My main use case for Contentful is building websites and managing the content. We have a public facing website where we showcase our products and offerings to people, and all of that content, images, and everything is managed through Contentful.
Contentful Composable Content Platform
Contentful GmbHExternal reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Rich content management has empowered teams to update web experiences without developers
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The best features Contentful offers include the Rich Text editor, the linking, the images, pages, and templates. I rely heavily on the Rich Text editor because that is where I create customized components. For example, Rich Text lets us paste images and links, and based on the JSON response structure we receive from Contentful with the GraphQL query, we know the structure of it, which helps render specific components on the screen, such as a banner that will have background images, buttons, and text, and the same goes for the slider and carousel.
Contentful has impacted my organization positively because the business is able to change the content without the help of a developer, and they can make a deployment very easily. This has led to measurable outcomes, such as a faster time-to-market and reduced workload for developers.
What needs improvement?
I think Contentful can be improved in several ways. Sometimes the linking is challenging. If you are using too many links, then it is actually making the application deployment time longer, so Contentful needs to figure out a way to solve that problem. Additionally, cost-wise, I feel our organization thinks it is too much because we were planning to use Contentful for our global site, which has four languages support, and for each language, we need to create different spaces. If Contentful could allow us to add the four languages in one go, that would be great.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Contentful for the last two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Contentful is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Contentful's scalability is good.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Contentful is good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we used an on-premise based Content Management System, which was Adobe AEM, and we changed to Contentful because of faster deployment and evolving technologies.
What was our ROI?
I would say we have seen a return on investment because the cost in the infrastructure got saved. Contentful is a platform offering that manages the infrastructure for us, resulting in savings in terms of infrastructure.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that mostly, a developer will not be managing those aspects, but from my point of view, Contentful is a bit pricey.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Contentful an eight on a scale of one to ten. My advice for others looking into using Contentful is to go for it. I have no additional thoughts about Contentful before we wrap up. My overall rating for this review is eight.
Content management has shifted to producers and empowers faster content updates and publishing
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Contentful is for migrating our Oracle ATG server into Contentful as a migration project.
During that migration project, we created multiple content types and developed a custom app where we map the ATG server code to our content types. We used that mapping to import the particular content to Contentful.
After the migration, we used this particular content for the website, specifically for our client Sephora, where we utilized all this content.
What is most valuable?
Contentful offers many best features including Preview, Custom Apps, migrations, Merge App, and workflows.
We used the preview feature whenever we wanted to see how particular content looks, and at that time we ran our server locally and tested it. Additionally, we used custom apps for building bulk editors and multiple features where we could reuse some of the code.
Contentful has positively impacted my organization as it has been a major breakthrough. The producers can automatically update their content without relying on developers, which is really helpful for the producers.
I could say we saved around 60% of the time for developers. Previously, we maintained all the content, but now producers handle that, which allows developers and producers to publish their content immediately when they want to update it.
What needs improvement?
Contentful needs to be improved for migration, not only for migration, but from lower to higher environments as well, as the schema diffs and everything are not working as expected. Improving the CI/CD pipelines would be greatly helpful, and it could build similar capabilities to Builder.io for enhanced growth when using Contentful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Contentful for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Contentful is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Contentful is scalable. We can scale the application to any level we want without any problems regarding scalability.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is good. There are three levels of support available, and level one support resolves issues within 15 minutes to one hour.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used ATG Oracle Cloud, which is too old and requires developers to handle the cloud architecture and content, leading to our migration to Contentful.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment. Previously, we used to have 10 developers for the ATG Oracle cloud, but for Contentful, we only need two developers, and once it is streamlined, producers can handle everything without the need for developers.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
Others looking into using Contentful can use it seamlessly without relying on any other deployments. Everything is present in Contentful itself, and any custom apps can also be deployed within Contentful without needing separate servers.
Content AI has transformed content modeling and now keeps all app experiences consistent
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Contentful is to decouple the content layer with the UI or presentation layer, and for that reason, we have an Android application, an iOS application, and also a web application, allowing us to decouple the content from all those applications.
We create a page-wise data structure at Contentful and store the contents there, and after that, we utilize GraphQL APIs on all three applications, including the iOS application, Android application, and web applications.
What is most valuable?
