Guides

As a marketing lead, it’s always fallen to you to choose the CMS to power the websites you’ve built. That’s a lot of pressure.

You have to evaluate whether a platform will be easy for your staff to use. Is it secure? Will it scale under heavy traffic loads? Can you find developers who can work with it? Can it grow with you? Will you regret the investment? Or worse, will it fail and cause you to beg for more money to go build again on a new platform?

Lost leads, stalled campaigns, delayed launches, and wasted budget. These are all real pressures for you as a marketing lead. Choose the right platform, Strapi, and avoid all of this.

In This Guide: Strapi

In this guide we will have a look at the open-source headless CMS called Strapi. We will walk through its features and capabilities and measure these against Solspace’s 25 years of experience building and maintaining complex, sophisticated, high-performance websites.

We will look at all of the relevant aspects of Strapi from the marketing lead’s point of view: open source origins, JavaScript core, AI capabilities, performance, ease of use, content preview, developer support, plugins / extensibility, cost, integration capabilities, SSO, multi-region and multi-language capabilities, certifications, and more.

Why Strapi and Why Now?

What’s the urgency? There are plenty of other web development platforms out there. Why Strapi, and why now?

AI. That’s the honest answer.

AI + web development is on fire right now. AI can do a great deal of the routine work of web development now. But it can only do our work for us if we give it the right tools to work with. AI models are extremely effective at generating code in specific languages and on specific platforms. Below we will look at why Strapi is a standout in the area of AI web development.

The Fundamentals First

Strapi is considered a headless CMS. It does not serve its own web pages. It does not send HTML to the user’s web browser. Instead, it serves as the backend system that front-end frameworks pull content from. It also serves as the backend where advanced functionality for the website lives. For marketing directors, this means your site won’t get locked into one stack, and you can pivot as tech evolves.

If you have a WordPress website, you store your content in the WordPress database. WP theme files grab that content from the database and build an HTML page that is sent to the web browser. Systems like WP own the whole page request.

With a headless CMS like Strapi, there is still a concept of a CMS owning a database of content; it’s just that the CMS can live anywhere, on any server anywhere on the web, and the front-end files go and fetch their content from that source.

This headless architecture makes your websites much more future proof. You have one place where your content is stored in an abstracted manner. Then you consume that content through one or more tech stacks or tools responsible for the presentation layer.

Our favorite headless website combo is Next.js + Strapi. Next.js is an open source React framework ideally suited for today’s complex websites. Developers build a Next.js frontend and consume the content for it by API calls to a Strapi backend. Both of these open source platforms have cloud offerings; Vercel in the case of Next.js and Strapi Cloud in the case of Strapi.

When you run a website on this stack, your front end pages are served from Vercel. Your content comes from Strapi Cloud. Both are highly scalable cloud-based solutions. You can set them both up and basically forget about performance issues.

Open Source

Many of the most popular web technologies got that way because they had open source roots. WordPress is open source. The people behind it make money by providing services adjacent to the platform itself. Much of the best of the web is open source: JavaScript, PHP, Python, React, Tailwind, Node.js, MySQL.

Strapi is open source. So what does this mean?

Anyone can download Strapi and use it. It costs no license fee to set up and host a Strapi website. Developers can freely modify it and make it do whatever they want. This means adoption of a great platform like Strapi can accelerate across the web. More adoption means more developers who work on the platform. More developers means an easier time for marketing directors finding expert help with their important business websites. For you, this means lower long-term risk and no licensing surprises in next year’s budget.

If you launch a Strapi website on Strapi Cloud, you will pay the fees for Strapi Cloud. And if you later get sick of paying Strapi Cloud fees, you can host the Strapi site somewhere else without any lock-in, penalties, or other impediments.

Strapi Is Javascript

Speaking of open source software, Strapi is built entirely on JavaScript. JavaScript is on 100% of the web browsers around the world. Its server-side counterpart, Node.js, also open source, powers a vast amount of the internet.

JavaScript is a very mature and thoroughly tested programming language. JavaScript and Node developers are both widely available and also highly skilled. The open source JavaScript community is vibrant and active. Node Package Manager, or NPM, where JavaScript developers go to find useful packages for their projects, has more than 3.5 million downloadable packages. It has more than 374 billion monthly package downloads.

You know how they say no one ever got fired for hiring IBM? Well no one should ever get fired for choosing something as expansive and pervasive as JavaScript. You’ll have a large hiring pool and no risk of being stuck without developer support.

AI Capabilities

We’re now living in the age of AI. AI is doing more and more of our work for us. Many of us are grappling with just how and when we should rely on AI in our workday and otherwise.

Most digital marketers are now leaning heavily into ChatGPT as a companion in marketing activities. But web developers are also using it heavily.

