ApostropheCMS Reviews

A bit of a backstory why we started using ApostropheCMS first. Most of our projects, or more specifically, our clients, require a way to easily change content on the site i.e. text, images, styles, etc. Well, that’s an obvious notion or requirement, you would think. However, if you are used to working with front-end frameworks such as Vue or React, content is either managed directly via a database or, in better cases, there is a middleware/API. Craft, Sanity, Contentful and others from the JAMstack ecosystem are examples of such CMS tools that can be “plugged in” and allow the end-user to manage content within a friendly (-ier) interface. Those are great but take time to implement from a development standpoint. We could potentially opt-in for so-called “closed gardens” such as Wix or Squarespace which are technically full-fledged WYSIWYG editors. Those are great for fast website developments. However, they have almost zero flexibility in terms of customization. Webflow doesn't cut it either since it is limited on how data are handled (e.g. no internationalisation) and more importantly, you cannot tweak the code in a way you like.

And then there is WordPress, the CMS that around one-third of the current Internet’s websites are built on. WordPress is a bit of a monster with its large library of plugins. On the one hand, it can do many things well if you know which plugins to use and how to use them effectively in conglomeration. But both the user and the developer can hit walls (or get lost) when they seek custom functionalities that WordPress itself or its array of plugins does not offer.

We think that ApostropheCMS fills the gap between easy to use interface and still providing freedom to the developer to add custom scripts, libraries, frameworks, etc. as well as modify the underlying source code. We should pause here for a bit and truly appreciate how ApostropheCMS handles the “content management”. It is a textbook example of a WYSIWIG editor with in-context/in-page editing capabilities. There is no separate dashboard application to access the data - most data can be changed via a modal window or directly on the page. It is as intuitive as you would expect - select a text and rewrite it. Or need to upload an image for your blog or build a form? No problem! Of course, it’s not always so simple, but that’s where the developer can shine by making necessary changes in the code and adding almost any feature required by the end-user. There are no limits in place as the whole platform is built with popular software packages (most notably Node.js, Express, Nunjucks and MongoDB).

Moreover, behind the ApostropheCMS project stands a great team of people who are attentively listening to their users as well as to a growing developer community. Any pressing issues can be discussed with the core team on a Discord channel. And any feature additions or fixes can be proposed on a GitHub repository. Exactly what you would expect from a collaborative community that is constantly pushing the (open-source!) platform to higher standards.

ApostropheCMS is excellent at what it can do by default. However, once there is a need to add or extend functionality, the real challenge begins. In most cases, we need to dive deep in order to get certain data (that are generally not available via the Nunjucks data variable) from the database. At the moment, we have to extend the `construct()` function to achieve that. It would be nice to have a Vuex style data store and an Axios style data fetching on the client-side (or possibly even on the server-side?). Or, in other words, a more straightforward and more universal CRUD data operations system. Unlike other frameworks, we used to get lost in the lifecycle of the application. Some of our junior colleagues were often unsure what parts of the code are server-side and what parts were client-side. Also, there are so many methods for each module (+ consider inheritance) used across the project. It takes time for the developer to grasp their operation and/or purpose fully. Indeed the learning curve is relatively steep to use ApostropheCMS effectively. In the end, it comes down to code readability and extensibility that we think could be improved. We would like to stress that this is our experience with A2; A3 may be taking a better approach. It is also important to note that Apostrophe’s documentation is well-written, and it greatly helps to navigate through the “inner workings” of the established system.

We are usually building marketing sites with high amounts of content. It is much easier for the user/client to keep track and manage the content contextually. ApostropheCMS comes fairly unopinionated on how you build the components system. We want to give our clients the option to modify pretty much anything they desire i.e. page layout, component styles, datasets, etc. So, we created a library of essential components (a.k.a. template system) that offer such options. Some examples would be: button, container, spacer, tabs, video player and many others. It is enough to build a whole page without having to write any custom code. It is, of course, not always so simple as more advanced features require additional coding - especially for a global menu or custom data manipulations or data fetching. We also normally plug in external libraries to simplify and speed up the development process while providing solid and complete functionalities for the end-user.

The capability of adapting the CMS to the client desires.

From the developer side, the internal structure is really awesome, it let a really quick development without putting at risk the performance.

From the editor side, the administration bar is really easy to understand and to manage mostly of the content from there.

From the editor side, the live edition of the widgets on the web can be confusing, especially when the website has various widget levels.

From the developer side, permissions management is sometimes confusing and hard to manage efficiently.

In our company we're making websites oriented to medical solutions, and also we're using Apostrophe as a Headless CMS for our mobile apps.

For our conveniences is really useful the capabitily that Apostrophe has for using it only as Headless CMS, only as a Web Content Management or both.

The flexibility and headless mode makes the development of API-led content delivery rapid.

Could have a larger ecosystem with more client SDKs etc.

CMS and headless CMS over API development.

Intuitive HTML editor. Fast editing and extremely user-friendly.

I wished the coding was cleaner with the WYSIWYG features.

I need efficient yet modern webdesign. Predictive typing is excellent compared to a basic text editor.

ApostropheCMS is incredibly easy to extend/change. I've used multiple other CMS platforms in the past, but one of the most significant improvements when switching to Apostrophe was the reduced time for feature development. The developers very clearly had customization in mind when the framework was built, as changing existing modules and adding new ones is fast and very easy.

