Strapi Reviews

API Framework / Headless CMS Made easy (and free)

Comments: Honestly this is by far the easiest solution for jumping into the headless CMS world and even better as an API framework to power whatever your needs are; Web, Mobile, Desktop, IOT, and even a smart toaster! The Strapi team is great and works hard to release feature and fix bugs as fast as they can.

Pros:

Strapi is extremely easy to setup Simple database configuration with many choices (Mongo, Postgres, and MySQL) Simple to modify the backend code Getting up and running from zero to a complete API with data in as little as 10 to 20 minutes

Cons:

I do think that more time needs to be spent on building a solid foundation (which the Strapi team are working on) More time needs to be spent testing bugs for all usecases (or some automation for the frontend testing needs to be implemented and I believe that is being done right now) While not an issue with the software itself, I do think that services like Heroku need to be put on the backburner and not pushed as heavily as Strapi is a service, Heroku and other "serverless" environments are not built to handle complex applications. At the same time more user involvment with Pull Requests are something that would greatly help development and bug fixing.

Strapi - a great API builder and a bad site builder

Comments: Generally Strapi is a great tool with the aim to be a robust CMS for large projects. I have use it to build/manage site which include live streaming, media portals and ecommerce. The "managing" part is fine, but most of the advanced functionality has to be coded additionally.

Pros:

Strapi - as the name suggest - is an API builder tool which helps you to manage data that is being consumed by frontends and other apps. This functionality is done very well. Strapi provides hooks and cycles to modify data coming in and out of it. But these need to be programmatically configured. Good thing is the Strapi authentification layer and CDN for images.

Cons:

As Strapi does not provide you with a Frontend it is hard to get the initial concept and add functionality. Every change in the Admin triggers a restart of Strapi and basically means downtime. Sometimes the database gets vacuumed while you try to work with endpoints. This can very frustrating. Same as the responses from Strapi which include nested objects and those are hard to orientate in while consuming the data.

Strapi is a super flexible, low startup cost solution

Comments: Absolutely love it, once I found the answers to some key questions it all just worked, and I could build my first website very rapidly. Strapi was in fact the easiest thing to learn!

Pros:

- The self-hosted option is simply incredible, especially for smaller companies or in our case, non-for-profit - Easy to setup, does what you need without being complicated - Third party integrations make Strapi an extremely flexible solution for many project types - The API is really easy to use, from setup to a working site in mere minutes

Cons:

- Documentation could be improved, especially around production deployment and a few more common use examples in the filtering/populate space ahead of the real complex examples already there e.g. relationships or depth - A type reference to explain how to use or access for example TypeScript types for things like Rich text (blocks). Shouldn't need to find solutions outside Strapi to do this. - This is the same for all CMSs. Cloud hosted plans for small businesses / non-for-profit / infrequently updated sites.

Promising but difficult to deploy and use

Comments: While I was very positive about trying Strapi the Docker image problem soured it and I found alternatives that worked better.

Pros:

Open source, we can host it ourselves, active community, lots of features and extensions.

Cons:

The Docker image is one major version behind but this is not made clear until you've spent hours trying to get it all working and then check the forums.

Strapi wins the HeadlessCMS war

Comments: Absolutely amazing Open-Source product. I often recommend it to colleagues and friends.

Pros:

- Perfect product for any developer or entrepreneur jumping from idea to testing. - Quick setup and launch - Awesome Dashboard that gives you a great overview of your db & data. - Ready-made Auth-system

Cons:

- Customization can be quite challenging and documentation on Services & Controllers needs to be improved. - Lots of free plugins available from the community but few are maintained or updated.

Great for Landing pages

Comments: I have been using Strapi for 3 years and it is a product that I am trying to push to others everytime they need a solution. I mainly use Strapi for frontend site and I rarely use it as an API to an app. But for content management, Strapi beats products like Contentful and Sanity in my eyes because it is open source and you can host it anywhere you want.

Pros:

To be able to create an API for landing pages in a matter of hours. I created many types of section for my landing and I could start integrating my frontend the next day. My site grew ever since and Strapi made it super easy to add more sections and evolve with time.

Cons:

One of the main thing I don't like about Strapi is the fact that it doesn't have a good way to be updated easily. I am using a deployment system and I wish I could update it from the admin panel itself. I need to use the command line and to redeploy everytime there is an update. Updating something frequently should not be something negative, but it is with Strapi because I am always in need to keep it up to date. The only other thing, is the lack of Responsive on the admin panel.

Strapi Experience

Comments: The overall experience was very nice , i used it get cms and backend in nodejs. very easy to use it . Best CMS.

Pros:

1. It gives nice and clean UI CMS 2. regular update and bug fixes 3. auth apis come inbuilt and easy to customize 4. docs are very helpful 5. community is very nice 6. backend is in nodjs and can be customized 7. so many options for plugins and easy to add 8. develop the apis fast

Cons:

1. No support for typescript we have to use javascript 2. no official plugins in vscode which helps in developing 3. the docs for publishing are not much helpful 4. Need some to get familier

Saves me tons of time

Pros:

Easy setup, complete API manager. It saves you sooo much time compared to a "normal" node backend application.

