How is Contento Different?

The world of Content Management Systems is a crowded one. This is not surprising. As Nick Huss claimed in his article How Many Websites Are There in the World [1] , there are currently around 1.14 billion of which an estimated 197 million are deemed active. A staggering 10,500 new websites are created every hour. Not a bad Total Addressable Market (TAM) then for Contento?

However, we need to dig a little deeper when it comes to how these websites are powered. There are consumer sites and business sites, and within the swathes of business sites, there are those for local businesses and those for larger businesses appealing to an international audience.

Take Headless CMS [What is a Headless CMS?] as one example. It is a relatively new category that represents a small but fast-growing segment, popular with larger business websites.

When it comes to choosing a Headless CMS option you are signaling you are a business user - after all, there are a lot of entry-level basic CMS options for a basic website with nominal features.

Taking this a step further there are two major camps when it comes to the market Contento is looking to appeal to.

Those who have already moved to a Headless CMS solution and those who have not.

For those who have already moved, Contento represents a compelling alternative. Several well-funded competitors in the Headless CMS space are growing quickly, however, our differentiated feature set makes us an attractive alternative to some of these. Similarly, one of the market leaders has an aggressive pricing strategy many fall foul of leading to acquisitions of price gouging.

For those unaware of the Headless CMS world, we believe that Headless represents a more solid approach to managing websites, as reflected by the growth of the category, and here at Contento we intend to feature in the decision set of those looking to select from competing alternatives.

A traditional approach to building a website entailed the use of a CMS like WordPress. WordPress is used by 43% of the top 10 million websites [2] as of October 2021. After that, there is a long tail of hundreds of other suppliers, from Webflow to Squarespace to Wix and many more.

They all offer different value propositions and typically align around certain features, as well as different use cases be that personal or business use. Depending on what you are trying to achieve you can navigate through the various options.

Taking “business websites” as a category, the choice will often include the likes of Shopify in your decision set if you run a shopping cart for example, or WordPress if you approach a local web agency to build a basic site for your business.

The decision as to which route to go down can also vary depending on the actors involved. These typically include the CEO, CTO, CMO, or an external agency depending on the context.

There are of course Pros and Cons for the different approaches, which tend to get amplified depending on who is making the argument. A WordPress-only agency will naturally pitch the benefits of WordPress as the natural leader worldwide (which is, of course, true) but when the decision is viewed through the lens of a fast-growing SaaS scale-up these benefits are often not as compelling. When it comes to B2B and SaaS it has historically been the CTO championing Headless CMS given its popularity amongst the developer community.

Is it any wonder that when faced with the sheer volume of options, CMOs struggle to choose?

So what makes Contento different from the various participants within the Headless CMS space?

1- Built for Marketing Teams

Take a look at the websites of most of the leading Headless CMS providers. The websites are targeting Chief Technology Officers (CTOs). The look and feel is aligned with developers, as is the language and the messaging. It is not a safe territory for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs).

This is our first point of differentiation. Our primary use case is the marketing team. Our product (and positioning) will appeal firstly to non-technical decision-makers while also ensuring the tech team are happy with the technology.

2- Focused on Websites

One of the leading benefits espoused by many of the Headless CMS competitors is the notion of omnichannel. As one of the leading provider’s references:

A headless CMS simplifies and streamlines operations by allowing a business to manage content for all of their digital products — website, app, social channel, mall kiosk, etc. — from a single, centralized content hub. Content can be optimized and quickly delivered to many different channels at once to support new product launches, in-person events, holidays, sales, and even real-life events.

We think the generic CMSs are making life difficult for content managers who are primarily managing the content on a website. This is why Contento is different - we actually make the primary use case, websites, our focus. This allows us to provide a much better experience than our generic competitors who don't understand concepts like SEO. We have SEO baked in. And we can still provide omnichannel content.

Thus, our focus is exclusively on using Headless CMS to manage websites and as a result, our feature set is aligned with that goal, be it through the easy-to-understand user interface, the powerful SEO module, or the integrations with 3rd party review sites like G2/ Capterra.

3- Designed for B2B and SaaS Scale-ups

Most Headless CMS providers offer their solution as a ‘horizontal offering’ with no concern as to whether the customer is B2C, B2B, or an agency.

We are unashamedly B2B focused, and within that broad category, we are seeking to meet the needs of SaaS scaleups primarily.

Do they have unique needs?

Most B2B or SaaS companies need features that others don’t value as much be that

• Baked in SEO

• Optimized for Lead Generation

• Gated Content, form submissions, and CRM integrations

• Beautiful design

• Blazingly fast websites

• API integrations with complementary tools like G2 and Capterra

• Simple intuitive interface

• Built for developers

In summary, Headless CMS’s continue to grow in popularity. We believe that the primary use case of Headless CMS should be for managing websites and by focusing on that use case we have developed features our competitors have not. Many of our competitors are 5-10 years old, and we benefit from developing by also learning from many of their mistakes.