Currently, the AI feature in Contentful is great—whenever you describe your use case, it creates a complete content structure for you, and I believe that is the most interesting feature on Contentful's side. Another interesting feature is content preview, which is really useful for us when we create contents for our development team.
By using the preview feature, we can see the content structure and how contents are appearing before using it with our actual applications. The inbuilt AI feature is really awesome, saving our time because earlier we used to take one week to create a complete content structure, but now if we define our use case correctly, that inbuilt AI feature creates the content structure within half an hour or an hour.
Contentful has positively impacted my organization by greatly increasing productivity and collaboration. Earlier, there was inconsistency in all three versions of applications, with the web application having something in capital case and the iOS application having something in small case, but after using Contentful, we now have similar content and similar cases everywhere across the applications.
We are getting zero bugs for the content now, which is a measurable improvement in productivity and collaboration after implementing Contentful.
What needs improvement?
Contentful can be improved by enhancing their SDK to directly connect with our presentation layer, and if we just provide a class name or something, that would make it better.
The main change I want to see is the improvement in SDK. I believe no other improvements are needed for Contentful that I haven't mentioned yet.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working for four years in my current field and in the DevOps side, I have been working for the last two years.
What other advice do I have?
For others looking into using Contentful, I suggest first understanding Contentful's architecture and structure, how Contentful creates the structure for the pages and views, and secondly, being aware of GraphQL; those two things are important for anyone looking to use Contentful. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Content workflows have become simpler for non-technical teams but could offer deeper features
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Contentful is optimizing images and videos. While people use Contentful to build websites, Contentful does not provide an inbuilt image and video optimizer. ImageKit fills this gap, allowing people who use Contentful to optimize their images and providing a digital asset management solution inside the Contentful UI itself. That is the kind of integration I am working with in Contentful.
I have a website and want to optimize my images and videos using Contentful to build that website, which is very easy. I can use my own frontend and then use the API to build that website, while also integrating ImageKit, which is my current organization. It is a mixture of these two approaches.
What is most valuable?
The best features Contentful offers are its APIs and how easy it is to integrate them. Feature-wise, the majority of CMSs are the same; I have used Strapi, and feature-wise, those are similar. The ease of use and the way Contentful provides the APIs and how easy it is to fetch the data directly and use it in your frontend is the best part. I have not explored many features, having mostly built a basic web page, so there could be features that I am not aware of, but the ones I have used were quite intuitive and easier to use.
Contentful's impact on my organization is that we do not use it very much. Contentful has not helped my organization or our customers achieve any measurable benefits, such as saving time or improving workflows, as we have not measured that. It does help customers who are using Contentful, but I have not quantified it.
What needs improvement?
Contentful works well for me; I might need to explore it a bit more to identify improvements. As I mentioned, I have been using it for a specific task, which it accomplishes quite well. I built a web page and integrated ImageKit successfully, so it works well in that way. Perhaps in the future, I can provide more feedback for this question.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Contentful for around a year, mostly integrating it with my current company, ImageKit, which is an image CDN and image and video CDN, and that integrates well with Contentful. That is how I started working on Contentful.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Contentful is stable in my experience; it is quite stable. The UI works well, as I did not encounter any issues with it and the APIs seem to work without problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have not scaled Contentful to that level, so I would not be able to comment, but I would assume it is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
I have not had any experience with customer support, as I managed to figure out the majority of things using the documentation and other resources. Therefore, I did not need to reach out for support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used multiple solutions before Contentful because I work with many customers using different systems. I have used WordPress, Magento, Shopify, Strapi, and then Contentful. Strapi and Contentful stand out to me because they are next-generation CMSs, where the APIs and functionality are much easier to understand. It is JavaScript-based, making it a very easy way to start building websites. While I have not switched away from others, I see a definite improvement compared to WordPress and other traditional CMS systems.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that I did not use the price plan; I was using the free plan, which did what I wanted it to do. Therefore, I cannot comment on the cost. The setup was easy, which I think would be the same even for the free plan and the pricing plan, but since I have not used the paid tier, I cannot speak on it.
What about the implementation team?
I was using the free plan which did what I wanted it to do. Therefore, I cannot comment on the cost.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Contentful, as it definitely saves time. Even if someone is not technical, they can provide a structure, and then someone from the technical team can pull data. Contentful gives a lot of control in terms of what you want, allowing even non-technical people to contribute positively. As a SaaS, it also helps significantly since you do not need to host it and deal with associated complexities.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that I did not use the price plan; I was using the free plan, which did what I wanted it to do.
