Structured content has empowered teams to deliver rich experiences faster across channels
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Contentful is as a headless CMS for clients who want an enterprise-grade platform without the enterprise cost of entry. Contentful solves the use of complex content structures in a simple and powerful way to expose content across platforms while empowering marketers to build a rich experience. The recent additions of a true visual editor and integration with Netlify ensure we can meet the capabilities of platforms that cost many times more.
One specific example of a project where Contentful made a big difference is that it serves as a great all-round solution for content projects. It is easy in the basics and powerful in the complex, data-heavy scenarios. Extending the platform is straightforward and the SDKs give you everything you need.
I would add that it is an easy way to update content and add translation. The usage of Contentful APIs to manage entries is also helpful for our business case. Contentful webhooks integrated with Buildkite API allows us to run builds to generate static pages. Lastly, we have used Contentful Studio for composed layouts, which was a game-changer since the marketing team was able to generate new pages without any development involved.
What is most valuable?
In my opinion, the best features Contentful offers include a free trial for experimenting, great documentation and guides, a marketplace for apps, and simple yet powerful SDKs.
Additionally, I would mention its flexibility. Contentful's flexibility stands out for me because it is flexible enough for any size of teams to use this tool. It also offers support for multiple locales, asset management, along with the RESTful and GraphQL APIs with global CDNs, and dedicated API endpoints for writing, previewing, and delivering content.
Contentful has impacted my organization positively because it has been a game changer since we started using this tool. It has enabled rapid project delivery and lowered cost projects for charities especially. This brought us direct client work through partnership. We have also seen faster content deployments and saved development time of approximately 30 percent.
What needs improvement?
One improvement I believe Contentful could make is regarding licensing, as there is no way to obtain it for free over time.
I would add that the user interface to filter entries needs improvement. Content type limitations can be frustrating at times. A comments dashboard is needed.
Other improvements needed for Contentful include improving the response time from customer support.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working as a data analyst for the past five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Contentful is very stable; I have not experienced any slowness or lagging.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Contentful is highly scalable, allowing us to manage all our organization's content effectively.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Contentful is good, but they should improve their response time, though they are proactive and available 24/7. I would rate the customer support as a seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using Contentful, we previously used WordPress to manage documentation content. We switched from WordPress to Contentful because WordPress was more flexible, but also prone to inconsistency. We ended up having a lot of hacks to accomplish various WordPress tricks. With Contentful, there is less ambiguity, so content producers are less likely to go astray. We also had our own in-house programmatic template solution for managing content, but this was a previous pain point when we needed to get the development team to do a deploy for every content change.
How was the initial setup?
I purchased Contentful through the AWS Marketplace.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Contentful because it has saved us valuable development time that was previously spent doing deploys for minor content updates. Contentful has helped us maintain consistent documentation, reducing the time needed to review for consistency. I have not experienced any negative return on investment impacts from using Contentful, but we have run into some limitations in adding too many content models, and the next pricing tier is substantially more expensive.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the price is very cost-effective and affordable. I do not have a problem with that.
However, I find that the licensing can be frustrating, especially for smaller organizations.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Contentful, I evaluated GitHub and Eclipse as other options.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Contentful is that it is a good tool to use in teams with varying levels of technical proficiency, allowing non-technical members easy access to update content and offering strong capability to integrate Contentful into their product. Although it can be a bit of work to implement initially, it will save time in the long run, as marketers and those who use it are able to push updates without needing to do back-end deployments.
Contentful has a very intuitive and user-friendly interface, along with good support for multiple spaces, which can be helpful for companies that need separate projects for development, staging, and production. I would rate this product a nine out of ten overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Effortless Setup and Intuitive Platform from Day One
What do you like best about the product?
What I like most about Contentful is that it has a platform that is easy to use and very intuitive. You can understand how to connect your web page and start creating pages from day one.
What do you dislike about the product?
Currently, I'm satisfied with all the features Contentful has to offer.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Contentful is helping my company easily upload blogs to our page.
Effortless Scheduling and Container Management
What do you like best about the product?
Being able to schedule things, schedule containers, switch bits out.
What do you dislike about the product?
Can’t upload anything by spreadsheet, lack of ai features.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Being about to create product lists with codes in that aren’t live. Speedily create product lists and immediate changes.
Intuitive System with Module Reusability, Needs Visual Refinement
What do you like best about the product?
I use Contentful to upload new copy and amend existing copy. It is quite intuitive, making uploading copy simple once I've learned the system. The ability to create modules is far and away its best feature. This massively reduces the amount of writing needed, especially for ubiquitous content like terms and conditions or author profiles. It means I don't have to write the same bits of copy again and again, and I can simply drop a module into any new page. The initial setup of Contentful was relatively easy, as the system is pretty simple and intuitive, so getting up to speed was quite simple.
What do you dislike about the product?
Visually it is quite poor. Sometimes it can be difficult to understand where in a page you are. Also, because naming conventions are dictated by the user, it can be very tough to find the right modules if they have been created by someone else.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Contentful is intuitive and simplifies uploading copy. Creating modules is a standout feature, allowing reuse across pages, saving time and effort.
