Contentful vs Medium

Compare Contentful and Medium for your content needs. Find out what actual users are saying about each product and which one is best suited for you!

Contentful
Contentful
Contentful is a leading headless content management platform that allows users to create, manage, and distribute content across various platforms seamlessly, providing complete freedom in designing their content models.
Medium
Medium
Medium is a popular online platform for reading and writing, offering an engaging space for creators. It allows writers to share their ideas with a broad audience while providing tools for monetization and community engagement.

What Users Say

See what users who have used Contentful and Medium have to say about their overall experience with the product.

Contentful's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Contentful.

Medium's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Medium.

Contentful's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Contentful.

Medium's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Medium.

Looking for a better alternative to Contentful & Medium? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!

What Marketers & Content Creators Say

Hear from the users who uses Contentful and Medium daily about their experience with the editors.

Contentful's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Contentful's editor.

Medium's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Medium's editor.

Contentful's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Contentful's editor.

Medium's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Medium's editor.

Mobile Editing

Find out how the platforms handle the mobile-first experience for the new generation of workforce on the move.

Contentful:
Not Suitable for Mobile

Contentful does not explicitly support mobile-first content creation for marketers; mainly desktop-centric.

"Contentful is mainly an API-based headless CMS, emphasizing structured content delivery rather than a mobile-first editing experience."
Source
"Contentful focuses on optimizing web performance metrics but does not emphasize mobile content creation."
Source
"No significant discussions regarding mobile-first content creation features for Contentful."
Source
Medium:
Not Suitable for Mobile

Medium does not support mobile editing; editing features were removed to enhance reading experience on mobile.

"Writing is not supported on mobile browsers. To write on the go, you'll need to download the Medium app for iOS or Android."
Source
"With our focus on an exceptional reading experience, we’ve made the difficult decision to remove story editing features from our native apps."
Source
"Editing had been disabled on the mobile app."
Source
"On the publishing tools front, we added mobile editing, but this feature is not currently active."
Source
"We’re bringing back the mobile editor, indicating the intention but no active support at the moment."
Source

Automatic Content Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic linking of related content to help user discover more content without additional manual effort from the marketer. This automatically create topical clusters of content and is essential for SEO.

Contentful:
AI-Powered Related Content

Contentful supports automatic related blog linking with Content Source Maps, linking content fields automatically.

"With Content Source Maps, this setup is now fully automated. Our APIs now return source maps for fields that link directly to the corresponding field in Contentful."
Source
Medium:
No Automatic Content Linking

Medium does not support automatic internal linking for related blog posts, focusing instead on manual links.

"Medium lacks features for automatic internal linking between similar content, relying instead on manual linking."
Source
"Medium does not have an AI feature to automate the linking of related blog content."
Source
"Medium emphasizes simplicity and content creation without the complexity of automating internal links."
Source

Automatic CTA Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic display of Call-to-Actions using AI to help users take actions that are relevant to the content they are reading.

Contentful:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Contentful does not support automatic call-to-action linking features.

"Links are a powerful way to model relationships between content."
Source
Medium:
Manual CTA Linking

Some CMSs have limited capabilities for automatic CTA linking, mainly through advanced custom settings.

"Use the calls-to-action (CTA) tool to create button CTAs, banners, or pop-ups to add to your HubSpot pages. You can also add CTAs to external pages."
Source
"The automation enrollment criteria is "has click [campaign] CTA" and "has completed [campaign] CTA Pop-up form.""
Source

Comments

Find out if the platform supports comments from your users to improve user engagement. This is often a great way to collect feedback and user emails.

Contentful:
No Comments Supported

While Contentful has a comments feature, it's primarily for internal collaboration. It does not support external visitor commenting out of the box.

"The Comments tab allows you to communicate with collaborators in your space by creating comments, replying, and tagging members."
Source
"Entry comments. Users can add comments to an entry. This allows for teams to collaborate and have conversations."
Source
"Contentful's flexible content modeling goes far beyond blog posts. Here’s how you can leverage Contentful and Netlify to create a nested commenting system."
Source
Medium:
No Comments Supported

Medium does not provide an external commenting feature for site visitors. It limits user interaction via internal feedback.

"Medium does not support commenting from site visitors."
Source
"The rules on Medium do not mention comments or discussions from visitors."
Source
"Medium lacks built-in commenting features for external users."
Source

Multi-tenancy

Find out if the platform supports managing multiple clients or projects within a single account. This is useful for agencies, multi-client or multi-project scenarios.

Contentful:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Contentful supports multi-tenancy, allowing users to manage multiple client accounts from a single interface.

"Multi-tenancy architecture means that all our customers and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base that is centrally maintained by us."
Source
"Our solution? A single, unified content platform."
Source
"Contentful's multi-tenancy concept is extensible on all levels and continuously delivers new features."
Source
Medium:
No Multi-tenancy

Medium does not support multi-tenancy; each user operates independently.

