ButterCMS Review

ButterCMS is a content management system built from the ground up for a headless architecture. It’s for companies of all sizes, from startups to enterprise-level companies like Salesforce, Indeed, and 1800contacts, to name a few. It offers robust features like multi-channel and multi-site support, locales, a blog engine, image editing, built-in SEO, and CDN hosting for your media library. 

Founded in 2015, based out of San Francisco, California, ButterCMS promotes itself as the #1 headless CMS platform. This is backed by exemplary ratings from the crowdsourced software review platform G2 for over 3 years in a row. They also claim it’s a CMS that marketers and developers will melt over, and we tend to agree with both assessments. 

ButterCMS Content Authoring

The beauty of ButterCMS lies within the content authoring experience. It’s primarily composed of collections, pages, components, and an off-the-shelf blog engine. Components are quick to spin up using drag-and-drop tools, which enables you to model data with a powerful set of fields. It is very easy to jump right in, as each field reveals a quick video guide as you hover. It’s little touches like this that give ButterCMS a very premium feel. The fields that are offered give a ton of flexibility if one needs to create more complex pages of content. 

There’s a preview mode that’s simple and fast to use, which can be hit or miss with some platforms. Additionally, there’s an API explorer that drastically simplifies the process of extrapolating data for developers to use. This is a major pain point of working with a CMS like Craft CMS or WordPress, which were not built for a headless architecture from the ground up. Craft CMS and WordPress both rely on GraphQL, an API language for modeling data queries. This has to be done manually; this is a step you can skip entirely when using ButterCMS.

ButterCMS Developer Support

Every developer has a favorite platform to work with, and ButterCMS complements this ideology well. Within the API Explorer, there are sample code references for fetching page data based on your frontend framework of choice. 

You are even given starter templates based on your technology stack, which is enough to get any developer moving along with very little ramp-up time. 

Multi-environment deployment is often a burden for the developer, but ButterCMS simplifies this process. Developers can spin up multiple environments for testing, staging, and live deployment on the fly. Additionally, you can manage multiple brands, sites, and locations from a single account. 

Developer documentation is dynamic based on the framework you select, and examples are adjusted for faster clarity. Clearly, ButterCMS understands the pain points of working with new technology. Beyond grabbing data, much of your code debugging lies within the frontend framework you’re building with. While the ButterCMS ecosystem is quite small compared to other popular CMS platforms, this doesn’t seem to impact the overall developer experience. If you’re also worried about developer handoffs, it’s less of an issue of finding a ButterCMS developer or agency, as anyone with a general understanding of a Javascript framework can hop right in. 

ButterCMS Customer Support

ButterCMS is like the Disney world of CMS customer support. From the very moment you engage ButterCMS, their team shepherds the entire process throughout your journey. They are like the Yoda to your Luke Skywalker, empowering you to keep things running smoothly and guiding you around any roadblocks that may occur. They will continue to follow up until you’ve squared away any issues or uncertainties you may be dealing with. Accessible within the enterprise level package is access to the ButterCMS slack channel. Most of the time we got our answers directly from chat or an email follow-up on the same day. 

ButterCMS Pricing

Because ButterCMS handles the CMS hosting, they include scaling, security, and maintenance within the monthly or annual cost. Prices range from $83 to $333/month for the pre-selected packages; these are aimed at startups and small businesses. For enterprise-level solutions, pricing is custom based on the number of staging environments, sites, and content you need to host. This is likely to scale in the 4 figure range, which is a typical price point for an enterprise-level CMS. The package you select is largely based on the number of users, pages, collections, and blog posts you anticipate having. Most small businesses will likely start with the mid-tier package starting at $166. If you’re looking for a multi-site architecture with several locales, a custom enterprise package is your only option. A write-API is available as part of the enterprise solution, which is a necessary feature if you’re building applications.  

ButterCMS Performance

The ButterCMS dashboard offers an intuitive and seamless authoring experience. It only takes a few hours to feel confident enough to make components, pages, and collections. Leveraging the component library also gives you the ability to spin up unique pages on the fly. These component libraries and custom field modules can also be ported over as a starting point for new builds, a key feature not found in platforms like Craft CMS. 

API calls are lightning-fast, and overall page performance will depend on your developer’s ability to create a performant web application. With its built-in CDN hosting, page performance is a moot issue. 

Conclusion

ButterCMS is simply great. Whether you are in commerce, SAAS, marketing, running a small blog, or a multinational corporation, ButterCMS can support your needs. New features, fixes, and other updates are released weekly. It’s easy to scale and grow your business with ButterCMS. Like butter, it pairs nicely with any tech stack or integration you need. 

If you’re considering ButterCMS as your next choice, reach out to our team at Electric Enjin. We’re passionate about this product, and we’re here to help.  You can reach managing director Jennifer Defreitas at [email protected].