Directus vs XM Cloud

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

Directus
Directus
Directus is a headless CMS and backend platform for managing complex content structures and digital assets, offering customizable solutions for developers and empowering teams to build faster.
XM Cloud
XM Cloud
Meet the CMS that takes your website further, faster. Grow traffic, boost engagement, and drive conversions with AI-assisted authoring, workflows, personalization, and A/B testing - all built in.

What Users Say

See what users who have used Directus and XM Cloud have to say about their overall experience with the product.

Directus's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Directus.

XM Cloud's Key Strengths

Read what users love about XM Cloud.

Directus's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Directus.

XM Cloud's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with XM Cloud.

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What Marketers & Content Creators Say

Hear from the users who uses Directus and XM Cloud daily about their experience with the editors.

Directus's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Directus's editor.

XM Cloud's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about XM Cloud's editor.

Directus's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Directus's editor.

XM Cloud's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about XM Cloud's editor.

Mobile Editing

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

Directus:
Mobile-First Experience

Directus supports mobile content creation via its mobile app and user-friendly interface.

"Layouts provide intuitive displays to view and interact with Items in a Collection."
Source
"Explore the features and benefits of the Directus Mobile App for seamless content management on-the-go."
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"The Directus Studio App serves as a comprehensive no-code interface for managing and presenting data, content, and assets."
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"Directus stands out as a fully open-source platform, designed to be modular and extensible."
Source
XM Cloud:
Limited Mobile Experience

Sitecore XM Cloud allows mobile-first editing with low-code tools, but some features may require desktop for full functionality.

"...easy-to-use visual tools for authoring, A/B testing, and personalization - powered by brand-aware AI copilots."
Source
"...mobile-first approach, allowing us to have a solid base for our build."
Source
"...difficult to create layouts for different breakpoints..."
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.

Directus:
No Automatic Content Linking

Directus does not support automatic related blog linking; only manual relationships are available.

"Directus provides a way to manually link related content but does not have AI-driven auto-linking."
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"Directus emphasizes creating and managing relationships manually for SEO purposes."
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"Discussion highlights the lack of built-in automatic internal linking features."
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"Directus focuses more on policies and access control rather than auto-linking features."
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XM Cloud:
No Automatic Content Linking

XM Cloud does not support automatic linking of related blog posts; linking must be done manually.

"XM Cloud relies on traditional content linking methods without AI-driven automation."
Source
"Linking of related content in XM Cloud needs to be managed manually, not automatically."
Source
"Current capabilities do not include automatic related blog linking, requiring manual setup."
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.

Directus:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Directus does not support automatic linking of CTAs to content through AI features.

"Directus offers a highly flexible API and content management system but lacks a specific feature for automatic CTA linking."
Source
"While Directus has released AI extensions, they do not include features for automatic CTA linking."
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"Traditional CMS architectures, including Directus, are not designed to support AI-driven content strategies like automatic CTA linking."
Source
XM Cloud:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Sitecore XM Cloud does not support automatic CTA linking directly for AI-driven context matching.

"XM Cloud does not have any references to automatic CTA linking capabilities."
Source
"Dynamic placeholders allow unique key generation, but don't automatically link CTAs."
Source
"The official Sitecore documentation and resources do not mention automatic CTA linking."
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.

Directus:
Comments Supported

Directus supports commenting directly on items for team collaboration with mentions and editing options.

"Encourage team collaboration directly within your content for things like approval processes and feedback."
Source
"Comments are a collaboration tool and can be left on items from the sidebar."
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"To create a comment, follow the steps: Navigate to the Content Module, select the desired Collection, select the desired Item and submit your comment."
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XM Cloud:
No Comments Supported

Sitecore XM Cloud does not have built-in commenting features for users to leave comments on content.

"You can add comments to projects, stages, or tasks when collaborating with other users."
Source
"Sitecore XM Cloud focuses on site management, personalization, and performance, lacking user-facing commenting."
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"In the ‘migrations’ I usually think about I’m often looking at an existing Sitecore customer trying to move to XM Cloud, but the fact is that there are a lot of options out there and Optimizely is pushing hard to pull those customers over to their SaaS CMS."
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.

Directus:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Directus supports multi-tenancy through project and role scoping, allowing for isolated environments for different clients.