Cons:

The fact that Strapi has a "quick and dirty" image (and name) makes it harder to sell or mention it as part of a solution to a customer. Even though he/she may greatly benefit from it, it takes more than an average amout of convincing them Strapi can easily be considered to be coroporate grade material.

Strapi is great for the open source community

Pros:

Strapi could easily paywall their entire software like many do, but instead contributed an amazing software to the open source community. There are also many starter projects to get started quickly, tutorials, blog posts, and tons of documentation.

Cons:

At the moment, Strapi doesn't work on Vercel. This is unfortunate, but that shouldn't stop anyone from using it. Surely it will be supported in the future!

Yekta's Review

Pros:

Automatic creation of API endpoints based on content types, Role Based Access Control, Authentication, Querying and Media Library features reduces the time of app development.

Cons:

Some parts of the Strapi documentation are not clear. It may be necessary to search the forum and the internet for things that can be easily explained with an additional sentence in the documentation.

Probably the best CMS for developers

Comments: Overall very good, have built many custom implementations powered by Strapi and never lets me down, do wish it was easier to update an older site, but overall very happy!

Pros:

Strapi is highly configurable and very extendable, if you know Node.js there isn't much you cant make it do, I like it for this reason. its also got very good documentation.

Cons:

Upgrading between major versions is very hard, but this is true of most software. Because its free, support isn't really there

"Best Customizable CMS platform."

Comments: This software has a broad range of benefits and it is quite flexible for applications. In addition to this, this software has the best API and is very flexible for configuring the MacOS integrations. So, the premium user interface and easy to install features make it more demanding. The tool contains an intuitive display with the best functionality. All in all, the software is best for use and has multiple advantages. Thus, you will get the best headless CMS with open sources. So, the tool makes it easy for you to control a wide range of monetizing operations.

Pros:

There are multiple benefits of Strapi and the most important one is the backend settings. This software has improved many features and allows the best website interface along with customizable modes. So, you can create the best graphic designs and other routes using this impeccable tool.

Cons:

One of the worst drawbacks of Strapi is the inability of this software to support internalization. Moreover, all alt-tags couldn't be used and it is complicated to use this software. The user should have proper skills to manage the features and keys of this tool. The utmost important modifications that Strapi software needs are the backend setting. The tool doesn't support the typescript backend language which is quite disappointing. So, the documentation process also gets difficult here and the Strapi system needs instant updates that they usually don't provide. Thus, the creators should look upon these issues.

A great headless cms for your MVP

Comments: I became a regular user.
There are few projects in which I do not use strapi, as it proves to be a rapid development helping in the evaluation of the features.

Pros:

It is open-source. It is Restifull but has support for GraphQL It provides the Playground to build and test your queries and mutations. Docker support. All data is yours, that is, you have full control over your database. The project receives frequent investments from large companies. Extremely easy and quick to start a project.

Cons:

Relationships in the database are still a critical and sometimes problematic point. It has no migrations of data. There is no 2FA. It does not delete unnecessary tables and columns from the database. Typescript is not supported.

I'm saving hours daily

Pros:

Earlier I used to create my APIs on ExpressJS and it used to take hell lot of time in creating and testing them. But with Strapi I can create any sort of APIs in just 5-10 minutes. It's that easy!Role Based Access Control, that too in the free plan is a super-power to any business or developer. I really loved it. And now as a freelancer I can create almost any type of web-apps - be it CRM, HRM, Hotel Management system or anything with ease.

Cons:

I wish there were in built aggregator functions in Strapi. That will help developers write custom services and controllers very easily. Additionally, there should be some extra options to change Strapi Branding. Right now we can only change the logo. We should be able to update the color scheme, Brand name and login page template. These additions will be really great!

A good core product with numerous small downsides.

Comments: I used it self-hosted for a couple of personal projects on v3. I had a really good time during setup and for a short time after. The migration to v4 was painful. v4 itself doesn't feel like a big enough upgrade or a robust enough product for it to have been worth it, and each update brings some sort of breaking change.

Pros:

It's really easy to create a data model and have a usable API and admin panel for it. This feature is so good that it's almost worth putting up with all the snags.

Cons:

The migration of code from v3 to v4 codebases was painful. It took several months for basic tooling (like database migration) to be available, and over a year later it is still not as good as it should have been.Migration between versions is not easy (upgrade versions of several dependencies, then find blog posts about migrations, which often ask you to run scripts on your code/ database). This could be automated, surely. Documentation for features often covers only one usecase, and is written in blogpost style. Even on their own documentation (not the guides)Plugins are not simple to write and the documentation on it is not clear. You can allegedly use TypeScript to write plugins but the plugin interface types are not well defined, so you're kind of on your own.You can't use Yarn v3+ with it.Deployment is not straightforward, I guess this is an incentive to use their paid service.