Contentful is flexible, easy to use, allows quick dynamic updates, and leverages our custom UI
What do you like best about the product?
We have been using Contentful as our CMS for the past year and a half. It allows us to dynamically update our website's home page, keeping it current, as well as manage our resource pages that include training materials, guides, and general user assets. Additionally, we rely on Contentful to manage our announcement banners, enabling us to deliver real-time user alerts. The experience has been excellent, as we were able to design the frontend to match the seamless look and feel of the rest of our application's UI/UX, while retaining the flexibility to update text, images, and assets through the CMS without needing development releases. Contentful has proven to be cost-effective, straightforward to learn, and has fully met our requirements.
The product is highly flexible, handling our peak traffic periods without any issues. Update statuses are clearly indicated, whether content is published or in draft mode, and the ability to schedule updates for a later time has been especially useful for timed announcements. Overall, it has been relatively easy to learn and has enabled us to become productive quickly.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is no support for search integration on the frontend, this requires a third-party integration with potential additional costs. Additionally, this may not be an issue with Contentful, it may be how we set it up, but I wish there was a way to support multiple environments of a site without pushing to all at the same time. When we publish in Contentful, we publish to all environments at once which makes testing tough after we went live.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We needed to provide user resources in a flexible way that can be updated by admins real time, consist of our new UI/UX design, and allow for cross-team collaboration. Contentful was easy to integrate, met our budget, and checked our core requirements.
Not the most intuitive platform, but one of the most in-depth
What do you like best about the product?
I like that one you create a module, it is very easy to replicate across various pages. This means you don't have to do the same work over and over again.
What do you dislike about the product?
I think the main benefit would be that naming conventions could be a little better. Sometimes pages can get lost when you are searching for them.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Helps me build a lot of pages quite quickly. Particularly good when I want to replicate modules across pages. Once you've got the hang of it, you'll quickly realise how powerful it is (but this will take a bit of time).
Contentful
What do you like best about the product?
Contentful is tool which is mainly used for create , mange, and delivery ofdigital contents by using API.it is working as content store where we can store different type of contents like photo , vedios, images,data etc and after that we can use this content in mobile applications,smart watch and mobile.it is esy to use in any organization.
What do you dislike about the product?
sometime it require technical skill to handle it and its advance feature require subscriptions either monthly or annually which make costly to use everyone .
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We can store multiple type of data in one place which make easy to use these document anywhere and provide support to our customer. it is mostly used by developers who can manage coding on daily basics.
The most robust CMS
What do you like best about the product?
I choose to go with Contentful when I'm building a project that has content at the core. Contentful offers a robust, battle-tested solution alongside a rich, optimized out-of-the-box UX, a great Dev experience, and a performant API layer.
What do you dislike about the product?
Prices tend to be higher than the competitors, which means that if the content is not that relevant to your project in relation to other features, you probably will find it too expensive.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Contentful allows our engineering teams to forget about dynamic content and everything related to it with confidence, to focus only on building differentiated experiences.
Flexible and Developer-Friendly Headless CMS
What do you like best about the product?
Contentful offers a highly structured and API-first approach to content management, making it easy to create and manage modular content. Its intuitive UI allows content editors to work independently, while developers enjoy the flexibility of integrating with any front-end framework. The role-based access controls and versioning features are especially helpful in collaborative environments.
What do you dislike about the product?
The learning curve can be steep for non-technical users initially. The pricing can also become expensive for growing teams or enterprise-level usage. Some basic features like advanced localization or asset organization require premium tiers or workarounds.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Contentful helps separate content from presentation, enabling our content team to update information without needing developer assistance. This saves time, reduces bottlenecks, and makes our workflows more efficient. It also makes it easy to manage consistent content across web and mobile apps through a single platform.
Contentful has been a welcome and needed change to our organisation
What do you like best about the product?
It has been easy to use and as a result of that, easy to train our content team. While it took a little adjustment in mental models, the benefits were immediately felt by everyone in the team. It's amazing being able to edit everything about a page without going to multiple places, everything opens as a nested window in the primary content model.
The development team have enjoyed working with Contentful and found it relatively easy to implement our 3 sites. Maintenance and iteration have also become far simpler since the move to Contentful, we are releasing at least once a sprint now.
We haven't had much need for customer support but they have been responsive when we have needed implementation questions answered.
What do you dislike about the product?
Due to the size of our organisation we are on a relatively low tier subscription, the number of content models included is a little limiting and definitely the bottleneck. There is currently no way to increase the number of content models without upgrading the entire subscription but we don't need any of the other parts of the upgrade.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
More regular iteration of our content experience and better scalability - in the past we were extremely slow moving with releases taking up to 80 hours of staff time.
Improved site and SEO performance - improved organic traffic and better user experience.
More autonomy in content management - the team are able to manage everything they need to in the content experience. This has taken a lot of pressure off the technical team and enabled them to focus on more important work.