What other advice do I have?
Contentful works well for me; I might need to explore it a bit more to identify improvements. As I mentioned, I have been using it for a specific task, which it accomplishes quite well. I built a web page and integrated ImageKit successfully, so it works well in that way. Perhaps in the future, I can provide more feedback for this question.
Contentful has not helped my organization or our customers achieve any measurable benefits, such as saving time or improving workflows, as we have not measured that. It does help customers who are using Contentful, but I have not quantified it.
My advice to others looking into using Contentful is to definitely try it because if they have a use case of providing some sort of tool for their non-technical people to build things, Contentful stands out. I have used Strapi, which can be a little more technical and tougher for people to understand. Contentful, in contrast, enables non-technical users to build things while their technical team can then integrate it.
I would rate my overall experience with Contentful as a 7 out of 10.
Centralized Templates That Make Publishing Across Clients Effortless and Easy to share.
Content modeling has empowered my personal blog and brings my articles and images together
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Contentful is that I built my personal brand called immediatetiger.com and I needed a section called blog where I could post articles from time to time about anything that I found interesting and related to my work. I needed something where I could log in and manage my articles with a basic API that would expose my data and I could read them through a microservice.
Because I use the Next.js framework, I found Contentful very easy to integrate and basically expose that to the front end so I can see articles and manage them through Contentful's content management system.
I use Contentful solo. I worked at one company and integrated Contentful as well, but for my personal brand, it is literally just a solo solution to manage my personal blog. That's why I also have a free account, because I set up my account a long time ago, but I didn't have a real solution that I could utilize Contentful for. I can see that right now it works for me long-term, so it's a great choice.
I have only four articles so far because it's been since January 2025, so it's just basically this year and we're currently in March, so it hasn't been a long time. What I found very interesting is that I can upload images. Because I can upload images and publish them through Contentful, that simplifies a lot of things because usually I use Google Cloud storage. When you write articles, it's better to keep images and articles in one place in Contentful because it's just so easy to think about. For now, because I'm very slow with doing my articles, it's a really great choice. I know that Contentful also does GraphQL, which is great as well.
What is most valuable?
Contentful offers several valuable features. The most valuable feature is Content, where I can create new articles. I also found the Media section interesting, where I can upload my images. When I look at the content, I found it interesting how I can model content. When I click on my article, I have ID, title, description, and images fields. This feature where I can add fields of a specific type is really great when you look at a project in the initial stage, because you never know how long-term you will expand or what will happen with the project.
Apart from these features, I found that it's easy to integrate, and the documentation is easy as well. I could easily create the API key and everything else. When you look at the API keys feature, I think it's very stable. I never had any problem. Webhooks also exist, but I don't use them right now. Maybe I will use them at some point. Because I publish my articles very slowly and not many, I use mainly these features for now.
Contentful has positively impacted my work because I have people browsing Google and because I use SEO as well, and my articles are indexed and written by me. People come and read them. The most valuable part is that some people find them attractive and actually read about topics like the difference between chatbots or agents, what is a chatbot, what is fine-tuning, or remote work. These are actually my articles, which are quite important looking at the market right now. Some people come and view and read them.
What needs improvement?
To be honest, I don't work so deeply with Contentful to see anything that I would change. Based on what I do, everything is really done in the sense that I don't need any changes. Maybe in the future something will change, but at this specific moment, I think I got everything I need from Contentful.
The only thing I would mention is basically fields and types. That's what I found quite difficult at the beginning to understand how all that works. So there is some space to improve. Apart from that, I didn't have really any big requirements in terms of any changes. I would need to look very deeply once again at what I did because I did that some time ago. For now, I don't need any updates from Contentful. At least, I don't see it at this specific moment. The job I really do by using Contentful is really little. I don't post every week or every single day to basically expect something more in terms of quality.
