Jamie Warburton · 3 January 2025 · 20 min read
This article is going to help you figure out which CMS pairs best with React - Headless CMSs, Hybrid setups, or Traditional options - and what you should actually care about when choosing one.
If I had to guess, a lot of you are either using—or seriously considering—something like WordPress or a traditional CMS for your React project. And honestly, that’s fair. WordPress is everywhere, and when you’re just starting out, it feels like the natural choice. It’s familiar, it’s got plugins for everything under the sun, and it’s probably what your friends told you to use.
But let me ask you this: would you put Formula 1 tires on a horse-drawn carriage? That’s kind of what it feels like when you’re trying to get a monolithic CMS to play nice with React. Sure, you can make it work, but it’s not exactly the smoothest ride.
So, why bother looking at alternatives? Because if you’re building with React, you’ve already decided you want something fast, scalable, and modern. Shouldn’t your CMS be built for that same world?
This article is going to help you figure out which CMS pairs best with React. We’ll talk about the options—headless CMSs, hybrid setups, and traditional options—plus what you should actually care about when choosing one. By the end, you’ll have a solid idea of where to start, and more importantly, what to avoid. Let’s dig in.
Let’s start with the obvious: React is all about building fast, modular, and reusable components. It’s the Ferrari of frontend frameworks, built to handle slick interfaces and high-performance applications. But unless you’re gonna pop open the codebase every night when the marketing team wants to make a change, it doesn’t manage your content. That’s where a CMS steps in.
But not just any CMS—a CMS that can keep up with React. The traditional options (you know, the WordPresses and Drupals of the world) were built for a different era, where the frontend and backend were tightly coupled. They’ll work in a pinch, but they’re not exactly designed for modern workflows.
Enter the headless CMS. They give you an API to fetch your content wherever you need it—whether that’s a React app, a mobile app, or even something weird like a fridge screen. It’s fast, flexible, and makes React feel right at home.
So why are there so many to choose from, and why does it matter that we get the pairing right? Because the right CMS doesn’t just store your content—it powers your whole workflow. It makes life easier for your developers, smoother for your content team, and faster for your users. The wrong CMS, on the other hand, is a bottleneck waiting to happen.
Below we’ll break down the types of CMSs that work with React and which ones might actually be worth your time. Spoiler: not all CMSs are created equal.
Let’s cut to the chase: not every CMS plays nicely with React, and not every CMS is easy to use. Some were built for the 2000s-era web, while some have taken all that we’ve learned in that time and built from the ground up for the modern React website.
As it stands, you’ve got three main options: Headless, Hybrid, and Traditional.
Headless CMS: The Star of the Show
Imagine a CMS that doesn’t try to do everything. It just focuses on letting you manage your content, and serves it up as clean, structured data via an API. That’s a headless CMS. It’s like your favourite restaurant doing delivery instead of forcing you to sit down for dinner. You call the shots on how that content gets served.
As it’s just focused on content, Headless CMS’ are often incredibly powerful, super fast, and quite enjoyable to use. We absolutely love taking clients from Traditional to Headless, because we always hear different versions of, “Wow, this is really fun to use, I can’t wait to get stuck in!”.
With a headless CMS, React becomes your playground. Fetch content through REST or GraphQL, render it however you like, and still get to use all the cool tools React offers. Platforms likeSanity,ContentfulandPayloadare some of the big names here, and they’re built to work with modern tech stacks, not against them.
If you love flexibility and hate being boxed into a one-size-fits-all dashboard, headless is probably your vibe. And if you're buildinga composable DXPor looking fora Content Operating System, this will be your best bet too.
Hybrid CMS: The Middle Ground
Now, if you’re not ready to leave the safety net of a traditional CMS but still want some of that headless freedom, a hybrid CMS might be what you need. Think WordPress or Drupal, but with a twist: you use their APIs to pull content into React while still having their full CMS features behind the scenes.
It’s not as clean or developer-friendly as a fully headless setup, but for teams with non-technical content editors, it’s a happy medium. You get the structure of a traditional CMS and the flexibility to modernise your frontend with React. The downside? It can sometimes feel like bolting a jet engine onto a tractor.
Traditional CMS: The Old-School Option
Let’s be real: traditional CMSs weren’t built for React. They’re great if you’re using their integrated templating engines (like PHP for WordPress), but once you try to decouple them, things can get messy. You’ll find yourself wrestling with plugins, slow APIs, and dashboards that feel like they’ve time-traveled from 2010.
Can you make it work? Sure. Should you? Only if you’re maintaining an existing site or working with legacy systems. Otherwise, skip it and save yourself the pain.
So you’ve got your eye on a shiny new CMS to pair with React. Before you hit the “sign up” button, let’s talk about what actually matters. Not all CMSs are created equal, and the wrong choice can lead to wasted time, frustrated developers, and a backend that makes your content team cry.
Here’s what you should really look for:
A Smooth Developer Experience
If you’re working with React, your CMS needs to speak the same language. That means robust APIs, modern frameworks, and tools that don’t make you want to throw your keyboard across the room.
The better the developer experience, the faster your development team will be able to work. It’s common to find that what took weeks to develop on a Traditional CMS takes only days in Headless.
A Content Editing Experience Without Tears
Your developers might love a CMS with a slick API, but if your content team can’t figure out how to update a blog post, you’re in trouble.
