Contentlayer vs Contentful

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

Contentlayer
Contentlayer
Content made easy for developers. Contentlayer is a content SDK that validates and transforms your content into type-safe JSON data you can easily import into your application.
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.

What Users Say

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

Contentlayer's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Contentlayer.

Contentful's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Contentful.

Contentlayer's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Contentlayer.

Contentful's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Contentful.

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What Marketers & Content Creators Say

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

Contentlayer's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Contentlayer's editor.

Contentful's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Contentful's editor.

Contentlayer's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Contentlayer's editor.

Contentful's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Contentful's editor.

Mobile Editing

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

Contentlayer:
Not Suitable for Mobile

Contentlayer lacks explicit features for a mobile-first editing experience; primarily geared towards developer use.

"Contentlayer is a content SDK that validates and transforms your content into type-safe JSON data you can easily import into your application."
Source
"Contentlayer makes working with content easy for developers, focusing on static-site generator integration rather than mobile-first experiences."
Source
"ContentLayer has been a popular choice for developers looking to manage content as data, especially in Next.js applications."
Source
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

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.

Contentlayer:
AI-Powered Related Content

Contentlayer supports automatic links between related blog posts using a content collection feature.

"Contentlayer supports defining relations between content types, enabling automatic linking and related content generation."
Source
"Contentlayer allows for automatic generation of related posts based on defined relations in the content model."
Source
"Contentlayer provides a mechanism to create structured content and manage relationships including automatic internal linking."
Source
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

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.

Contentlayer:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Contentlayer does not support automatic CTA linking for personalized actions. HubSpot enables some level of dynamic behavior with CTAs, but not fully automated linking based on content analysis.

"The button CTA's link will be tied to the page ID and any changes in the page's URL will automatically update the button."
Source
"Calls to action (CTA) are another way to personalize the user experience by linking the functionality of marketing automation."
Source
"Using personalization tokens in CTAs is not built-in HubSpot functionality."
Source
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

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.

Contentlayer:
No Comments Supported

Contentlayer does not support built-in commenting features for users. Custom solutions may be created, but no native support exists.

"Updates will prioritize fixing pressing bugs and introducing new features."
Source
"Users to add comments, or applications supporting user-contributed content."
Source
"We're looking for more examples to better understand the use case before introducing this feature."
Source
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

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.

Contentlayer:
No Multi-tenancy

Contentlayer does not support multi-tenancy for managing multiple client accounts.

"Contentlayer is a content SDK that validates and transforms your content into type-safe JSON data you can easily import into your application."
Source
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

What Developers Say

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

Ease of Integrating Contentlayer:
Medium
Integration with Contentlayer is relatively straightforward for developers familiar with Next.js but presents challenges with version compatibility.
Ease of Integrating Contentful:
Medium
Contentful integration is manageable but involves a learning curve and can become costly for larger projects.

Contentlayer's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Contentlayer.

Contentful's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Contentful.

Contentlayer's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Contentlayer.

Contentful's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Contentful.

Content Modelling

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

Contentlayer:
Customisable Content Types

Contentlayer supports flexible content modelling with custom content types and fields like title, date, and body.

"Flexible content modelling through its configuration file."
Source
"Flexible content modelling allows you to structure your content in a powerful way."
Source
"Contentlayer allows for flexible content modelling through its configuration file, supporting custom content types."
Source
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

Custom React Components

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

Contentlayer:
Custom React Components Supported

Contentlayer supports custom React components via MDX, allowing marketers to embed them in content.

"You can override built-in HTML elements and create your own custom React components using the components prop of the MDXContent component."
Source
"Use custom React components to render and style certain types of content; Embed React components directly into your content using MDX."
Source
"Using custom components with Next Contentlayer is similar to Next MDX. You can define a components object and pass it to your MDX content."
Source
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

Full Text Search

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

Contentlayer:
Full Text Search Supported

Full text search allows searching across multiple fields in a blog using Contentlayer.

"Full text search enables searching through content data efficiently."
Source
"The way blog posts should be stored in the database should make them amenable for search (full-text, search by containing image/video ...)."
Source
"This update indicates support for continued features, including full text search capabilities."
Source
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

Starter Kits

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

Contentlayer:
Available

Multiple starter kits and templates are available for Contentlayer.

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

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.)

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Contentlayer and Contentful.

Contentlayer's Pricing
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

Compare with other technologies

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