The search is over

Comments: I'm very impressed overall with the simplicity and lack of fluff, bloat features. The ui is clean intuitive and doesn't require extensive understanding of the guys to get going super quickly. The core product gives you more than enough to launch your APIs and there is good documentation that explain how to extend it when needed.

Pros:

I'm building a running related platform that features unique running events around the world. I'm doing this as a part time "gig" because I have full time job. For the front end I settled on react which seems to do the trick. For the backend there were lots of options but my requirements were: easy UI for editors, configurable data model, graphql and an easy way to customize the functionality. In other words, I wanted something that would get me up and running in no time but that I could also fine tune down the road for custom features. After spending a significant amount of time researching hosted, self-hosted, open source and commercial offerings I found strapi. It ticked every one of my requirement boxes and then some. It's even able to run on postgres which is my favorite db. Now I'm working full speed to launch my website and figure out my content instead of spending months trying to build a backend and UI for it from scratch.

Cons:

Would be nice to have an easy launcher or AMI for AWS. Seems like deployment options could be better documented.

Simplest headless CMS to setup, install and deploy

Comments: We've used Strapi for a number of projects from CMS to website manager and ML pipeline. Strapi's API is easier to expose to third-party integrators.

Pros:

It goes without saying but Strapi atm is simplest to setup, install and deploy. Part of the reason is that Strapi has an admin UI that covers a lot of aspects of content and API management but still has room for customizations. Strapi is easy to extend on admin-level and plays nicely with other services due to it exposing the API, webhooks and easy extension on code-level.

Cons:

Limited roles on free/open-source version are only 3. With the newer Strapi versions, they've limit the number of roles and you need to pay even if it's self-hosted.

Better open source option

Comments: Helped deliver some projects faster!

Pros:

I like that it brings ease and speed when creating api and content managers.

Cons:

I find it a little complex to move and customize yet!

A perfect CMS for all our frontend code.

Comments: This is one of best CMS out there in the market.

Pros:

One of the most important feature was graph-ql end points, which was much needed adapter our frontend stack.

Cons:

Doesn't have plugin ecosystem as that of wordpress

Save time and money of building a REST API backend for your app

Comments: We built businesses with this tool by just using it as a simple CMS system. It's content type builder has a great intuitive user interface that helps design schemas really fast.

Pros:

1. You can get a production ready REST API backend for you super duper hit mobile or web app in mere 20 minutes. 2. Ease with which you can select different database types.

Cons:

User management module can have customer role user facing dashboard too.

The CMD Front-end Developpers love.

Pros:

It is true. Strapi is very convenient to use and also customize. It works using plugins and makes it really easy to stay organised. No more will you have to re-write boring redundent API codes.

Cons:

Can't really say anything bad about it right now other than the fact there the learning curve can be slightly big and the lack of videos online when learning.

Amazing experience with Strapi in production

Comments: When you need to tinker around with the source, the official documentation has all the information written in a legible and concise way. At our company, we have created everything from custom views, modified the branding, colors, etc. To put it in perspective: we had a detailed plan on how our API should look like, and we knew what the CMS system needs to have. From start until we were able to deploy to testing phase, it took less than an hour. We created all the custom views and branding modifications, deployed to production in a single day.

Pros:

How easy it is to get started. You literally have a single CLI command, go through the process of setting up the connection to the database, and you're ready to work. From there, the UI/UX is great. During the development, it's important that prototying is FAST, which it is. The customization of views and data types is just the cherry on top. Support for GraphQL comes in form of a plugin that you install with a single click. That's it. Now you have GraphQL. In a single click. The documentation is automatically generates for your API is concise and to the point.

Cons:

I'm waiting for out-of-the-box TypeScript support. It's planned, so I'm not worried. Sometimes, the UI shows an error when updating the component, even though the operation was successful. You just refresh the page and it works.

Well-rounded, flexible and fast

Pros:

The flexibility available in Strapi is fantastic, it's a pleasure to develop and build with. From the lifecycle hooks through to built in auth and a large variety of default field types. There's a really excellent community attached to Strapi too.

Cons:

No real complaints, but I am excited for v4 as the CMS does look a little dated (but still far from bad, and very functional).

Strapi Review

Pros:

Ease of use and that it was JavaScript native.

Cons:

The fact that every time a change is saved, it takes a long time for the server to restart. It needs to restart much much faster.

Strapi will replace yoru CMS

Comments: We've used Strapi in a few small projects and it's looking like a great alternative for our past choices

Pros:

Strapi does a great job managing the basic structure of a CMS and including a lot of backend logic you'll probably use in your application.

Cons:

It's still a infant compared to other CMS applications like Drupal and Wordpress (which supports API-only acess nowadays)