attack surface and therefore a higher degree of protection. 

You could argue that protection is greater in a headless architecture because you have the scope to choose the head that best fits your security needs. Headless architecture necessarily creates an air gap between the back and front end, while decoupled architecture, provided by a single vendor, still has a point of connection — and so opens up a potential attack vector for hackers. 

Complexity

Both the headless and decoupled CMS require some level of technical expertise to set up and use — at least more than a monolithic CMS does. A decoupled CMS typically offers greater out-of-the-box technical support since a single vendor offers the option to manage both layers, even if they’re connected via API. Meanwhile, a headless CMS suits users capable of taking a greater degree of technical initiative, and who are comfortable leveraging multiple APIs to shape every aspect of their tech stack. 

Content flexibility 

While a decoupled CMS makes it easier for non-developer users to create and publish content, the headless CMS unlocks the flexibility of content itself by making it possible to create highly customized experiences for very specific audiences. In practice, this makes the headless CMS a powerful marketing tool since brands can tailor content to a given campaign, demographic, or region, and reuse content as much as it is needed rather than creating new content from scratch. 

Predefined content model

Part of the appeal of the decoupled CMS is that it provides you with a predefined content model out of the box — a feature that is necessary when using the packaged templates. That structure is a benefit in the sense that it can kickstart your content workflows, but it can also represent an obstacle for independent content modeling where you need to figure out which content types you can safely remove, add, or revise. In contrast, headless platforms offer a much greater degree of sophistication and flexibility when it comes to setting up your content model exactly how you want. 

System performance

Prepackaged templates are one of the reasons you might opt for a decoupled CMS, but remember: those templates need to be stored somewhere and optimized for use. That means the provider will likely be keeping them all on one server to reduce costs, or focusing on the performance of a very specific template when measuring latency and other metrics.

For this reason, decoupled systems could be overwhelmed if they only optimize for a standard scenario (a small store selling T-shirts online on a typical weekday, for example), whereas headless platforms can scale up for anything. 

Truly headless platforms are frontend agnostic when it comes to performance; they really sweat every detail of their infrastructure stack and make sure that API responses come back lightning fast wherever you are in the world, and are incredibly resilient during high traffic situations, like Black Friday or the Super Bowl. 

API scope 

Users often approach decoupled CMS architecture with the expectation that the API will support an array of presentation layer capabilities. In reality, decoupled CMSes typically only make available a subset of their own capabilities to meet users’ bring-your-own-template appetites for flexibility, but don’t offer much beyond that. 

If that’s enough for your content needs, that’s all well and good, but with headless architecture, the API really is putting in the work and sweating every detail — simply because everything happening in the app has to be programmable via the API. Having everything fully documented is a big plus too.

Long-term and short-term costs

A decoupled CMS might be cheaper to set up and run in the short term. You’ll have an all-in-one solution with a ready-to-go content creation and publishing functionality. It’s worth remembering that decoupled cost-efficiency benefits aren’t always nailed on: even using a template out of the box, it can take time and effort to align it with customer brand needs — to the point it might be easier to create a head from scratch. 

With that said, headless CMS architectures generally require greater upfront investment: you’ll need to conceive and build your presentation layer, and ensure you have people with the skills to run it. Headless CMSes deliver their value over the medium to long term: you’ll have a presentation layer that fits your content workflow and business needs, that you can adjust when those needs change. 

The composable content platform

Modern content management has changed a lot since the debut of both headless and decoupled architectures. Most notably: flexibility, customizability, and future-proofing are no longer simply nice-to-have options, but indispensable features. 

In other words, if you have any kind of ongoing digital content needs, migrating to a headless CMS is going to provide the most value and customizability over time. But, if we're really thinking about the big picture, let's put aside headless CMS vs. decoupled CMS for a moment, and introduce another content management term: composability. 

If headless is an evolution of decoupled CMS architecture, composability is the next leap forward on the scale, a force multiplier that can take your content to the next level. 

How does it do that? Composable content management extends customizability beyond the frontend presentation layer, to every part of the tech stack. That means you could build your entire content infrastructure from the ground up, using different components like building blocks, to create an ecosystem of microservices. So, for example, you could build your website with Next.js, use Shopify to handle ecommerce, Contentful for content management, and so on — until you’ve built exactly the digital experience that you want for your audience. 

Contentful is your launchpad into the composable content universe. The Contentful® Composable Content Platform is more than a CMS, it’s a new way of thinking about content itself: an API-first system that allows you to plug any microservice into your digital content workflow, shape audience experiences meticulously, and display your content to any audience, in any part of the world. 

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