Short answer: for a small business site where you want to own the hosting and the data, Payload or Strapi, self-hosted, are the realistic options. Contentful makes sense if you want a vendor to run the content platform and you have budget and a reason to pay for that. None of them is the best for everyone.
Disclosure. SquadLoad builds on Payload. That is a bias, and you should weigh this post accordingly. We have not benchmarked these three products against each other, and nothing below is a measured result. Prices and features are as published at the time of writing (2026-10) and change often, so check the linked pages.
What are we actually comparing?
All three are headless content management systems: an admin area where people edit content, and an interface (API) that your website or app reads from. The difference that matters most to a small business is not the feature list. It is who runs it, and who holds your content.
- Payload is open source under the MIT license and designed to be self-hosted. It installs directly into a Next.js app, so the admin and the website can live in one codebase. It supports MongoDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite.
- Strapi has a free, MIT-licensed Community Edition you host yourself, plus paid self-hosted plans and a hosted Strapi Cloud.
- Contentful is a hosted service. You rent the platform and your content lives there.
Who hosts it, and who owns the data?
If you self-host Payload or Strapi, the database and the media files sit on a server that you hold the account for. If a developer disappears, another developer can take over because the code, the database and the server are yours. That is the main reason we favour self-hosted options.
With Contentful, your content lives in Contentful's service. That removes server upkeep, but it means your site depends on their account, their pricing and their terms. Ask how you would export every entry and every asset, and in what format, before you sign up.
A note on Payload specifically: Payload has joined Figma. Its announcement says it stays open source under MIT, can be hosted anywhere Next.js runs, and that new Payload Cloud deployments are currently paused while existing projects continue. For a self-hosted build this changes little. If you were planning to use Payload's own cloud hosting, it is a factor.
How does the pricing model differ?
The models differ more than the numbers. At the time of writing (2026-10):
- Payload: no licence fee for the open source software. Your costs are hosting, the build, and maintenance. Payload Cloud is not taking new projects.
- Strapi self-hosted: the Community Edition is free. The Growth plan is listed at $45 per month including 3 seats, with extra seats at $15 per month, adding features such as live preview and releases. Enterprise is priced on request.
- Strapi Cloud: listed at $35 per month (Starter), $90 (Pro) and $450 (Business), with limits on API requests, storage and bandwidth that rise by tier. Extras are billed on top.
- Contentful: hosted and priced by plan, with usage limits on things like users, records and API calls. Its help pages say the Free plan is meant for testing and learning, not commercial use. We could not retrieve the current price list while writing, so open the pricing page yourself and check what your expected content volume and traffic would cost.
Two questions apply to all of them. What does it cost when the site grows, and what does it cost if you want to leave? A free licence is not a free website: you still need hosting, backups, updates and someone responsible for them.
What is the editing experience like?
We will not rank editor interfaces, because that is a matter of taste and of how your content is modelled. A good editing experience depends mostly on the developer setting up sensible fields, clear labels and a preview, not on the brand of CMS.
What to do instead of trusting a review: ask the developer to set up a demo with your real content type (a service page, a product, a blog post). Let the person who will edit it do three real tasks: change a heading, add an image, publish a translation. If they hesitate, fix the model before launch.
Features that matter to non-technical editors, to check for in any of the three: live preview before publishing, draft and published states, scheduled publishing, roles and permissions, and how multiple languages are handled.
What is the developer experience, and how locked in will I be?
For a developer, the key facts are these:
- Payload lives inside the Next.js app. One repository can hold the website and the CMS. It supports SQLite, which suits small sites on a single server; its documentation calls the SQLite adapter production-ready.
- Strapi runs as a separate application next to your frontend. Its pricing page lists PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB as supported databases, so check which database fits your hosting.
- Contentful is accessed through its API from your frontend; there is nothing to host for the CMS part.
Lock-in comes in layers. The licence (MIT for Payload and the Strapi Community Edition) lets you keep running and modifying the software. The data is portable if you can export it. The code is yours if your contract says so. A hosted service can still be left, but the cost of leaving is higher because your content and access are on their side. Whatever you choose, make sure the site's content model is documented, so that a different developer can read it.
Which one is right for which situation?
A rule-of-thumb list, not a ranking:
- You want to own everything and a developer will maintain it: Payload or Strapi self-hosted.
- You want the CMS and the website as one codebase in Next.js: Payload fits that shape directly.
- You want a separate CMS application that you can run yourself or have hosted by the vendor: Strapi.
- You want no server work for the CMS and have budget for a vendor plan: Contentful.
- You have a marketing team inside a larger company with its own approval needs: a hosted enterprise plan may fit better than anything we would build.
When this is not for you
If your site is five pages that change twice a year, you do not need any of these. A simple site generator, or a well-maintained WordPress, is cheaper and easier. We would also not recommend self-hosting if nobody can be responsible for updates and backups, because owning the server means owning those chores; in that case a hosted plan or a maintenance plan is the honest answer. And because we build on Payload, if you already have a Strapi or Contentful setup that works well, we would tell you not to move it for the sake of it.
Next step
If you are choosing a CMS for a new site, tell Kevin what you publish, who edits it and where you want it hosted, and you will get a straight recommendation, including when it is not Payload. See our website development service, or contact us to book a free call.
