Enterprise organizations continue to embrace open source technologies because they’re more flexible, innovative, and adaptable than their proprietary counterparts. In fact, 69% of IT leaders said open source was important for their organization’s overall enterprise infrastructure software plans in 2020. That’s why it’s crucial to understand where an open source headless CMS fits into the mix.
With this in mind, let’s look at the advantages of open source for a CMS headless in particular, and the most common open source technologies these platforms leverage.
What is an open source headless CMS?
An open source headless CMS is a type of content management system that empowers users to create, manage, and distribute content without being restricted to a specific front-end presentation layer.
In a traditional CMS, how the content is displayed to the audience, also known as the front-end, and where the content is created and stored, commonly referred to as the back-end, are tightly coupled. A headless CMS separates the two, providing users with a fundamentally backend-only solution for managing content. A headless CMS also differs from a hybrid CMS, which combines headless CMS and the ability to integrate with one or more suite solutions.
Content managed with a headless CMS is typically stored in a content respiratory and is made available through application programming interfaces (APIs), often in a format like JSON or XML. The content can then be consumed by any front-end or platform, such as websites, mobile apps, and IoT devices. This functionality allows developers to build custom front-end experiences while still leveraging the content management features of the CMS.
Open source means that the code for the CMS is publicly available for developers to freely modify, extend, or contribute to the system. This feature offers several advantages, including providing flexibility, scalability, and freedom for managing content across various platform without the limitations of traditional architectures.
Why Open Source Headless CMS Matters
The move towards open source is becoming more prevalent across enterprise organizations because they need the ability to quickly adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace and open source technologies facilitate this. That’s because open source by nature doesn’t lock companies into specific vendors or proprietary technologies, so companies can freely change out applications within their tech stack or extend the source code itself to meet unique business requirements.
Beyond the flexibility of open source, companies value the ecosystem that surrounds popular open-source software. This often includes an active developer community that fosters innovation and improves the quality of open source technologies. Enterprise companies, therefore, can leverage worldwide collaboration on software projects outside their core competency to bring enormous benefits to their organization.
By leveraging active open source projects, enterprises can also reduce their costs by leveraging open source software. That’s because a worldwide network of developers can build innovative solutions and provide a community of support as well without the enterprise needing a massive development team to work on the project. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel If the software isn’t a core competency of the organization, so companies can look to existing high-quality CMS solutions and utilize their developers for internal software projects that have a greater impact on business success.
The Benefits of an Open Source Headless CMS
There are many underlying technologies — both proprietary and open-source — that enable the critical functions of a headless CMS. Let’s take a closer look at these specific capabilities and the advantage of using open source technologies to drive them.
Storage
When it comes to content storage, an open source CMS looks beyond proprietary database technologies like Oracle to open source databases such as MySQL or MongoDB. That’s because moving to open source database technologies can reduce licensing costs and limits the risk of vendor lock-in. Many solutions even leverage an open source Java Content Repository (JCR) technology like Apache Jackrabbit to standardize access to content repositories and enable flexible database support. That’s not to mention the open source technologies like Elasticsearch that improve the search ability of content repositories as well.
Extensibility
It’s unlikely that a CMS will have the exact functionality to meet your business requirements out of the box. That’s why it's ideal for a headless CMS to embrace a modular architecture that’s straightforward to customize. Many headless solutions, therefore, leverage open source technologies like the Open Source Gateway Initiative (OSGi) so that development teams can introduce new code without impacting core functionality. They may also include thorough documentation and Low Code tools to further reduce development times as well.
Further Reading: What Is A Low-Code Digital Experience Platform?
Integrations
For most enterprises — particularly those pursuing a best of breed approach to content management — need robust integration points. And by far the most interoperable headless CMSs utilize open source technologies. That’s why many platforms are built atop the Spring Framework, which most Java developers are familiar with and can work with more easily. That means they can build custom API endpoints, for example, by using commonly understood methods provided by the Spring Frameworks to reduce development time. Many headless CMSs are also embracing GraphQL, an open source API querying language that standardizes and streamlines API integrations for numerous business systems.
Deployments
Enterprise organizations are likely heavily invested in infrastructure for deploying software already such as specific operating systems, languages, or application servers. Open source technologies are critical when it comes to deployments, therefore, because they’re much more likely to be cross-platform. Headless CMS solutions that leverage open source technologies like Docker and Kubernetes enable organizations to deploy the platform on nearly any operating system or server. Meanwhile, support for packaging the software as WAR files in a Java environment enables companies to leverage a variety of open source and proprietary applications servers ranging from Tomcat to Wildfly or Websphere.
Why Choose an Open Source Headless CMS?
Here, we take a deeper dive into open source CMSs and explain the reasons why they’re worth considering.
Developer Community Support
When working with a new CMS, very rarely does everything go perfectly without any hiccups. Access to the correct resources to resolve the issue can be difficult with a proprietary CMS. With choosing an open source headless CMS comes access to an active developer community that can assist when things go awry.