I just noticed that there's a new AI Automation tab. I have not seen that before. At this specific moment, I think everything works in a really great way. It's very stable. That's the most important when you post content. The last thing you want to see is that the service disappears or your content is somehow changed. For me, it's been very stable. Even though I have just four articles, they're very important for me, and my personal brand is very important for me as well. I just try to make sure that I stick to basically stable solutions. For one year and six months, I never had any problems with Contentful. Even when I was updating the module, I never had any problems.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Contentful for about one year and six months, starting when I began building my personal brand and one of my sections is a blog, where I needed to manage my blog articles somehow.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
At this specific moment, I think everything works in a really great way. It's very stable. That's the most important when you post content. The last thing you want to see is that the service disappears or your content is somehow changed. For me, it's been very stable. Even though I have just four articles, they're very important for me, and my personal brand is very important for me as well. I just try to make sure that I stick to basically stable solutions. For one year and six months, I never had any problems with Contentful. Even when I was updating the module, I never had any problems.
In terms of Contentful, I would rate it 10/10 based on my usage and driven by the stability of the service. When I was building my personal brand for the last one year and six months, I never saw the service go down or break my articles in any way. So there was no downtime. At least I have not noticed that. This is the reason why I rate it 10/10 because when you publish your content and you have articles, even though you have just four of them, the company Contentful may not understand the value of my ideas and why I do it. However, it is very important that there are no downtimes periodically since I bought my domain and I build a lot of other things on that domain as well. My service is quite big. When I choose companies, I look at how stable they are, what's the downtime, and if I had any problems during the time I was working with that actual integration or something. There are companies where things fail and so on. To be honest with Contentful, since I signed up and used this service twice, I didn't have any problems in terms of downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Contentful scalability in my experience is great.
How are customer service and support?
There were challenges because when I was creating a solution, I didn't know Contentful very well. I found a lot of problems with types and matching in TypeScript types with the fields I was using and with the API and the full module. The biggest problem I found was to actually set up correctly and match types so I could build the project and deploy that correctly. This was causing me at the beginning a lot of problems when I was trying to pull data and display my articles. Also quite challenging was displaying the image. It took me a while before I actually did that. However, I managed to display everything the way I want it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was using Drupal and Joomla a long time ago. I was also using WordPress. However, all these systems are not headless. I was using those content management systems for a while for different reasons. For my personal brand, I was looking for a solution where I could create different types of fields and I could connect to the API and get the actual values of these fields.
How was the initial setup?
I found a lot of problems with types and matching in TypeScript types with the fields I was using and with the API and the full module. The biggest problem I found was to actually set up correctly and match types so I could build the project and deploy that correctly. This was causing me at the beginning a lot of problems when I was trying to pull data and display my articles. Also quite challenging was displaying the image. It took me a while before I actually did that. However, I managed to display everything the way I want it.
What about the implementation team?
I use Contentful solo. I worked at one company and integrated Contentful as well, but for my personal brand, it is literally just a solo solution to manage my personal blog.
What was our ROI?
For one year and six months, I never had any problems with Contentful. Even when I was updating the module, I never had any problems.
Contentful has positively impacted my work because I have people browsing Google and because I use SEO as well, and my articles are indexed and written by me. People come and read them. The most valuable part is that some people find them attractive and actually read about what the difference is between chatbots or agents, what is a chatbot, what is fine-tuning, or remote work. These are actually my articles, which are quite important looking at the market right now. Some people come and view and read them.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm on a free plan just because I don't post a lot and the basic setup is free. So at the moment, I'm on a free plan.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was looking at Netlify or something, and looking at WordPress.
What other advice do I have?
I do use Google Analytics. I track my views and I can see how popular my articles are. It's not a lot of views, but people systematically come and read something, which is good.
I didn't check support, but when I was doing that I found out that it's easy to generate the API key and easy to look at the documentation and easy to integrate Contentful with Python as a module. Contentful's module in Python is easy to set up, plus the ability to create the API key easily. Looking at Contentful itself, adding articles is really easy. You upload the image first, then you create the content, you publish, and that's it. It works. Because of that, I think it's good as well. The UI is very normal. I could suggest to Contentful that maybe there are some ideas in terms of content. Now we have AI and a lot of great designs you can create with basically AI. Maybe that's where Contentful could look at, how to innovate or reinvent that part. Even though it looks good, maybe there is space to innovate something.
Make sure your API key is safe. That's what I would suggest. Focus on your content and try to divide your content into different sections and think about what type of section that is and what type of format that should be. That's how I would advise people to look at Contentful. Think about what you want to do, what you want to build, divide this into smaller pieces and think about what type of field that is, and then try to match this with Contentful fields.