You need a CMS that handles the basics your team expects, as well as the advanced features that make your team fall in love with it.
Performance, Scalability and Security
React apps are built for speed, so don’t let your CMS be the weak link.
Pricing and Licensing
Not all CMSs are free, and the “freemium” model can sometimes sneak up on you with more costs for plugins, hosting, and other licenses. Look for transparent pricing and consider:
At the end of the day, the right CMS should feel like a teammate—not a roadblock. Keep your developers happy with clean APIs, your content team happy with an intuitive UI, and your budget happy with transparent pricing. In the next section, we’ll break down some of the most popular CMS options for React and see how they stack up.
By now, you’ve got a good sense of what makes a CMS great—but which one should you actually pick? Let’s break down some of the most popular options for React projects and see how they stack up.
1. SanityCMS: Incredibly powerful, customisable, fully managed
Sanity is a headless CMSwith a customisable content studio, real-time collaboration, and an API that’s ridiculously fast. Bonus: it uses GROQ, a query language that’s like GraphQL but more flexible.
It hits the nail on the head for all the features we’ve mentioned above, and has been G2’s Leader in HeadlessCMS for the past 4 years running. It’s packed full of features that make using it extremely fast, and infinitely customisable to adapt to exactly how you want to work.
We’ve seen marketing teams launch full landing pages from scratch in less than 20 minutes using Sanity.
And if you’re a non-profit, Sanity has anextremely generous FREE non-profit plan, so it’s absolutely perfect for NPOs.
Using aSanity certified partner agency (like us!)completely mitigates these drawbacks. If you use an agency, make sure they have the groundwork already built and ready to go, and that they have a history of high quality Sanity websites. They also have you covered fora Content Operating System, being one of the best in the business.
2. PayloadCMS: Powerful, customisable and self-hosted
Where Sanity is the GOAT for teams that don’t want to host and scale their CMS in-house, Payload is the self-hosted counter-part. Almost everything that applies to Sanity applies to Payload as well.
The key difference is that Payload is self-hosted. Your in-house Ops or DevOps team will be responsible for hosting, managing and scaling the CMS, likely in a platform like AWS or GCP. This is typically cheaper than Sanity (unless you’re a non-profit) if you already have an Ops team, but if not you must also consider the recruitment and salary costs of Ops members.
3. Contentful
If you’re looking for something that gets the job done quickly, with most of the features you’ll need, and you have the enterprise budget for it, Contentful could be a good option. It’s a headless CMS with a clean, intuitive interface, strong API support and tons of features for marketers and developers.
4. WordPress (Headless)
Yes, WordPress can be used with React—but let’s be honest, it’s not ideal. If you’re already on WordPress and can’t migrate, going headless with the REST API or GraphQL plugin could be your best bet. But more often than not, migrating content from WordPress to Sanity and moving to a modern solution is the better decision.
There’s other options you may have heard of, like Hygraph, Statamic, Strapi, Prismic, Storyblok, and so many more.
We feel these each fill the same role as one of the CMS we’ve mentioned in more detail above, but to a lesser degree, so think one of the above options is almost always better for your use case when building a React-based experience.
By now, you’ve got a shortlist of CMS options, but how do you figure out which one is the right fit for your project? The key is understanding your unique needs, both from a technical and a business perspective. Let’s break it down.
I have a development team or agency to build the website, but I don’t want to manage the hosting, security and scaling of the CMS in-house
In this case, SanityCMS is the perfect CMS for you.
Alternative : PayloadCMS (you’ll just need to manage hosting and security yourselves)
I have a development team or agency to build the website, as well as an in-house Ops team to manage the hosting, security and scaling of the CMS
In this case, PayloadCMS is likely the right choice for you
Alternative: SanityCMS (for a hosted solution with all the bells and whistles)
I have a development team, a fairly large budget, and need a very standard enterprise CMS
In this case, either Sanity or Contentful could be the right choice. Contentful will let you get off the ground quickly, but you will need to adapt your process to what the CMS provides. Sanity could have a little more up-front development depending on your needs, but it means you’re completely future-proofed, both in features and in cost.
And if you’re a non-profit, then Sanity’s generous and free non-profit plan is definitely the right decision.
I have an existing WordPress website that I cannot migrate away from
Here we’d say, are you 100% sure you can’t migrate away from WordPress?
If so, it’s possible to use WordPress with React, via the WordPress API, but you’ll lose a lot of the benefits of WordPress, and gain very little in the way of a modern CMS and fast React application.
Choosing the right CMS for your React project isn’t just about picking the most popular option—it’s about aligning the CMS with your team’s needs, your project’s scope, and your long-term goals. Whether you’re building a small site or a sprawling enterprise platform, there’s a CMS out there that will make your life easier and your React app shine.
Still unsure? Here’s a pro tip: start small. Pick a CMS with a free tier or that’s open-source and test it with a simple React app. You’ll quickly figure out whether it’s a match made in heaven—or a headache waiting to happen.
Hex are experience design experts. We specialise in building platforms that delight content teams, development teams, and organisations all over the globe. We buildDigital Experience Platformsand create stunning digital experiences that are powered by them. We're partnered with Sanity, Vercel and Mixpanel to ensure we deliver the best products and services. Send us a message if you want more information or advice on the right Headless CMS for your React project.