Open source projects typically attract a large and diverse group of developers who, in many cases, have encountered similar problems. The community can help troubleshoot issues, share best practices, and provide recommendations for solving complex challenges, saving you time, money, and effort. Additionally, because open source platforms are continually updated by the community, they often evolve quickly with new features, optimizations, and bug fixes.
Transparency and Flexibility
The nature of an open source headless CMS is inherently transparent. That is because the availability of the source code isn’t hidden as it is with proprietary systems. Having complete access to the CMS’s source code enables you to look under the hood and get extensive knowledge of how the system works. This level of insight is invaluable for debugging, customization, and ensuring the CMS meets crucial security standards.
In many cases, with a proprietary platform, you are at the mercy of the vendor, including technology and business decisions. With an open source system, you can change and adapt your CMS to meet your specific immediate needs and future plans. Essentially, with an open source CMS, you dictate your own path as you see fit.
By separating the content from its presentation layer, an open source headless CMS offers unparalleled flexibility. Developers are free to use the frontend technology of their choosing to deliver customized experiences across various platforms.
Security
For every enterprise, security is a top priority, particularly those whose business operations involve sensitive customer data. While open source projects are heavily scrutinized, causing organizations to be hesitant to adopt them, the exposure means security vulnerabilities are typically identified and patched much faster than in proprietary solutions.
Because you have access to the source code, open source CMS platforms allow you to implement specific security measures that suit your needs rather than relying on pre-defined levels in proprietary systems. For instance, developers can set stringent security policies based on user’s roles to control what they can see and do.
Reliability
With vast amounts of information shared and consumed online, businesses across every industry depend on their content being available to intended audiences at all times. Even though it may seem minor, just a few hours of downtime can have serious consequences and impact a company’s bottom line. Therefore, reliability is critical when it comes to content management systems.
Since the community maintains the CMS, it’s not dependent on the fate of a single company or developer. Those who get stuck on a problem have access to resources, such as online forums related to the issue, where they can find sample code detailing the solution. This helps to ensure that the system is reliably active and doesn’t remain down for extended periods.
Lower Costs
To stay competitive and succeed in business, it is essential to reduce costs while maintaining quality and efficiency. An open source headless CMS helps to keep costs down in the following ways:
No licensing fees: Open source headless CMS platforms eliminate the need for expensive licensing or subscription fees that are commonly associated with proprietary solutions.
Customization and flexibility: The ability for developers to modify the CMS to meet specific needs cuts down on the reliance of third-party integrations or customer development solutions and their costs.
Lower maintenance costs: Because of their flexibility and enhanced reliability, open source CMS platforms are often easier to maintain, reducing the need for upgrades.
Reduced development time: Reusable components and existing modules can speed up the development process, cutting down the time and money needed to build new features from scratch.
Ownership Of Your Platform
One of the biggest differences between an open source platform and a proprietary alternative is the open source solution provides you with complete control over your content management system. This differs from an out-of-the-box solution that may fall short of fulfilling all your needs. On top of that, a proprietary CMS might include features that are useless to your application.
Restriction by a one-size-fits-all platform can hinder your ability to provide your users with informative content, as well as limit the heights your business can reach. With an open source headless CMS, you can modify the system to precisely match your specific business requirements, ensuring that it can grow and evolve alongside your organization.
Additionally, because you’re not locked into a particular approach or set of tools, you will be afforded the freedom to experiment with the technologies, architectures, and content strategies that align with your business vision. The level of autonomy that comes with an open source headless CMS allows you to shape the platform in a way that directly reflects your business and the goals you set forth.
dotCMS: An Open Source Headless CMS From The Start
dotCMS has always been open source, and the platform was built from the ground up as a flexible, API-driven headless CMS that leverages powerful open source technologies. That means organizations can leverage the platform’s underlying technologies to standardize content storage, streamline integrations, simplify customization, and easily deploy dotCMS to their existing IT infrastructure.
The dotCMS source code is freely available and the system is built with familiar technologies like Java and the Spring Framework, so developers can quickly get up to speed with the platform. With its Java foundation, it was only natural for dotCMS to leverage JCR repositories to simplify database interactions and support numerous database technologies ranging from MySQL to PostgreSQL Microsoft SQL Server as well. Java and Spring also make dotCMS easy to package as a WAR file and deploy to most application servers out of the box. These capabilities make it straightforward to make the platform work with an organization’s existing infrastructure and tech stack.
Along with many out of the box integration points to leading third-party systems and robust RESTful APIs, the platform includes tools for developing custom endpoints for complex business requirements. For maximum flexibility, dotCMS has recently added native support for GraphQL as well. Beyond this, the platform aims to make frontend integrations even easier by leveraging the open source Apache Velocity scripting language. That means it’s hybrid editing capabilities can be used with a number of open-source frameworks like Angular, Vue, or React to deliver content to frontend applications.
If you want to learn more about the open source nature of dotCMS, you can check out our interview covering Why We Choose to be an Enterprise-grade Open Source CMS.
To use dotCMS for FREE under our Business Source License, visit the BSL FAQ page.