Because of the surge of AI in the last few years, much is drastically changing about how we work.

AI can build websites now.

So is Solspace out of business? Nope.

AI is a tool. In the right hands a good tool can do incredible things. But this assumes that the wielder of the tool can use the tool well.

AI is powerful in web development when it is used to build with programming languages and platforms that are widely adopted, understood, and openly available. AI is best when it is writing code in JavaScript, React in particular.

The majority of the AI website building tools on the market now default to producing React.js based websites. AI is also well versed in backend development in the form of Node.js.

If your web developer can reduce the time and money it requires to build websites for you, this is a good thing. For them to do this reliably, they have to choose AI compatible platforms like JavaScript.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an entire CMS that was AI ready?

Strapi is all JavaScript and open source. It is AI ready.

When you and your web developer choose to deploy a Strapi website, they can use AI to build the front end in Next.js, which is a popular flavor of React. They can build the backend with Strapi. In both cases, AI can handle a lot of the heavy lifting, which helps teams launch campaigns faster and at lower cost.

Performance

The web was designed to serve flat, static HTML files. Everything about HTTP, Apache, servers, caching systems, etc. is geared toward service static files. When you give the web what it wants, it can be incredibly fast, and it can scale to ridiculous volumes.

When you choose Next.js + Strapi and you run these from their cloud service counterparts, Vercel and Strapi Cloud, you can achieve incredible scale and speed. This means pages load faster -> SEO improves -> campaigns convert better.

A web page that relies on Strapi for its content can be built in one of two ways, or a mix of these. A web page can be rendered on the server. This is called SSR or server-side rendering. You make changes to your site and then deploy them up to the web. This means the static pages get ‘built’ and then served from global CDN nodes. There’s currently nothing faster than this.

The other way of serving Strapi content into a web page is to fetch it dynamically after the shell of the page lands in the user’s web browser. This is CSR, client-side rendering. When this kind of website is served from Strapi Cloud, it’s also crazy fast.

Ease of Use

Marketers love page builders! Marketers hate page builders! But let’s be real, page builders are here to stay.

Marketing teams can’t predict the future. They can’t know exactly what page layouts they will need to support next quarter’s marketing campaigns. That’s why they need flexible page builders on their websites. They need simple, reusable components that can be arranged in numerous ways.

Out of the box, Strapi has one of the easiest and most intuitive page builder capabilities. Strapi uses a concept called Dynamic Zones. Your developer can create numerous page components that are available in a dynamic zone on a given page. When you build a new landing page, you just choose the components you want and load the content. These pages are also simple to edit and maintain over time.

Want to see the 6 lines of code that make a Strapi page builder hum?

{main.builder.map((block, i) => {
    const name = normalizeBuilderComponentName(block.__component);
    const Component = Builder[name];
    if (!Component) return null;
    return <Component key={i} {...block} />;
})}

You and your web developer can feed any number of page builder components into that little snippet of code. That’s future proof.

Content Preview

As a marketing lead, your work is exposed to the public on a regular basis. The stakes are high for you. You need to make sure that before you publish, what’s going up looks and reads the way it’s supposed to.

Most CMS platforms fall down when it comes to preview capability. Strapi has this ability built in. It just needs to be configured by your web developer.

With Strapi, you can preview and validate your content before it hits the web. Preview gives you confidence before launch, which is critical when campaigns are public-facing and high-stakes. This makes the platform reliable in one of the most important ways.

Developer Support

How many times in my 30 years as a web developer did I hear a new client say, “I can’t find anyone who can work on our XYZ website!”

This is one of the biggest fears for marketing leads owning websites. Can they maintain a consistent and reliable level of support for the tech stack over time? Can they get important changes made on the site promptly? Can they fire a crummy developer and easily find a replacement?

With a Strapi website you can have this. Since Strapi is headless, it is decoupled from the front end pages that pull in its content. Your web developer only needs to be able to work with headless architectures and they can work with Strapi. And since it’s all JavaScript, if a custom plugin or field type needs to be written or altered, JavaScript developers are easy to find.

Plugins / Extensibility

Speaking of plugins, any CMS that lacks a serious and well executed plugin architecture is doomed for trouble. Marketers can’t predict what they will need from their website over the years that it will exist. A plugin architecture assures that the system can morph and adapt over time as needed.

A good plugin architecture also means any missing features, integrations or capabilities can be built into the platform without breaking the underlying integrity of the core system. This is powerful. It also means that a smart developer out there has likely already built the plugin customization you need. It’s just a matter of installing the thing.

Good plugin systems attract good developers. Where there are good developers there are good websites.

Cost

Strapi is open source. You can host it wherever you can host a Node.js website along with a database. So Strapi itself is free.

