Netlify vs Netlify CMS

Overview

Netlify

Stacks3.6K

Followers2.1K

Votes207

Netlify CMS

Stacks523

Followers565

Votes6

Netlify vs Netlify CMS: What are the differences?

Introduction

Netlify and Netlify CMS are both popular tools for web development and content management. While they are related, there are key differences between the two that make them distinct from each other.

Hosting Platform vs. Content Management System: The main difference between Netlify and Netlify CMS lies in their core functionalities. Netlify is primarily a hosting platform that allows developers to deploy and manage static websites with ease. On the other hand, Netlify CMS is a content management system that runs on top of Netlify and provides a user-friendly interface for content creation and editing.
Development Workflow: Netlify focuses on providing a seamless development workflow, allowing developers to easily build, test, and deploy their websites. It offers features like continuous deployment, Git integration, and instant rollbacks. In contrast, Netlify CMS is designed to empower non-technical users to manage content on a website without needing to work with code directly. It provides a user-friendly interface for creating and editing content, with features such as a visual editor and drag-and-drop functionality.
Flexibility: Netlify provides a high level of flexibility for developers. It supports a wide range of static site generators and offers extensive customization options through build plugins and integrations with third-party services. Netlify CMS, on the other hand, is more opinionated and tightly integrated with specific static site generators like Gatsby or Hugo. While it offers some degree of customization, it may not be as flexible as Netlify itself.
Role-based Access Control: Netlify CMS offers role-based access control, allowing website administrators to define different user roles with specific permissions. This enables more granular control over content editing and publishing. Netlify, on the other hand, does not provide built-in role-based access control features. However, it can be integrated with external authentication providers or identity services to implement user authentication and authorization.
Content Storage: Netlify CMS uses a Git-based workflow to store and manage content. This means that content changes are tracked as commits in a Git repository, providing version control and collaboration capabilities. Netlify CMS also supports multiple content backends, including local file storage, Git repository hosting services like GitHub and GitLab, and headless CMS platforms. Netlify, on the other hand, does not directly handle content storage as its primary focus is on hosting and deployment.
Extensibility and Customization: Netlify CMS provides an extensible architecture, allowing developers to customize and extend its functionality. It supports custom widgets, editor plugins, and backend extensions, making it possible to tailor the CMS to specific project requirements. Netlify also offers a wide range of integrations and extensibility options through its ecosystem of plugins and APIs, making it highly customizable as well.

In summary, Netlify is primarily a hosting platform that focuses on providing a seamless development workflow for static websites, while Netlify CMS is a content management system built on top of Netlify to empower non-technical users to manage website content. Netlify offers more flexibility and customization options, while Netlify CMS focuses on providing a user-friendly interface and content management features.

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Advice on Netlify, Netlify CMS

Howie

Full Stack Engineer at Yintrust

Aug 13, 2020

Decidedon

Netlify

We use Netlify to host static websites.

The reasons for choosing Netlify over GitHub Pages are as follows:

Netfily can bind multiple domain names, while GitHub Pages can only bind one domain name
With Netfily, the original repository can be private, while GitHub Pages free tier requires the original repository to be public

In addition, in order to use CDN, we use Netlify DNS.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Netlify	Netlify CMS
Netlify is smart enough to process your site and make sure all assets gets optimized and served with perfect caching-headers from a cookie-less domain. We make sure your HTML is served straight from our CDN edge nodes without any round-trip to our backend servers and are the only ones to give you instant cache invalidation when you push a new deploy. Netlify is also the only static hosting service with integrated continuous deployment.	It is built as a single-page React app. You can create custom-styled previews, UI widgets, and editor plugins or add backends to support different Git platform APIs.
Global Network;Global Network;Instant Cache Validation;Atomic Deploys;API proxying;SSL for custom domains;Continuous Deployment;Link to Github or Bitbucket	Fast, web-based UI; platform agnostic; easy install; oaut2 and jwt; flexible content types; fully extensible
Statistics
Stacks 3.6K	Stacks 523
Followers 2.1K	Followers 565
Votes 207	Votes 6
Pros & Cons
Pros 48 Easy deploy 43 Fastest static hosting and continuous deployments 23 Super simple deploys 23 Free SSL support 16 Easy Setup and Continous deployments Cons 7 It's expensive 1 Bandwidth limitation	Pros 3 Open source 2 Free 1 GraphQL API Cons 2 No relations between items
Integrations
GitHub Bitbucket	React Gatsby

What are some alternatives to Netlify, Netlify CMS?

