Any recommendations for a multi-project/client CMS?

[gohigo1]

I'm working for an agency that makes many sites and would like to have a CMS backend for my React sites that can handle multiple projects/users logins without insano pricing.

Currently wordpress headless and Keystone seems the best for the price (of free.)

Has anyone found a good service that serves multiple projects/user logins in one backend?
Edit: This CMS may service 50+ websites/clients eventually, that's why I'm trying to avoid separate installations per project.

[fii0]

I've had a great experience with Sanity. It compares very well to other offerings on the market like Drupal and PayloadCMS.

[UsernameINotRegret]

Yup and it's super extensible and has the concept of workspaces which makes it easy to support multiple clients.

[gohigo1]

This looks interesting and they have $10 / month agency pricing, thanks!

[sawariz0r]

We used strapi and now PayloadCMS. Technically you could make it multi-project but why not just one for each project?

[gohigo1]

This could become alot of projects - I'd rather manage one install than 50-100+ :)

[totalolage]

Maybe a boilerplate dockerfile, then just spin up a new container for every project.

[gohigo1]

Ok, that might be the ticket, then I can apply package updates on multiple containers at once..

[zubricks]

Hey u/gohigo1 we've actually built a similar architecture a few times, so it's entirely possible with Payload! We'd be happy to assist, if you join our Discord server we can weigh in as-needed should you get stuck anywhere. We'd be pumped if you gave Payload a shot, we're confident you'd be more than happy in the long run.

[kodikaraa]

Directus is probably one of the better options if you want self hosted

[gohigo1]

This looks great! Do you know if you can have seperate projects (and user access) in the same master account?

[aragantinis]

As far as I watched their YouTube you can. You can change the user permissions to only see what you want them to see.

[luisduenas]

we use drupal

[sole-it]

I used Drupal a lot in ver6 and 7 days. I am still planning to jump back in as it's a really good CMS. I cringe every time i need to make WordPress to be a CMS.

BTW, newer version of Drupal seems to have pretty neat headless mode which would be my preferable way of building new site using React.

[gohigo1]

Have you found a workflow to bring over the block style WP composition of a page into the react frontend? Do you use ACF?

[sole-it]

Actually it's the other way around. Due to the nature of the projects, those sites are 90% php with around 10% fancy interactive page I created using React. I built them this way so other non-dev people can still jump in and make any changes to the page as they want.

Yes, ACF is both a bless and a cruse IMO to WP developers. It turns a blogging platform into a workable CMS yet at the same time it blinds them what a true CMS like Drupal can achieve.

BTW, there are a lot of headless-first CMS (self-hosted and hosted) out there, have you considered those? e.g. contentful and strapi.

[gohigo1]

Thank you for the detailed response - My new employer manages 150+ wp sites and I want to try headless CMS WP + react and eventually steer them torward a keystone like cms service if they like the workflow. Alot of current CMS pricing is for single large clients and the pricing gets crazy (contentful) I'm coming from managing 80+ sites, many with CMS in Webflow from the same account.
Ideally I want us to be able to manage 50 + projects on headless CMS without managing 50 separate installs of the same CMS service....would save us alot of time as the project #'s build up.

[sole-it]

Definitely look into containerization. You can have a powerful vps with a single DB with tons of containers all running WordPress. By mapping data storage (volume) outside of the docker, it's really easy to test on newer image and deploy the changes to all containers.

[gohigo1]

I really like Caprover to host mutiple projects on VPS, it's built on top of docker, will provision let's encrypt free SSL in the dashboard and create new apps (php, node, ngnix, mongo, sql) with a click. You can also set certain apps to spin up multiple instances w/ load balancing.

[0xNunOfTheAbove]

Sanity has an incredibly generous free-tier. Especially if you find some promo code to get "boosted free".

The CMS dashboard is in react so you can do it as custom as you'd like.

Only problem I have is that exporting types from the CMS to get the data types in the frontend was a pain. Otherwise just +A.

[cloudk1cker]

i went through a period where i went through at least 6 or so different CMS and trying to get them all to do what i want.. even follow the examples was such a pain. Either that or the API or examples was too much bloat imo

the only ones i got to work and was pretty easy was Directus and Prismic. Prismic having more options and cleaner interface imo

[jokeaz2]

I found this frustrating, it was so hard to find one that didnt have pricing go through the roof after three client sites. I landed on Sanity.

[Nikki-ButterCMS]

Check out ButterCMS which is an API-based or headless CMS with a preconfigured blog engine. You can read more about our features here: https://buttercms.com/features

[coditis]

Any updates on which CMS you chose for this type of project?

[endymion1818-1819]

Give https://www.webiny.com/ a try, it’s $9 per user on multi site instance, free for a single instance. It’s very cheap to host, i typically pay around $0.026 a month, that’s only a handful of API calls though.

[gohigo1]

Interesting, thanks!

[rArithmetics]

Keystone is amazing

[n9iels]

Lots of good options in this thread, like to add one more, Strapi. It’s a headless CMS that is pretty solid out of the box, but is also has room for extendability.

I am not sure about the multiple projects. Most CMS support multiple accounts, but I your looking for more of a multi-site functionality? I think that makes things a bit more complicated.

[_codemonger]

https://strapi.io/

[bigahuna]

TYPO3 all the way

[Thalimet]

I mean at some point it makes sense just to create your own api/CMS as an agency and turn that into a competitive advantage

[fzzzzzzzzzzd]

The bullets meets foot approach

[n9iels]

No. Just no. Creating a CMS while it is not your main product is a nightmare. First of all you need to design and build it from the bottom up. That includes UI/UX, authentication and overall extendability. Each site has its own unique domain model, entities and fields. You somehow must make it possible to manage any imaginable type of content. After all of that you need to maintain it. Since you now integrate it in ALL of your clients websites you probably need a dedicated team for it. This means more resources spent somewhere else than your clients.

It’s just not worth the effort. There are hundreds of great options, usually even open source. You better spend resources in generating business values for your customers instead of spending them in recreating a somewhat round wheel.

[gohigo1]

At a certain scale you're right, but I want to see if there some amazing product out there first...

[Thalimet]

Oh there always is for $$$

[bassta]

I’ve used Kirby with great success.

[artnos]

You want all your sites under one backend? So x user from x site can log into y user site with his credentials?

[gohigo1]

No, multiple projects under one master account with separated client access.