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Contentful, a Stripe for content management, raises $28M led by General Catalyst

40 points by realityking 9y ago

sashthebash 9y ago
Contentful was born several years ago (back then as StorageRoom) through Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2616041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2616041
aaronpk 9y ago
What does "a Stripe for content management" mean?
- colept 9y ago
  It's a crap analogy, but in this case it means they do content management really well with a good design and seamless integration.
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  Seriously. From the article: > When many people today think of cloud-based content management systems (CMS), the names that likely come to mind are WordPress (which we use), or Medium (which people leaving their companies like to use), or Tumblr (which is owned by the same company that owns TC). So it's a blog hosting service? > Contentful can provide some of the same functionalities as these but it’s aimed at a different end: CEO and co-founder Sascha Konietzke describes it as a “headless” CMS, not unlike Stripe’s relationship to payments: there is no front end for ingesting and formatting content, or design end for producing the final look of that content for the reader. Instead, there are a set of APIs that developers of the media product in question can use to control both of those aspects more flexibly. So it's a specialized database? > “Existing CMSs are like the MS-DOS of the internet,” Konietzke said. “No one really likes to use them, similar to older payment systems before Stripe.” …wat wow
Sujan 9y ago
Awesome product. And a free developer plan you can actually use for live projects, too!
thogenhaven 9y ago
We almost went with contentful when we chose a headless cms. But their pricing for large multilingual sites was through the roof. Directus is an open source alternative that has the same features for free. So we wet with this. Very happy with this CMS.
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  I'm looking at the awful web site[0] for Directus, and it sure has a lot of screenshots of what appears to be a fairly traditional web-based CMS UI. I get that what we're seeing may just be a front-end "app" connecting to the core headless CMS via its own API, but at what point has your "headless CMS with a nice UI" just become another traditional CMS? [0]: https://getdirectus.com https://getdirectus.com
  - detaro 9y ago
    All I see on their homepage is backend UI. A headless CMS has no client/visitor facing UI.
  - lsaferite 9y ago
    Headless CMS in this context means it's just the CMS backend (the tail) and not a frontend (the head). The raw content is rendered to a FE view by something else.
    - thisacctforreal 9y ago
      Back-end and front-end often mean server-side and client(browserside respectively, eg Front-end developer. So to be clear, headless CMSs have an admin-facing front-end and back-end to manage content, but only an API for a process to render the content into HTML/CSS/JS for visitors. That said, headless CMSs can be used for more than just websites.
      - lsaferite 9y ago
        Hence the "in this context" part
0xCMP 9y ago
I guess I thought of all this way later than everyone else. I only just recently wanted to start building a headless CMS and now it seems a ton of really well done ones are coming out. Good to know I can focus on what I actually wanted the CMS for! Another one that came out recently was sanity.io.
CryoLogic 9y ago
What a terribly confusing analogy.
chickenfries 9y ago
> “Existing CMSs are like the MS-DOS of the internet,” Konietzke said. “No one really likes to use them, similar to older payment systems before Stripe.” What a ridiculous statement. Wordpress is so much more popular than Contentful. The vast majority of publications don't need a headless CMS. It's literally half the value proposition of Wordpress (since they have a REST API).
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  End-users clearly love to use them (Wordpress esp.), but if the statement was rephrased as "no developer likes to implement or support them" it might be more plausible.
  - chickenfries 9y ago
    That statement is honestly not without controversy either. Outside of the HN crowd, do you know how easy it is to find Wordpress developers? They all can't possibly hate it. Headless CMSs are definitely preferred by some front-end /mobile devs who develop apps and publications. But that is a really, really small group compared to web developers and CMS users overall.
    - meebs 9y ago
      I'd suggest that WP developers exist because of the demand for WP developers and not because they enjoy it. How many people would be doing boring CRUD if it didn't earn them money?
      - TylerE 9y ago
        Plenty of people? Boring is good. Boring means I don't get phone calls at 11PM on a Saturday night. Boring means work isn't my life.
        meebs 9y ago
        I agree that boring is good, but that doesn't mean you enjoy the problem. To me, enjoying your job means you would do it even if you didn't have to (i.e. already have enough money). Maybe I operate on the wrong definition. :)
devdad 9y ago
So it's a REST API with a webapp I can whitelabel? Why would I pay for this - what is the problem it solves? If it's anywhere near as brilliant in implementation as Stripe is I really want to know, since it will probably make my life easier. I often find "Uber for X" or "Stripe for Y" confusing. If Stripe were doing Y they wouldn't be Stripe now, would they?
misterbowfinger 9y ago
Can someone provide a pros/cons of Contentful? I don't get what's so hard about building an API around content. The frontend I get, but the backend seems relatively simple, and the complexities are usually brand-specific
- atonse 9y ago
  It's not the API. It's that too many applications have Admin UI boilerplate interfaces for managing a lot of their content. And too much time is wasted in building those UIs. I know, I've done it. The way I see this is, it allows you to completely skip building the content management portion of Admin UIs, and present you with pure content as data, so you have full flexibility over how your website layout looks.
  - Sujan 9y ago
    Contentful (and similar services) also _can_ invest lots of time to get a good looking and super usable admin interface that can tackle difficult problems well. Examples: Sorting of ordered many to many relations, WYSIWYG or markdown editors, workflows, versioning, concurrent editing of items - all the stuff that you don't need for an MVP but if you have hundreds of editors and non dev people working on the actual content.