There is an AI and automations tab. I didn't look at this section, but I don't see any chatbot available on the app when I sign in. Agents are very important right now because, for example, if you had a section when I look at content, I may have a question about anything. I could ask anything about my article and there's no chatbot that I could talk to when I log in myself. Probably something very important right now is that if you build an article and you are very new to Contentful, it's very hard to understand everything at once. Even though it may look very simple, it's actually not when you build and integrate the module in Python, for example, and then you need to expose that to the front end and so on and so on. You need to use Postman, make requests, and try to understand how it all works. It's actually a lot of things. A chatbot would help your clients for sure because they will have questions. For example, how to connect Contentful through GraphQL and how to connect Contentful through REST. Even though documentation is there, I think questioning an agent is actually much better for me.
I rate this product 10 out of 10.
Structured content has accelerated multi-channel updates but still needs simpler modeling
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Contentful is managing dynamic content separately from the front end so apps and websites remain flexible, fast, and easy to scale.
I use Contentful to manage products and marketing content for a shopping website. What I stored in Contentful was product titles, descriptions, images, and category-wise shoes. I also use promotional banners in homepage sections, hero banners, and featured products. On the front end, I use a UI front end such as React and Next.js, fetching data using the Contentful API, primarily REST or GraphQL.
How has it helped my organization?
Contentful has positively impacted my organization by facilitating faster campaigns for marketing content, reducing the dev workload, and shortening the time to market, with no hard-coding of content, a clean API-based architecture, and reusable components. Developers can focus on the future instead of content changes, resulting in a faster development cycle and less repetitive work. There is better scalability and structure, as the content models keep everything organized.
The positive outcomes and metrics from using Contentful include a massive reduction in content update time. Before, changing a banner tag required a dev ticket and a deployment, taking one to two days. Now, after implementing Contentful, the content team updates directly, taking only five to ten minutes, which is an 80% time reduction. There are fewer deployments; previously, there were frequent small deployments just for content, but now content updates happen without deployment, reducing content-related deployments by 50% to 70%. Developer productivity has improved as they no longer handle minor text and image changes or repetitive updates, saving 20% to 30% of their dev time for core work, leading to 30% to 40% faster feature development with reusable components, models, and an API-driven structure.
What is most valuable?
The best features Contentful offers include separating content from the front-end UI. I can fetch data via an API such as GraphQL, which works with any front-end tool such as React, Next.js, mobile apps, and even smartwatches. Instead of pages, I create content models such as products, blog posts, and banners, breaking content into reusable pieces such as title, image, and description.
Using APIs such as GraphQL has helped my workflow by allowing me to get only the required fields instead of too much unnecessary data, which means a smaller payload and faster front-end performance. It makes handling the nesting of referenced content easier, as in Contentful everything is connected, such as product categories, homepages, and featured products. With REST, there are multiple API calls and manual mapping, but with GraphQL, one query gets everything needed properly, leading to better performance and cleaner code for the GraphQL API.
In addition to the previously mentioned features, I find webhooks very practical. Contentful can trigger events when content changes, allowing me to rebuild a site, clear the cache, or trigger deployments. For example, when content is published, a webhook triggers a Next.js rebuild. Localization is also significant for real products since I can manage multiple languages inside some content models, with fields such as the title available in English, French, and Hindi, saving considerable effort versus having separate systems. The Preview API is very important and underrated because it lets me use draft content before publishing, which is essential for content authors.
What needs improvement?
One area where I believe Contentful can be improved is better handling of complex content relationships, as when content is deeply nested with references inside references, the queries can get messy and hard to manage on the front end. A more intuitive way to visualize and manage relationships, with built-in tools to simplify nested data handling, would be beneficial. Another improvement could be performance with large data sets, as with many entries, API responses can slow down and pagination can become tricky; better query optimizations and smarter caching tools built-in could help. Lastly, content modeling can get complex since designing models requires experience, and it is easy to over-complicate; better templates and guided modeling with suggestions based on use cases, such as e-commerce or blog, could improve usability.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have worked for the past four years in my current field.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Contentful is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Contentful's scalability supports both small apps and large enterprise systems, with a global CDN aiding in scalability.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Contentful is to get content modeling right from day one, not to rush into creating a content type, and to think about reuse and relationships. A bad model leads to a messy API and a painful front-end later. Use it for the right use case; Contentful shines when you need dynamic content across multiple platforms such as web and mobile, and when non-dev teams also need to manage content. For very simple websites or small static projects, it might be overkill. Plan your API strategy, preferring GraphQL for flexibility to avoid over-fetching, and structure queries clearly to maximize performance. Always handle edge cases from the start since real-world content is messy. Work closely with content and marketing teams to explain the content structure clearly, add validations, and set required field limits to ensure the CMS is usable and prevents breaking the UI.
