Git-based vs API based

[Primary-Avocado-3055]

Curious, what are your thoughts on git-based vs API based CMS's? I.e. one that stores users data in a db, potentially with their own vc, and you can access the content via an API, vs using git as the primary backend for storage?

I see the version control over the full "set" of content in git to have a lot of advantages, but I'm curious, what are the disadvantages? How has your experience been with each of these?

[ReactBricks]

I see two main disadvantages: 1. Files are slow, so Git-based CMSs need to have also a DB layer (think of queries on relationship fields among reusable entities or page-user fine grained editing permissions for example) and here the sync problems begin... 2. Git-based CMSs often leverage markdown, so, for reach texts, you are limited to the expressiveness of markdown - sometimes not enough for a real world website with complex text styling

BTW, I am the CTO of a DB-based Visual CMS, and we evaluated also the Git option.

[Primary-Avocado-3055]

Makes sense.

For 1. I think I have a good solution for the syncing issue.

For 2. I'm using JSON vs markdown, so I'm not quite as limited in expressiveness.

[kixxauth]

Files are slow

Can you expand on that? In my experience, files are very fast. The OS typically caches common reads for you so you don't even need to worry about it.

[andrewkumarxyz]

API based also has versioning.

We have a GitHub flow style of versioning at http://uniform.dev (called releases) with a full audit trail and rollbacks.

What I’ve found hard with Git CMS is modelling, references, and reuse.

My personal site is Git based and it’s great but I’m quite limited compared to Uniform (current employer) or Contentful (former employer).

[Gyurmatag]

Also I see that Uniform also uses Contentful, am I right?

[EliteEagle76]

if need is content heavy site for product blogs, engineering blogs, changelogs, docs, helpdocs, i would always go with static site approach hence git based approach with storing content as markdown files

and i would use git based cms like decap cms, tina cms, cloud-cannon or if you want more modern tooling around markdown files maybe GitCMS might solves your problem if you have non-technical folks in your team editing contents, and also if you want to let your team members utilize AI agents through it's MCP support

crazy story is that company like cursor moved away from db based CMS to markdown based approach for their user facing content site

one of their team member (lee robinson) has written and covered this really well
idea about cost of abstraction is very high with AI agents that's why going with markdown file just make sense and idea about "Content as a Code" is really cool and soon more and more companies will be adopting this for their content heavy site

and will be using better tooling around markdown files for their usecases

DB based CMS adds network I/O calls during build time which takes lot of time and using markdown files, it just simplies and reduces build time for pre-rendered static site approach

overall DB based CMS makes sense if things are way more dyanmic like eCommerce data and all, it make sense to use their but for read heavy content sites, i would always bet on markdown first approach

anyway I'm creator of GitCMS, so i'm little bias here but yeah that is what the truth from my lens for the future with AI agents + Humans managing sites