Ask the Expert: The Power of Micro CMS for Developers

Q: What is a micro CMS?

Ryan: A micro CMS is a lightweight, flexible content management system designed to deliver content quickly and efficiently without unnecessary complexity. 

Unlike traditional, monolithic CMS platforms, which often bundle both frontend and backend features, a micro CMS is typically headless. This means it focuses only on managing and delivering content through APIs, leaving developers to decide how that content is presented on the frontend. This makes it a powerful tool for campaign landing pages, event microsites, and targeted digital experiences where speed, customization, or scalability are essential.
 

Q: What are the benefits of a micro CMS build for frontend (FE) developers?

Ryan: For frontend developers, you can use any tech stack you want (e.g., React, Vue.js), which means no restrictions on design or performance. You can also focus purely on building a rich user interface (UI) without worrying about CMS limitations, and you can also take advantage of tons of easy 3rd party API integrations. 

And if you have an experience that does need to grow over time, that’s easier to handle, too. For instance, the same content can be shown in multiple places across websites, apps, or even digital signage, so there’s no need to recreate it for each use case. Not only that, but as the site grows, the frontend and backend are decoupled, making it easier to scale since the two don’t depend on each other.

Q: What kinds of benefits are there for backend (BE) developers?

Ryan: For backend developers, they really benefit in that they can work solely on building the backend logic and handling data without worrying about how the content will be presented. A micro CMS is also highly customizable and comes with fine-grained access control, which ensures that sensitive content is only accessible by authorized users. And finally - easier maintenance! Since the backend and frontend are decoupled, maintenance and updates are less disruptive since they don’t affect one another. It’s safe to say these are a few of our BE developers’ favorite things. 

Q: Which CMS’s do you turn to for micro CMS builds?

Ryan: For micro CMS builds, we’ve found two platforms that we enjoy working with the most.

Strapi is one of the most popular open-source headless CMS solutions, and we’ve used it for at least three projects in just the last year! It’s both powerful and flexible for developers, while also user-friendly for content creators. 

Another great option is Craft CMS, which is highly customizable, developer-centric, and optimized for performance. It also uses Twig templating, which our team is highly skilled in, so we love it for that!
 

Q: What projects have you built using a micro CMS?

Ryan: We’ve worked on several exciting projects utilizing micro CMS solutions, each with its own unique requirements and challenges:

• Sephoria is a beauty event hosted by Sephora, and our task was to create a microsite for the event. The site needed to display event details and enable user registration, all while handling dynamic content based on event dates and availability. With tight deadlines, Strapi allowed us to launch quickly, enabling the backend and frontend teams to work independently and efficiently. The user-friendly CMS was crucial for content editors to manage the site.

• Another project we employed a micro CMS for last year was for Meta Connect. This is Meta's annual developer conference; it’s held both in-person and virtually, and we were tasked with building a microsite for each experience. Both sites needed to update content and media daily, across multiple languages, and in this case Strapi was the perfect solution for publishing content updates on the fly. 

• A project where we decided to utilize Craft was an interactive quiz and lead capture experience that we built in a matter of weeks for Andover Academy, a premier prep and boarding school in New England. Thanks to Craft CMS, we easily integrated a GraphQL API to deliver truly personalized content to users. With Craft’s flexibility and the React frontend, the quiz delivered a seamless experience for both prospective students and content managers at Andover.

In each of these projects, using a Micro CMS played a pivotal role in allowing teams to work efficiently, update content dynamically, and save time on web development deadlines, all while delivering a high-quality user experience. 

Do you have a targeted experience in mind you’d like to talk over before selecting a CMS? Reach out today to talk with Ryan or anyone on our developer team.