Contentful is not just a CMS; it is a content infrastructure tool that works well when you treat content as structured data and design it as a system, not just pages. It is really powerful for medium to large-scale apps, teams with developers and content marketing people, and multi-platform needs such as web plus mobile. That is the real value of Contentful. You need to be careful with small-scale projects, as poor content modeling can get messy and requires upfront thinking. Personally, I have learned that the biggest takeaway is that Contentful's success depends less on the tool itself and more on how well you design your content model and workflows.
I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Content modeling has supported complex websites but has highlighted costly gaps in publishing workflow
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Contentful is to create the content for a website for a bigger company as mine, and I'm also a backend developer and design the Contentful model and the content that uses it. A quick specific example of how I used Contentful for my website is the e-commerce website for a bigger company in Germany.
What is most valuable?
In my experience, the best feature Contentful offers is the application plugin mechanism. The add applications I can add to Contentful to customize the application is highly beneficial.
What I appreciate most about the application plugin mechanism is everything around the deployment and the chosen front-end framework for my project was great, and React also. There are some limitations, which is in the nature of how the plugin mechanism was designed. The iframe technique was the blocker to implement SSO for connecting to other services. However, there are other techniques you can use.
Besides the application framework, something that stands out about the features is that the publishing mechanism can be improved further. With the start of 2025, the local-based publish was introduced by Contentful. That is a great feature, but it had some limitations. Backend implementation for validation, the bulk validation was no longer supported for this feature. This is a big bug. Contentful never lined out the timeline when it can be fixed, and I have two bugs open on Contentful now. That is not favorable for me.
What needs improvement?
Contentful can be improved to have a full-featured free account, perhaps with fewer content types. However, with all features, a free developer could test everything without having a company that subscribed to an enterprise account, which would be great.
The rate limit on the management API is a big deal for most developers and is something that would make Contentful better. The inability to search for JSON objects, meaning content types that contain fields with JSON objects and looking for some field values in the JSON, is not supported. It would be nice to have something like this.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Contentful since 2018, for eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Contentful is stable. It is really stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Contentful's scalability is fine. Sometimes it was going slower, but most of the time there was a fix available by Contentful. The stability and scalability were good.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support reacts relatively fast if you have the right subscription. I would rate the customer support a nine on a scale of one to ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used a different solution from IBM. I do not remember the name. It was a well-known system from IBM. On one hand, and on the other hand was Drupal. Both were on-premise, and the company looked for a SaaS solution. Contentful made sense a few years ago, and we developed for a few years with Contentful.
How was the initial setup?
I cannot tell you much about the pricing, setup cost, and licensing. It was in the field from another colleague. I think it was easy, and I cannot tell you anything about that.
What about the implementation team?
I had a team of five developers dealing with Contentful, but we are facing some bugs, and the support was not as good.
What was our ROI?
There was no return on investment. It was very expensive to implement all the needed specialties a company needs for its public publish strategy, to publish the content in different countries, different markets, and different languages. This was a concept that Contentful does not support out of the box, and we had to deal with a complicated content model. It was very expensive to implement, but we had chosen Contentful, and so we had to deal with it.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I evaluated other options before choosing Contentful. I do not remember the names we evaluated. It was in late 2018, and I cannot recall which specific alternatives were considered.
Content management has become self-service and reduces dependence on developers
What is most valuable?
Contentful has positively impacted our organization because it is seamless and almost 60% of the content is flowing well with no dependency on any particular part of AEM. We are directly using the content we create with GraphQL into the UI.
There are many time savings and positive outcomes after switching to Contentful. Product owners who use Contentful are very happy because they can create content themselves, which eliminates the need to depend primarily on developers. This is a significant positive point.
What needs improvement?
Deployments could be somewhat easier for migrating content from lower environments to higher environments, which is a challenge we are currently experiencing with Contentful.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Contentful is that they can use it seamlessly with no problems. I would rate this review as a positive recommendation for Contentful.
