DatoCMS vs Contentful

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

DatoCMS
DatoCMS
Visit DatoCMS for the most complete, user-friendly, and performant Headless CMS. Manage online content from a central hub and distribute it via API without legacy constraints.
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 DatoCMS and Contentful have to say about their overall experience with the product.

DatoCMS's Key Strengths

Read what users love about DatoCMS.

Contentful's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Contentful.

DatoCMS's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with DatoCMS.

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 DatoCMS and Contentful daily about their experience with the editors.

DatoCMS's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about DatoCMS's editor.

Contentful's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Contentful's editor.

DatoCMS's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about DatoCMS'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.

DatoCMS:
Limited Mobile Experience

DatoCMS offers a functional mobile interface for content creation, but improvements are needed for a better mobile-first experience.

"DatoCMS is a headless CMS equipped with all the features presented above that a mobile CMS should have."
Source
"Dato’s mobile interface is functional. Again, some tweaks could make the mobile experience more pleasant."
Source
"DatoCMS provides content as a service. This means it delivers content through an API, which can be consumed by various front-end systems such as websites, mobile apps, or other internet-connected platforms."
Source
"DatoCMS is a cloud-based headless CMS designed to work with websites, mobile apps, and server-side applications of any kind."
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.

DatoCMS:
No Automatic Content Linking

DatoCMS does not support automatic linking of similar blog posts for SEO.

"Automatic linking of related blog posts is not mentioned as a feature."
Source
"Inverse relationships allow for manual linking between content types, but not automatic 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.

DatoCMS:
No Automatic CTA Linking

DatoCMS does not support automatic CTA linking; however, it allows modular content creation.

"DatoCMS allows the definition of re-usable 'Blocks' for CTAs, but lacks explicit automatic linking features."
Source
"In DatoCMS, users can create landing pages with CTAs but are required to manually link them."
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.

DatoCMS:
No Comments Supported

DatoCMS does not support external commenting features for site visitors. Comments are limited to internal collaborators via plugins.

"A plugin that allows you and your project collaborators to leave comments under a record."
Source
"DatoCMS does not allow content editors to add comments to content entries."
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.

DatoCMS:
Multi-tenancy Supported

DatoCMS supports multi-tenancy, enabling agencies to manage multiple client accounts with unique content.

"DatoCMS is a cloud-based headless CMS that provides all the benefits and features you have just seen and much more. It was designed to work with static websites, mobile apps, and server-side applications."
Source
"They needed a platform that could manage completely separate brands, with their own segmented markets, price lists, inventories, promotions, and customers."
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 DatoCMS and Contentful about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating DatoCMS:
Medium
Users report that DatoCMS is relatively easy to integrate, but there are some hurdles with customization and initial setup.
Ease of Integrating Contentful:
Medium
Contentful integration is manageable but involves a learning curve and can become costly for larger projects.

DatoCMS's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with DatoCMS.

Contentful's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Contentful.

DatoCMS's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with DatoCMS.

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.

DatoCMS:
Customisable Content Types

DatoCMS has extensive content modelling features, including a variety of field types like text, media, modular content, and blocks.

"Models are composed of several field types - where each field serves a specific purpose for accepting data (such as the title, slug, featured image, etc.)."
Source
"The Modular Content field is used to define a dynamic area for richer page layouts, allowing writers to choose among various blocks."
Source
"Blocks allow you to define complex and repeatable structures that can be embedded inside records, providing significant expressive freedom."
Source
"DatoCMS has advanced content modelling capability using the unique Modular Content field."
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.

DatoCMS:
Custom React Components Supported

DatoCMS allows custom React components through its Plugin SDK and functionalities.

"DatoCMS plugins can be built using React, allowing for extensive customizations."
Source
"A set of components and utilities to work faster with DatoCMS in React environments."
Source
"You can also use our <StructuredText> component to render it."
Source
"You can implement custom components to render in modals."
Source
"The react-datocms Image component is used for responsive images in React."
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.

DatoCMS:
Full Text Search Supported

DatoCMS supports full-text search across multiple fields using its Site Search API.

"Our Content Management API offers a REST endpoint to perform search requests."
Source
"I have created my own search index of DatoCMS data in JSON file, by using DatoCMS API."
Source
"DatoCMS Site Search is a way to deliver tailored search results to your website visitors."
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.

DatoCMS:
Available

DatoCMS offers several starter kits and templates for quick project setup.

(Expand section to see a list of DatoCMS 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 DatoCMS and Contentful.

DatoCMS's Pricing
Free Plan
$0 / month
- 1 collaborator
- 300 records
- 200MB file storage
- 10GB/month bandwidth
- 100k API calls/month
Professional Plan
$149 / month
- Up to 10 collaborators
- 100k records
- 500GB file storage
- 1TB/month bandwidth
- 1M API calls/month
- Includes 10 locales
- Supports 11 projects
- Basic support
Enterprise Plan
$0 / custom
- Custom pricing
- Dedicated support
- Enhanced security features
- Higher limits on resources
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 DatoCMS & Contentful? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!