WordPress

The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.

GitHub Pages

Public webpages hosted directly from your GitHub repository. Just edit, push, and your changes are live.

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Strapi

Strapi is100% JavaScript, extensible, and fully customizable. It enables developers to build projects faster by providing a customizable API out of the box and giving them the freedom to use the their favorite tools.

DomainRacer

It is a blazing fast hosting solution that provides Customer Satisfaction driven Web Hosting services since 2016.

Ghost

Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customisable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even fun to do.

Wagtail

Wagtail is a Django content management system built originally for the Royal College of Art and focused on flexibility and user experience.

OctoberCMS

It is a Laravel-based CMS engineered for simplicity. It has a simple and intuitive interface. It provides a consistent structure with an emphasis on reusability so you can focus on building something unique while we handle the boring bits.

Vercel

A cloud platform for serverless deployment. It enables developers to host websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and require no supervision, all with minimal configuration.

Twill

Twill is an open source CMS toolkit for Laravel that helps developers rapidly create a custom admin console that is intuitive, powerful and flexible.

Related Comparisons

Netlify vs Netlify CMS: What are the differences?

Introduction

Netlify and Netlify CMS are both popular tools for web development and content management. While they are related, there are key differences between the two that make them distinct from each other.

Hosting Platform vs. Content Management System: The main difference between Netlify and Netlify CMS lies in their core functionalities. Netlify is primarily a hosting platform that allows developers to deploy and manage static websites with ease. On the other hand, Netlify CMS is a content management system that runs on top of Netlify and provides a user-friendly interface for content creation and editing.
Development Workflow: Netlify focuses on providing a seamless development workflow, allowing developers to easily build, test, and deploy their websites. It offers features like continuous deployment, Git integration, and instant rollbacks. In contrast, Netlify CMS is designed to empower non-technical users to manage content on a website without needing to work with code directly. It provides a user-friendly interface for creating and editing content, with features such as a visual editor and drag-and-drop functionality.
Flexibility: Netlify provides a high level of flexibility for developers. It supports a wide range of static site generators and offers extensive customization options through build plugins and integrations with third-party services. Netlify CMS, on the other hand, is more opinionated and tightly integrated with specific static site generators like Gatsby or Hugo. While it offers some degree of customization, it may not be as flexible as Netlify itself.
Role-based Access Control: Netlify CMS offers role-based access control, allowing website administrators to define different user roles with specific permissions. This enables more granular control over content editing and publishing. Netlify, on the other hand, does not provide built-in role-based access control features. However, it can be integrated with external authentication providers or identity services to implement user authentication and authorization.
Content Storage: Netlify CMS uses a Git-based workflow to store and manage content. This means that content changes are tracked as commits in a Git repository, providing version control and collaboration capabilities. Netlify CMS also supports multiple content backends, including local file storage, Git repository hosting services like GitHub and GitLab, and headless CMS platforms. Netlify, on the other hand, does not directly handle content storage as its primary focus is on hosting and deployment.
Extensibility and Customization: Netlify CMS provides an extensible architecture, allowing developers to customize and extend its functionality. It supports custom widgets, editor plugins, and backend extensions, making it possible to tailor the CMS to specific project requirements. Netlify also offers a wide range of integrations and extensibility options through its ecosystem of plugins and APIs, making it highly customizable as well.

Netlify vs Netlify CMS

Overview

Netlify vs Netlify CMS: What are the differences?