The built-in modules for user management and permissions are also fantastic and exactly what I've needed for my projects. Overall, this is one of the few software frameworks I've had fun using, and look forward to building new modules for. The system the developers have built for extending existing modules and creating new ones is absolutely fantastic, and is much easier to understand than other CMS frameworks I've used.

Some of the documentation on UI/front-end component usage/extension is a bit limited, but nothing that can't be figured out on your own. I also wish there was a widget/plugin system to publish customized bundles of code publically and add them via an interface in the application, instead of only adding packages via NPM.

ApostropheCMS allowed me (an individual developer) to build multiple websites/membership management systems for a few different non-profits that I work with. Importantly, it allowed me to have a very fast development timeline, while also letting the non-profits themselves manage content and information on the website, saving me a huge amount of time. Any features/new development I do in Apostrophe also takes to tend 1/2 or 1/4 as long as it used to in other equivalent CMS frameworks such as Wordpress and EpiServer.

I found Apostrophe CMS while evaluating the field of solutions that support headless publication to other systems like Gatsby. I have a strong professional motivation to know and work with CMSs like Apostrophe, and therefore have seen a fair number of them. I know that content editors like the live editing view where they see changes happening immediately.

I'm not a Node developer, so I wouldn't invest in learning to develop on Apostrophe CMS myself, unless I was also ready to invest in my Node.js skills.

It fits my criteria of having an Open Source program that also has commercial support and backing, while maintaining a strong contributor community. It solves the problem of intuitive content management without inheriting decades of technical debt, or architectures that were conceived of before mobile and multi-channel were the norm.

The comfortness and easyness of the platform is so amazing and intuitive.

The tools available in this are best custom solutions available for the most attractive and engaging content for web trafficing.

Seamless and streamlined development features for outstanding results.

Has the capability to get and modify the processing framework and make changes to the content in the most appropriate manner.

The widgets views are sometime laggy and does not show proper accurate results.

Due to larger data importing and processing, the interface gets clunky sometimes.

The softwares great developing features are helping us to generate the professional and customer interacting content for our web sites. This has enhences our web services for our customers.

Apostrophe provides many core features and additional packages that save you time when you need to stand up or prototype a site quickly. The high quality of the feature set will serve you well, and if anything is missing, you can always access the underlying framework and use express or mongo directly. It is very easy to work with.

Integrating express error reporting tools such as AWS-XRay or Sentry can require modifying the framework source rather than having a clear integration path.

We were able to solve two needs with ApostropheCMS. We needed a marketing site built on NodeJS and Javascript technologies that consisted of several templates and reusable components and the ability for designers to insert custom HTML for individual pages. ApostropheCMS supported this out of the box, and we were able to stand up a site relatively quickly. The blog integration was full of useful features, and we were able to import a WordPress blog from an existing site into ApostropheCMS with relatively little work. We also needed a headless CMS to power a Vue web app, and the headless module for ApostropheCMS handled that wonderfully.

In-context (on-page) editing, localization capabilities (requires workflow module), posibility of deep-nesting of components to achieve elaborate component taxonomies, great internal architecture, front-end-developer-friendly stack, ease of maintenance, ability to decouple the application from media storage (AWS S3-based solution available).

Permissions and access control capabilities allow for fine-grained control but are a bit confusing to set-up initially. It would be great if the Admin UI could be customized according to a user's needs - there are hacky ways to do this in the current version using over-rides and I believe the next major version is planning to implement this natively.

Try it with a reasonably sized website (~50 URLs). Don't be too concerned about the fact that it's still in its second version and by the smaller community (relative to bigger players in this space) - they're growing rapidly and the plans for the next version look great. The team is active and helpful in their online chat room and forums. Bug-fixes are quick and the code is very easy to contribute to. Their enterprise support plan is also a great value if your organization is very serious about moving fast.

Apostrophe is a CMS that can be tested, implemented and rolled-out rapidly, and at scale. Core features are solid and the APIs and architecture are quite straightforward. In our implementation, we were able to rapidly migrate around 22 of the 40-50 websites that are owned by our organization (~2500 URLs) in a span of 3 quarters.

What brought Michelin Group to this CMS framework is a blend of modern technology and smooth admin experience. Its robust full-javascript open source stack is quite flexible and extendable, as experienced by our in-house development team. The admin tools have been extended as we grew bigger in scope, and currently allows for worldwide deployment in up to 50 countries and multitenancy operating model.

Finally, we enjoy a strong support from the ApostropheCMS core team and feel a willingness to scale up with respects to both open source vision and Enterprise-class ambitions.

If you just look at ApostropheCMS as a mere content management system, the learning curve to master its development may look steep, due to the recent technologies it leverages (NodeJS, MongoDB, etc.), as opposed to the more popular dev. languages (PHP) underlying the usual CMS systems. The required development skills may thus be less popular among the developer community. However when you look at ApostropheCMS as a framework — which it eventually is — the development learning effort is definitely worth the flexibility it brings.

- start small, and build your operating model as you grow bigger

- invest in development skills to master underlying technical stack

- leverage the open source stack as much as possible and do the specific dev. only when necessary

- build strong links with the ApostropheCMS core team, leverage their support and share your roadmap

Through its digital factory, Michelin has been extensively using ApostropheCMS for the last three years with most satisfaction. From a couple of small websites to our biggest, brand/country web platforms undergoing deployment all over the world, the reach of ApostropheCMS within our internal web ecosystem has been growing continuously and the solution currently powers up to 100 websites (and counting).