Contentful is a flexible and future-proof content management platform that allows you to publish content across all platforms easily. Create content once and post it with a beautiful presentation anywhere! Publishers interactively manage content from an easy-to-use editing interface while developers configure content delivery with their choice’s programming language and template framework. Customers choose it for the flexibility and stability of content modeling and delivery. Test it!
Who uses Contentful?
It provides services to companies that need to manage content on various platforms. The average customers are big companies (Nike, Disney, EA, Viacom, etc.), but you also have smaller customers on the cheapest plans.
Companies are turning to digital media to make their presence felt more than ever. It is not surprising that there is a need to ensure that data and information online are channeled clearly and organized. Content management systems were developed to address this issue. They are used to create and manage the content of digital products. However, these systems often have the disadvantage of being rigid and unresponsive to the collaborative needs of designers.
This is where Contentful comes into play. Contentful is a cloud-based content management and development platform that uses API technology. API, or application programming interface, functions for giving instructions to software components. In the case of Contentful, its API technology makes it easy for users to access its content anywhere in the world, at any time. Co-founded by Sascha Konietzke, its current CEO, Contentful was developed in response to the new iteration of the online world. Different media channels – from the web to mobile – often interact seamlessly. Therefore, Contentful aims to provide flexible APIs and a web application interface that encourages developers and content creators to provide content for any digital product, including Digital Signage, Virtual Reality technology, and even cars. Smart.
Contentful Review has long been recognized for its potential as a content management system. In 2016, it was declared by Forbes magazine as one of the best 100 cloud companies in the world. He has also worked with several renowned companies such as Nokia, Urban Outfitters, and the British Museum. The company prides itself on its ease of use. The Contentful site floats that a product can be “deployed in minutes” without sacrificing design freedom. Users can create a custom model with the program instead of using a standard template. From a business perspective, this provides the advantage of producing output that fully aligns with business goals.
Another selling point for Contentful is that it has various plans to tailor it to the needs of different customers. It offers free plans targeted toward small businesses and start-ups and plans for those who want access to the program’s more sophisticated features for their paid brand. Content can be found in a single space, which means everything from images to text is added. This makes it easier for users to update or even share your content. This feature is not just about convenience. It is also about how user resources are being used. Contentful’s centralized management capability enables brands to use their existing resources more effectively and without unnecessary delay. Flexibility and responsiveness to user needs are just a few reasons why Contentful is a viable option for those looking to enhance their digital presence.
History of Contentful
Contentful was founded in Berlin in 2013, the same year they launched the first version of their platform, which they called “Storage Room.” The brainchild of its founders was ‘a CMS for mobile apps’ back in 2011. The firm changed its name to Contentful and quickly evolved to offer a content delivery service. As of 2021, the firm has offices in San Francisco, Denver, and Berlin, with a valuation of over three billion dollars (USD 3 billion).
Today, Contentful has an online marketplace for third parties and its own, where tools that give it more versatility and utility are offered to its users. What makes its platform one of the most used by companies worldwide are brands such as IKEA, Jack in the Box, Spotify, Red Bull, Twilio, and Urban Outfitters.
Headless and the use of CMS with APIs
The term “Headless” refers to using a CMS through an API (Application Programming Interface) without the CMS being responsible for rendering the content in the Front-End layer.
In Headless, the content management system (CMS) delegates content to display in exchange for consistency, flexibility, scalability, and simplicity.
Since the beginning of web content managers, the engine (CMS) has taken care of everything: managing the content and displaying it to the end-user through different templates, themes, or extensions. This convenience had its implications: the content was used ‘mainly for websites’ and had content manager implementation details attached without allowing reuse.
A headless model exposes an API that can be accessed by multiple clients: web pages, mobile apps, and software applications. Developers can choose the presentation layer and presentation logic independent of the CMS.
Who is Contentful for?
Contentful is more than a platform for content management. It is a tool that facilitates the publication of content on all media, optimizing the creation, distribution, and dissemination of the same.
Contentful applies to various types of customers but has generally been attractive to experienced customers committed to a roadmap for the evolution of their digital applications. They have distributed teams, use different platforms, programming languages, and groups, and generally see value in embedding content across various channels.
Contentful has been adopted by world-renowned companies, such as Nike, Disney, EA, Viacom, Spotify, and Red Bull, among many others.
A striking factor about Contentful is that it has shallow barriers to entry. Being a cloud service with subscription plans (from free to enterprise), companies can create test accounts in minutes, start experimenting with the content model and create their applications.
Advantages of Contentful Cms
Contentful stands out for benefits when it comes to creating and publishing content, and some of the unique features that we like about it are the following:
- Content Distribution Infrastructure: This platform provides its content distribution network (CDN)with the primary purpose of delivering content to users 24 hours a day.
- Content Model Management: Each custom content model can be designed and created based on your business needs. It is important to note that there are no predesigned content models. Therefore, you must define the model that fits your requirements.
- Simple user interface: One of the characteristics of Contentful is that its user interface is straightforward, and its use is very intuitive; it is not necessary to have programming knowledge to use it optimally.
- Omnichannel content distribution: Contentful has an API responsible for distributing all the content created through all platforms with just one click, whether mobile, web, or any other medium.
- Backup: All the information and data of your website, app, or program, are backed up on two separate servers, and in case of being deleted, they have a recovery window of 25 days. Therefore, there is no need to worry about accidental data loss.
- Content management without code: Being completely intuitive to use, Contentful’s user interface allows even people without programming knowledge to manage this platform usually. Since you don’t need to code to use it, you can add and edit content types and manage them within the platform.
It should be noted that Contentful reduces the effort in content management, but it still requires the development of a web page or an application, so it does require action.
Contentful Data Model
Contentful gives you the freedom to create your content model, which means you can structure and organize all kinds of information entities.
The Contentful model (domain model) is divided into sections, which are: organizations, spaces, content types, and content entries, where each of them has a specific task:
The organizations are in charge of controlling the spaces. Therefore, they are the ones that create, organize and eliminate them; in addition, they are also the ones in charge of assigning the roles of each user in each space.
Spaces: These allow you to interact with content types and posts.
The types of content do: These represent the templates that shape the content created; this is done through fields that can be defined for different kinds, such as JSON or files, for example.
Content entries: These contents already have the information entered or consigned in the template.