The Strapi Cloud offering is excellent and very reasonably priced. Small websites can host on Strapi Cloud for free. There are reasonable limits on bandwidth and storage. For $15 / mo you greatly increase your storage and bandwidth capacity. For $75 / mo you drastically increase it. And for $375 / mo you drastically increase it yet again. With the higher plans you also unlock excellent additional features.

Compared to other headless CMS platforms, Strapi is highly competitive.

If you’re comparing platforms, you may also want to see how we approach headless CMS implementation for clients like you.

When Strapi Might Not Be the Right Fit

Strapi is powerful, flexible, and future-proof, but like any tool, it’s not perfect for every situation. If your website is very small or simple (think brochureware sites or one-page campaigns), the overhead of a headless CMS may not be worth it. Traditional platforms like WordPress may be easier to manage for small teams without dedicated developer support.

Strapi also assumes you have at least occasional access to developers. While marketers can manage content easily, setting up the system and building front-end components is not a drag-and-drop experience. If you don’t have a reliable dev partner, Strapi may feel like too much.

Of course, if you need a development team you can trust, we happen to know one.

Integration Capabilities

Most Solspace clients need to integrate their websites with other systems. We’re all about increasing reliability and reducing friction at Solspace. So whenever we can tie a client’s website into Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, etc., we argue strongly for it.

With Strapi, these kinds of customizations and integrations are either available from plugins in the Strapi Plugin Marketplace or they can be written custom for a project.

Strapi exposes their event and extension architecture to developers, so almost any part of the CMS can be integrated into external tools. This is how your CMS becomes a real marketing tool, not just a content box.

SSO

For an added monthly fee, a Strapi website can support single sign-on through platforms like Okta, Active Directory or most any other SAML 2 or OAuth2 provider. This means that access permissions for working inside Strapi can be controlled at the corporate IT level. For big teams this is an essential component of an enterprise capable CMS.

If your IT/security team requires SSO, Strapi already clears those hurdles so your projects don’t get stalled.

Multi-Region and Multi-Language Capabilities

Out of the box, Strapi supports managing content in multiple languages and locales. At least 75% of the websites that Solspace has built and maintained over the years have needed this capability. Sometimes we had to bolt it on. Sometimes it was native to the CMS.

Strapi is built and maintained by an international team. From its core out, it is an international-capable platform.

Certifications

Strapi is SOC 2 Type 2 certified. This is a very difficult and costly certification to come by. It is the standard for most corporate INFOSEC teams evaluating and choosing CMS platforms.

An SOC 2 Type 2 certification means that an outside certifying party monitored and verified the effectiveness of Strapi’s security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy controls over a period of time. Strapi was certified with 0 noted exceptions.

If you are running marketing for a company that has SOC 2 requirements, Strapi is an easy win.

Implementation

Once you decide Strapi is the right fit, what does rollout look like?

Here’s the typical process:

1. Set up the foundation. Your developer configures Strapi (backend) and Next.js (frontend), usually hosted on Strapi Cloud + Vercel for performance and scalability.
2. Define your content model. Together, we map out the sections, fields, and content types you’ll need (pages, articles, product info, etc.).
3. Build and integrate. Developers connect the content model to the front end, add plugins or integrations (CRM, analytics, forms), and make sure everything is secure and stable.
4. Review on staging. You and your team get a working draft site to test, preview content, and request adjustments.
5. Launch with confidence. Once everything checks out, your site is deployed to production and your domain is pointed at the new build.

Your role will be to provide input on the content model, review staging versions, and give final approval. The rest is handled by your dev team (or Solspace, if we’re your partner).

Technical Implementation (for Developers)

If your developers want the nuts and bolts, here’s what the under-the-hood process looks like

• Use AI-assisted dev tools like Vercel’s v0 to accelerate scaffolding the frontend in Next.js.
• Generate initial Strapi content models with AI to save setup time.
• Connect both projects to GitHub repos for version control.
• Refine AI-generated code to align with the planned content model and brand styles.
• Install or custom-build plugins as needed.
• Deploy to staging for internal QA before final production release.

Strapi’s flexibility means developers can move quickly and lean on AI where it makes sense, while still maintaining control over quality and security.

So Is Strapi Right for You?

If your priority is a CMS that won’t box you in, scales with your business, and plays well with today’s AI-driven workflows, Strapi deserves serious consideration. It gives you the freedom of open source, the confidence of SOC 2 certification, and the flexibility to integrate with the tools your marketing team relies on.

At Solspace, we’ve spent 25 years helping marketing directors choose, implement, and grow on the right platforms. If Strapi feels like the right fit, we’d love to guide you through the decision and ensure your rollout is smooth, secure, and built to last.

Get in touch with us to talk about whether Strapi is the right move for your team.