"Multi-tenancy is just the same, only worse. Instead of threads competing for shared memory, you've got tenants competing for shared infrastructure."
Source
"Multi-tenancy is an architecture where a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers, with each customer being referred to as a tenant."
Source

What Developers Say

Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Contentful and Medium about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating Contentful:
Medium
Contentful integration is manageable but involves a learning curve and can become costly for larger projects.
Ease of Integrating Medium:
Medium
Integration into existing setups can be challenging due to the need for custom configurations.

Contentful's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Contentful.

Medium's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Medium.

Contentful's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Contentful.

Medium's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Medium.

Content Modelling

Find out how developers model and manage their content with the platform with key highlights and limitations.

Contentful:
Customisable Content Types

Contentful supports content modeling with flexible structure and customizable content types, including various field types and validations.

"A solid content model is the foundation of every great digital project. Your model is the bones of your project; it tells our APIs what kind of content to send to your end application."
Source
"You can set up your content model with the following tools: Visual modeler — Visually build your content model, view the content types and references."
Source
"This guide will lay out a set of best practices that are considered good content modeling patterns."
Source
"Currently, editor interfaces are fully supported in templates. These include all configurations for content type fields."
Source
Medium:
Customisable Content Types

Medium supports content modeling with custom content types and fields including text, media, and references.

"A content model is a collection of content types and their interrelationships."
Source
"A solid content model is the foundation of every great digital project. Your model is the bones of your project."
Source
"Kontent.ai is a content management tool (CMS) that allows managing core content types with flexible models."
Source
"Contentful has a lot of features and flexibility in content modeling."
Source

Custom React Components

Find out if the platform supports custom React components to go beyond the basic HTML components for content.

Contentful:
Custom React Components Supported

Contentful supports custom React components, allowing developers to enhance content editing with interactive components.

"To use custom components in Experiences, you need to register them."
Source
"You can import your own design system components into Experiences to create on-brand digital experiences."
Source
"The Forma 36 Design System and React component library provides a comprehensive collection of UI components."
Source
Medium:
No Custom React Components Supported

Medium does not explicitly support custom React components or a component API for dynamic content.

"Web Components can help you decouple the implementation of your component from the framework/library."
Source
"Design systems are doing much better in sharing an API across design and dev, due in part to rapid advances in design tools."
Source
"Medium frowns on stories containing marketing tactics like affiliate links or aggressive call to actions."
Source

Full Text Search

Find out if the platform supports full text search across multiple fields to help users find content quickly.

Contentful:
Full Text Search Supported

Contentful supports full-text search across multiple fields, allowing users to search content effectively.

"In Contentful, full-text search terms are left anchored...full-text search is built into the standard entry listing endpoint."
Source
"Contentful's full-text search capabilities allow searching across all fields."
Source
"Contentful does include some intriguing full-text search capabilities out-of-the-box that searches across all fields."
Source
Medium:
Full Text Search Supported

Full Text Search is supported across multiple fields including content and metadata.

"Full-Text Search is a powerful feature in MySQL that allows you to search for text within large sets of unstructured data efficiently."
Source
"Full-Text Search employs a series of steps to effectively search through complex text-based data."
Source
"Using a database with built-in search such as MySQL or MongoDB for full text search."
Source
"We now launched a full-text search feature that lets you search across your Firestore collections."
Source
"WordPress's core search gets used when you say https://example.com/?s=searchterm."
Source

Starter Kits

Discover starter kits and templates to help you get started with the platform.

Contentful:
Available

Contentful offers various starter templates including Next.js and Gatsby options.

(Expand section to see a list of Contentful templates and starter kits.)

Medium:
Available

Medium has various templates that help writers format their articles effectively.

(Expand section to see a list of Medium templates and starter kits.)

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Contentful and Medium.

Contentful's Pricing
Free
$0 / forever
- 5 users
- 2 locales
- 1M API calls/month
- Community support
- 1 Intro Space
- Structured content
- Developer tools
Lite
$300 / month
- 20 users
- 4 locales
- 2M API calls/month
- 0.75TB/month CDN
- Technical support
- Extended editorial tools
- Optional Medium Spaces
Premium
$81000 / year
- Custom users
- Unlimited API calls
- Custom CDN
- Dedicated support
- Enhanced governance and security
- Contentful Studio compatibility
Medium's Pricing
Medium Member
$5 / month
- Read member-only stories
- Support writers you read most
- Earn money for your writing
- Listen to audio narrations
- Read offline with the Medium app
- Access our Mastodon community
- Connect your custom domain
- Create your own publications
Friend of Medium
$15 / month
- All Medium member benefits
- Give 4x more to the writers you read
- Share member-only stories with anyone and drive more earnings for writers
- Customize app icon
Medium Member
$60 / year
- Read member-only stories
- Support writers you read most
- Earn money for your writing
- Listen to audio narrations
- Read offline with the Medium app
- Access our Mastodon community
- Connect your custom domain
- Create your own publications
Friend of Medium
$150 / year
- All Medium member benefits
- Give 4x more to the writers you read
- Share member-only stories with anyone and drive more earnings for writers
- Customize app icon

Compare with other technologies

Looking for a better alternative to Contentful & Medium? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!