Content modeling has streamlined omnichannel publishing and now supports faster collaboration
What is our primary use case?
I use Contentful as a headless CMS following the architect and API architecture. In my daily work, I use Contentful to create content types, create their fields, and perform content modeling, building relationships between the content and integrating those with the front end.
I use content modeling in the back end with Contentful, and as per the requirement, I can use some APIs through Contentful, so I created some content modeling parts.
How has it helped my organization?
Contentful has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to manage our content more efficiently. I track concrete metrics to demonstrate Contentful's impact, such as content publishing speed; I have reduced the time to publish new content by approximately 60 to 70%, which previously took days of coordination between developers and content teams but now occurs in hours or even minutes for simple updates.
Additionally, my development cycle time has shortened by about 40%, allowing developers to build and iterate on front end experiences without waiting for back end content structure changes. Multi-channel efficiency is also noteworthy; I have launched content across three different platforms—web, iOS, and Android—simultaneously, while previously managing separate content systems for each.
I have seen an approximately 30% reduction in content management operational costs by consolidating multiple legacy systems into Contentful and reducing the developer hours needed for content updates, which has improved my average page load time by about 35 to 40%, positively impacting user engagement.
What is most valuable?
The best features that Contentful offers include API-first architecture, content modeling flexibility, a rich text editor, and localization support. In API-first architecture, I can use RESTful and GraphQL APIs to export APIs for the developers, and I can create webhooks, perform media management, and optimize performance, which can significantly increase traffic on high-performance websites.
I find myself heavily relying on the API-first architecture of Contentful because this is the foundation for everything; I create content modeling, and to export those APIs, the API-first approach serves as the backbone that makes all features accessible and useful. Without API, I cannot accomplish this efficiently; it allows me to fetch exactly the data I need, and when needed, I can create the content modeling part.
The traditional CMS structure involves performance optimization, such as direct API access, implementing a caching strategy, and optimizing queries. The integration flexibility is also there, allowing seamless connection with third-party tools such as e-commerce websites or custom applications.
The flexibility of content modeling determines how well the content structure supports the project needs, but the API-first structure ultimately gives me the power to leverage that well-structured content efficiently and effectively across any platform.
Additionally, in terms of Contentful features, I can mention API calling—I call the REST API and GraphQL, and I find the GraphQL feature very advantageous compared to REST, as I can write queries in a JSON format. Contentful supports other libraries, such as JavaScript and PHP, in content modeling similar to a content management system. It includes features for content authoring, such as transitioning from draft to publishing. I can create many roles and manage content authoring for particular roles, providing permissions on who can edit or publish the content.
What needs improvement?
Contentful is a strong platform, but there are definitely areas for improvement; for instance, media management could be more robust, with valuable features such as advanced image editing, better organization through nested folders, and more sophisticated search and filtering capabilities for large media libraries.
Furthermore, the workflow approval process should be more robust, with improved built-in workflow features and approval chains.
There are additional areas worth mentioning for improvement, such as localization complexity, version control, rollback capabilities, content relationship visualization, API rate limits, and search functionality, which would enhance an already strong platform for enterprise-scale content management.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used the solution for around two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Contentful is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For scalability, I am following the modularity of creating components.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Contentful is very good; whenever I have a query, the customer support team is very responsible, although response times can be delayed sometimes. Overall, it is quite reasonable, and the support team is knowledgeable about my issues.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Drupal CMS, which is also a content management system, and I switched to Contentful because the new project's requirements necessitated the use of Contentful; it was quite similar to the CMS architecture, so the managers chose me to work on the Contentful project.
What was our ROI?
I have definitely seen a positive return on investment with Contentful, due to time-saving and efficiency gains, team collaborations, and resource optimizations, which have also positively impacted the revenue.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Contentful, I considered other options such as Drupal.
What other advice do I have?
I am satisfied with the features I have explained. Based on my experience, I would offer several key pieces of advice for anyone or any business considering Contentful. Overall, Contentful is a powerful tool that requires investment to use well, but that investment pays off if you have the right use case. My impression of Contentful is that it has been a solid choice for us and the business. I am generally happy with the decision I made, which emphasizes the importance of preparing thoroughly regarding the whole use cases before utilizing it. I have given this review a rating of eight out of ten.