What is a Headless CMS
Headless CMS are applications that give you a visual dashboard for managing data but don't lock you into any particular way of building a frontend for that data. Instead, they deliver the data via an API which you can pull into the frontend application build of your choice. Headless CMS has become an integral part of the JAMStack movement and you can find a full list of Headless CMS solutions hosted and self-hosted/open source at JamStack.org.
The List
- ButterCMS
- Contentful
- AgilityCMS
- GraphCMS
- Sanity.io
- SlickNode
- Builder.io
- Scrivito
- Typewriter
- Flotiq
- CloudCannon
- TakeShape
- StoryBlok
- Stastic
- SiteLeaf
- prepr
- Prismic
- Gridly
- FrontAid
- Forestry
- Flamelink
Small Scale Alternatives
These aren't full-blown Headless CMS Solutions but using their Rest API's you can pull data from these sources as a small-scale solution or to feed a static site generator.
- Google Sheets
- Airtable
- Wordpress.com (Has an API)
- Trello
- Asana
- Json Files Hosted on Netlify
Self-Hosted Solutions
A Bigger list is available at JAMStack.org but here are a few Headless CMS Solutions that are open source meaning you can install it on your own server and avoid vendor lock-in.
- Strapi
- KeystoneJS
- Prisma
- Hasura
- SquidEx
- cockpit
- daptin
- mesh
- hashbrown
- unite cms
- ponzu
Public API Data
In case you need existing data for your application here is a list of free public APIs!