40 points by realityking 9y ago

Contentful was born several years ago (back then as StorageRoom) through Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2616041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2616041

aaronpk 9y ago

What does "a Stripe for content management" mean?

colept 9y ago
It's a crap analogy, but in this case it means they do content management really well with a good design and seamless integration.
Cyberdog 9y ago
Seriously. From the article: > When many people today think of cloud-based content management systems (CMS), the names that likely come to mind are WordPress (which we use), or Medium (which people leaving their companies like to use), or Tumblr (which is owned by the same company that owns TC). So it's a blog hosting service? > Contentful can provide some of the same functionalities as these but it’s aimed at a different end: CEO and co-founder Sascha Konietzke describes it as a “headless” CMS, not unlike Stripe’s relationship to payments: there is no front end for ingesting and formatting content, or design end for producing the final look of that content for the reader. Instead, there are a set of APIs that developers of the media product in question can use to control both of those aspects more flexibly. So it's a specialized database? > “Existing CMSs are like the MS-DOS of the internet,” Konietzke said. “No one really likes to use them, similar to older payment systems before Stripe.” …wat wow

Sujan 9y ago

Awesome product. And a free developer plan you can actually use for live projects, too!

thogenhaven 9y ago

We almost went with contentful when we chose a headless cms. But their pricing for large multilingual sites was through the roof. Directus is an open source alternative that has the same features for free. So we wet with this. Very happy with this CMS.

Cyberdog 9y ago
I'm looking at the awful web site[0] for Directus, and it sure has a lot of screenshots of what appears to be a fairly traditional web-based CMS UI. I get that what we're seeing may just be a front-end "app" connecting to the core headless CMS via its own API, but at what point has your "headless CMS with a nice UI" just become another traditional CMS? [0]: https://getdirectus.com https://getdirectus.com
- detaro 9y ago
  All I see on their homepage is backend UI. A headless CMS has no client/visitor facing UI.
- lsaferite 9y ago
  Headless CMS in this context means it's just the CMS backend (the tail) and not a frontend (the head). The raw content is rendered to a FE view by something else.
  - thisacctforreal 9y ago
    Back-end and front-end often mean server-side and client(browserside respectively, eg Front-end developer. So to be clear, headless CMSs have an admin-facing front-end and back-end to manage content, but only an API for a process to render the content into HTML/CSS/JS for visitors. That said, headless CMSs can be used for more than just websites.
    - lsaferite 9y ago
      Hence the "in this context" part

0xCMP 9y ago

I guess I thought of all this way later than everyone else. I only just recently wanted to start building a headless CMS and now it seems a ton of really well done ones are coming out. Good to know I can focus on what I actually wanted the CMS for! Another one that came out recently was sanity.io.

CryoLogic 9y ago

What a terribly confusing analogy.

chickenfries 9y ago

> “Existing CMSs are like the MS-DOS of the internet,” Konietzke said. “No one really likes to use them, similar to older payment systems before Stripe.” What a ridiculous statement. Wordpress is so much more popular than Contentful. The vast majority of publications don't need a headless CMS. It's literally half the value proposition of Wordpress (since they have a REST API).

blacksmith_tb 9y ago
End-users clearly love to use them (Wordpress esp.), but if the statement was rephrased as "no developer likes to implement or support them" it might be more plausible.
- chickenfries 9y ago
  That statement is honestly not without controversy either. Outside of the HN crowd, do you know how easy it is to find Wordpress developers? They all can't possibly hate it. Headless CMSs are definitely preferred by some front-end /mobile devs who develop apps and publications. But that is a really, really small group compared to web developers and CMS users overall.
  - meebs 9y ago
    I'd suggest that WP developers exist because of the demand for WP developers and not because they enjoy it. How many people would be doing boring CRUD if it didn't earn them money?
    - TylerE 9y ago
      Plenty of people? Boring is good. Boring means I don't get phone calls at 11PM on a Saturday night. Boring means work isn't my life.
      - meebs 9y ago
        I agree that boring is good, but that doesn't mean you enjoy the problem. To me, enjoying your job means you would do it even if you didn't have to (i.e. already have enough money). Maybe I operate on the wrong definition. :)

devdad 9y ago

So it's a REST API with a webapp I can whitelabel? Why would I pay for this - what is the problem it solves? If it's anywhere near as brilliant in implementation as Stripe is I really want to know, since it will probably make my life easier. I often find "Uber for X" or "Stripe for Y" confusing. If Stripe were doing Y they wouldn't be Stripe now, would they?

misterbowfinger 9y ago

Can someone provide a pros/cons of Contentful? I don't get what's so hard about building an API around content. The frontend I get, but the backend seems relatively simple, and the complexities are usually brand-specific

atonse 9y ago
It's not the API. It's that too many applications have Admin UI boilerplate interfaces for managing a lot of their content. And too much time is wasted in building those UIs. I know, I've done it. The way I see this is, it allows you to completely skip building the content management portion of Admin UIs, and present you with pure content as data, so you have full flexibility over how your website layout looks.
- Sujan 9y ago
  Contentful (and similar services) also _can_ invest lots of time to get a good looking and super usable admin interface that can tackle difficult problems well. Examples: Sorting of ordered many to many relations, WYSIWYG or markdown editors, workflows, versioning, concurrent editing of items - all the stuff that you don't need for an MVP but if you have hundreds of editors and non dev people working on the actual content.