What Kind of CMS Is CrafterCMS? Headless—Plus Everything You Need to Ship Faster

If you’re evaluating content platforms, you’ve likely heard “headless CMS” more times than you can count. CrafterCMS is headless. But it’s also headless “plus.” That means you get all the advantages of an API-first platform and the productivity of an enterprise CMS: rich authoring, templated site development, built-in search and vector capabilities, scriptable APIs, flexible deployment, Git-native versioning, AI-native, and DevContentOps® workflows that bring authors and developers together. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Headless at the Core: API-First, Any Front End, Any Channel

CrafterCMS is designed to power any experience, whether websites, mobile apps, kiosks, OTT, digital signage, and AI-driven assistants. Author once, deliver anywhere through REST and GraphQL. Your front-end teams are free to build with React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, SSGs, native apps, or anything else that suits the project. Because the platform is fully decoupled, authoring and delivery run independently: editors get a safe, productive environment; delivery scales elastically without dragging an admin UI along for the ride.

The “Plus”

Authoring & Templating That Don’t Slow Teams Down

A purely API-only system often leaves editors stranded. CrafterCMS adds a user-friendly authoring studio with in-context preview, drag-and-drop components, workflow, and roles/permissions. For teams that want to ship full sites quickly, templated site development gives you a productive starting point and a path to custom components. Prefer to go all-in on front-end frameworks? Great! CrafterCMS still provides the content model, APIs, live preview, drag/drop building and in-context editing you need, without getting in your way.

You’re not choosing between headless flexibility and editor happiness. You get both.

Render Your Way: CSR, SSR, or Hybrid

Content experiences increasingly blend client-side interactivity with server-side performance and SEO. CrafterCMS supports client-side and server-side rendering so you can optimize for lighthouse scores, cacheability, and interactivity without architectural compromises. Use SSR where it matters (speed, crawlability, personalization at the edge) and hydrate or go fully CSR where that makes sense. The platform lets you pick the right approach per experience.

Built-In Search & Vector Store for Modern Retrieval

Search is table stakes; modern retrieval is the new baseline. CrafterCMS includes a built-in search engine and vector store providing developers search APIs, so you can power lightning-fast site search and retrieval-augmented experiences (RAG) that ground AI responses in approved content. This matters whether you’re building a classic search UX, an intelligent help center, or an AI assistant that cites sources.

Scriptable APIs: Integrate and Extend Without Heavy Lifting

Every organization has unique workflows and data. CrafterCMS offers scriptable API development with Groovy and/or JavaScript, making it easy to create or adapt endpoints, orchestrate integrations, and control request/response shapes. You can expose precisely the APIs your apps need, without forking the core or building brittle one-off services. Pair that with out-of-the-box REST and GraphQL, and you have a clean path from prototype to production.

Git-Based Content Repository: Real Versioning, Real CI/CD

Under the hood, CrafterCMS uses Git as the content store. Every change, including content, templates, media metadata, and configuration, is versioned with commit history. That unlocks:

• Time-machine versioning across the entire repository (not just single items)

• Branch-based workflows and safe experimentation

• Auditable approvals and easy rollbacks

• Standard DevOps tooling for promotion across environments

In short, content behaves like code: predictable, traceable, and automatable.

DevContentOps®: Authors and Developers on the Same Rails

DevContentOps® is CrafterCMS’s operating model for high-velocity teams. Authors and developers share a Git-backed workflow with pull requests, checks, and previews. Developers pull production content down with a git pull, gather feedback, and merge when ready. Publishing is automated and safe, and rollback is a single revert. The result: faster releases, fewer tickets, and a shared definition of “done.”

AI-Native CMS

CrafterCMS gives you the primitives to build AI features safely, from copy assistance and translations to RAG-powered search and conversational experiences, without bolting on a second content system.

1. Ground truth for AI. Your approved, structured content lives in a Git-backed repository with rich metadata, plus a built-in search and vector store. That makes CrafterCMS an ideal source of truth for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG): index content by topic, product, audience, or locale; query via content and vector search APIs; and serve grounded answers that cite sources.
2. Scriptable pipelines. Use Groovy or JavaScript to script API endpoints and automate AI tasks such as draft generation, summaries, alt-text, SEO snippets, translations, and content classification. Run those steps in DevContentOps® workflows: prompts, templates, and policies are versioned in Git; PRs trigger checks; editors review and publish like any other change.
3. LLM Integrations. Leverage pre-built LLM integrations available in the CrafterCMS Marketplace to accelerate content production workflows.
4. Spring AI Developer Support. As a Spring/Java platform, CrafterCMS natively incorporates Spring AI into its platform enabling developers to build generative AI experiences for both content authors and site visitors.

From assistants to personalization. Whether you’re powering a help center chatbot, an in-app assistant, or smart search, CrafterCMS provides the AI-ready content layer so you can deliver useful, accurate and engaging conversational experiences that respect editorial control, compliance, and scale.

Flexible Deployment: Your Cloud, Our Cloud, or On-Prem

CrafterCMS supports multiple deployment models to meet security and compliance needs: run it on your own infrastructure, in your own 3rd-party cloud accounts (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.), in a managed/private SaaS, or fully on-prem. Because authoring and delivery are decoupled, you can isolate editorial systems, scale delivery globally, and apply the right security controls at each tier.

Built for a Composable DXP

CrafterCMS plays perfectly in a composable DXP architecture. Use it as the content backbone alongside your preferred analytics, personalization, commerce, DAM, and experimentation tools. Clean APIs, a Git foundation, and a decoupled runtime make integrations straightforward. You get vendor choice without lock-in, and a platform that can evolve with your stack.

Why Teams Choose CrafterCMS

• API-first flexibility for any front end or digital channel

• Editor-friendly authoring with drag/drop experience building, true in-context editing and more

• SSR/CSR support for performance and SEO

• Search + vector capabilities for modern retrieval and AI use cases

• Scriptable APIs to integrate quickly and safely

• Git-native content for true versioning and CI/CD

• DevContentOps® to align authors, developers, and operations

• Decoupled architecture for scale, security, and resilience

• Flexible deployment to fit your governance model

So, what kind of CMS is CrafterCMS?

It’s a headless “plus” content platform: the openness and performance of headless, plus the productivity features enterprises need to deliver complex, multi-channel experiences at speed.

Want to dive deeper into specific capabilities? Explore the platform features here.