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Tired of PM2, Docker, and Strapi's memory appetite? We rank 7 alternatives — UnfoldCMS, Directus, Payload, Sanity, Contentful, Ghost, and KeystoneJS — by runtime, hosting cost, and upgrade pain.
A ranked, honest look at 7 Contentful alternatives — UnfoldCMS, Strapi, Sanity, Payload, Directus, Storyblok, and Hygraph — compared by hosting model, pricing, and API type.
The hosting picker for headless CMS front-ends in 2026. Cloudflare Pages now wins on cost (unlimited bandwidth all tiers), Vercel still wins on Next.js DX (with a commercial-use ban on Hobby), Netlify got more expensive after April. Edge function performance compared, when each one fits.
Strapi is a serious CMS until the Node deployment ops surface (PM2, Docker, DB tuning, security patches) becomes the bottleneck. Honest migration paths to UnfoldCMS, Payload, Sanity, or flat-file. When to leave, when to stay, real cost math.
Step-by-step tutorial: Astro 5 + UnfoldCMS via the Content Layer API. Type-safe build-time fetching, Cloudflare Pages free-tier deploy, 90% less JavaScript than the Next.js equivalent. 30 minutes from git clone to live.
When migrating off Contentful makes sense and when it doesn't. Replacement landscape (UnfoldCMS, Payload, Strapi, Directus, Sanity, flat-file). Honest 4-week migration plan, what you trade, hidden costs.
Strapi is the most popular self-hosted headless CMS. UnfoldCMS is the only one with admin built on shadcn/ui. Honest comparison on stack, hosting, plugins, licensing, when each one fits.
UnfoldCMS and Payload share an audience and almost nothing else. UnfoldCMS is a Laravel monolith with admin built on shadcn/ui. Payload is headless Node.js. Side-by-side on architecture, stack, hosting, pricing — and where each one wins.
Honest ranking of 7 CMS options for shadcn/ui projects. Only one is built fully on shadcn — the rest are headless with bring-your-own-shadcn front-ends, or admin templates without CMS guts.
The direct answer to 'is there a CMS built with shadcn/ui' — a production CMS using 51 real shadcn components across 205 admin pages, with three themes from one codebase.
The new /api/v1/* namespace ships in Core. Public reads, authenticated user endpoints, admin CRUD, outgoing signed webhooks. Built for Next.js, Astro, SvelteKit, and mobile apps.
Honest tradeoffs on JAMstack + headless CMS. Five scenarios where the combo pays off, four where you should stay on markdown, and the middle ground most sites should pick.