"The Multi-tenant SaaS starter kit is designed to streamline the backend infrastructure for Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. The user data is setup as a simple project and task as an example only, but you can build whatever you desire."
Source
"Directus supports multi-tenant architectures, ensuring that each Professional Project is isolated within its own container. This approach guarantees dedicated minimum resources."
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"Directus has multi-tenancy in that you can create different projects that each have their own database. Within each project you have the ability to create different roles to manage specific access."
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"Multitenancy is an architecture that allows multiple tenants (e.g., customers) to be managed by the platform. There are two main ways to achieve multitenancy: project scoping and role scoping."
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XM Cloud:
Limited Multi-tenancy

XM Cloud operates as a single-tenant instance; however, the underlying delivery environment supports multi-tenancy.

"XM Cloud runs the Experience Manager environment as a single-tenant instance. The delivery environment..."
Source

What Developers Say

Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Directus and XM Cloud about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating Directus:
Medium
Integration is generally straightforward but requires careful configuration and may involve technical complexities.
Ease of Integrating XM Cloud:
Hard
Integration with Sitecore XM Cloud is notably complex, often requiring additional time and investment, as well as partner assistance.

Directus's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Directus.

XM Cloud's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with XM Cloud.

Directus's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Directus.

XM Cloud's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with XM Cloud.

Content Modelling

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

Directus:
Customisable Content Types

Directus provides robust content modelling capabilities, including custom collections, fields, and relationships.

"The Directus data studio enables no-code configuration and management for any SQL database, with no arbitrary restrictions on how you build your data model."
Source
"Directus collections help you manage your data. Create custom collections, define fields, configure relationships, and leverage features like content versioning."
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"Directus supports creating collections, defining fields, and configuring relationships, forming a comprehensive content model."
Source
XM Cloud:
Customisable Content Types

Sitecore XM Cloud fully supports content modeling with customizable data templates and flexible presentation components.

"Content modeling means creating the schema structure of an element that will be presented on your website. You do this using templates, also known as data templates."
Source
"Sitecore XM Cloud is an entirely new product, focusing on content modeling and APIs."
Source

Custom React Components

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

Directus:
Limited Customization

Directus allows for integration with React using its SDK, but fully custom React components are not natively supported.

"Integrating Directus with React applications provides a powerful combination for building dynamic and real-time web applications."
Source
"Directus provides a set of reusable UI components that can be used when building extensions."
Source
"Custom Modules are completely open-ended components that allow you to create new experiences within the Directus platform."
Source
"Custom Interfaces allow you to create new ways of viewing or interacting with field data on the Item Detail page."
Source
XM Cloud:
Custom React Components Supported

Sitecore XM Cloud supports custom React components through registration, allowing rich interactions ineditors.

"In XM Cloud, developers can bring their own code (BYOC) by referencing an external code base that includes components."
Source
"At the time of writing, XM Cloud Components are new and do not have a full feature set. Because of this, only standard React/Next.js components should be used."
Source
"You can build a component by providing Sitecore managed data to a third party API like Google Maps API."
Source

Full Text Search

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

Directus:
Full Text Search Supported

Directus supports full text search across multiple fields with built-in indexing for enhanced performance.

"Full text search is a powerful feature in Directus that allows users to perform comprehensive searches across their data collections."
Source
"Directus offers robust search capabilities that allow users to quickly find the data they need within their collections."
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"Directus Features: Full Text Search, Role-Based Permissions, Content Management."
Source
XM Cloud:
Full Text Search Supported

Sitecore XM Cloud supports full-text search allowing users to search content across multiple fields.

"Searches for a full-text phrase within a value. For example, searching for 'apple pie' returns items for which the value is 'We made apple pie'."
Source
"Sitecore Search is a cutting-edge, AI-powered, headless content discovery platform, empowering users to craft tailored and predictive search encounters."
Source

Starter Kits

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

Directus:
Available

Directus offers community-maintained templates and premium starter kits for projects.

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

XM Cloud:
Available

Sitecore XM Cloud has various starter kits including Next.js and Angular templates.

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

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Directus and XM Cloud.

Directus's Pricing
Starter
$15 / month
- 1 Studio User Included
- 5,000 DB Entries
- 50,000 API requests
Professional
$99 / month
- 5 Studio Users Included
- 75,000 DB Entries
- 250,000 API requests
Business
$499 / month
- 10 Studio Users included
- 250,000 DB entries
- 1,000,000 API requests
- SSO included
- Support add-on
Enterprise
$0 / custom
- Custom Studio Users
- Custom DB Entries
- Custom API Requests
- Multiple Environments
- Premium Support and SLAs
XM Cloud's Pricing
XM Cloud
$0 / subscription
- Bundled with Pages and embedded personalization
- Includes Headless Services and Experience Edge in a single subscription

Compare with other technologies

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Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!