Blog
January 23, 2025
Are you trying to decide between headless CMS vs. traditional CMS, but aren't sure the difference? You're in the right place.
Generally speaking, content management systems (CMS) make it easy to deliver and manage content on PHP web applications. While traditional CMS for PHP, such as WordPress or Drupal, have been a popular solution for content management, an increasingly complex web landscape has demanded more flexible and multichannel options. This has led to the development of headless PHP CMS.
In this blog, I compare headless CMS vs. traditional CMS and break down the differences in PHP applications. Next, I explore how to choose between headless CMS vs. traditional CMS, and then discuss the best use cases for each type to help you decide which is better for your PHP web application.
What Is the Difference Between Headless CMS vs. Traditional CMS?
Both headless CMS and traditional CMS will allow users to generate, organize, and deliver digital content to end users. However, before deciding which CMS is right for your PHP application development project, it's important to understand how each functions on the front and back ends.
Traditional CMS for PHP
Traditional CMS applications are monolithic and typically follow the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, which is common with traditional or legacy PHP applications.
How Traditional PHP CMS Work
Traditional CMS, or non-headless CMS, platforms tie the front end and back end together, providing themes and having everything you need to build out a website out of the box. Since their inception, traditional CMS have aimed to allow non-technical people to build out dynamic, rich-with-content websites with ease, and many (like WordPress, written with PHP) have met that goal.
Drawbacks of Traditional PHP CMS
However, many (especially developers and technical users) have noticed that traditional CMS are an imperfect solution and have become quite bloated over the years. Too many plugins can easily slow down websites and crush performance. Unless you learn how to build plugins, which are typically written in a rigid format defined by the CMS itself, it can sometimes be difficult to achieve the customization you need. For example: cell phones, tablets, and other formats became popular for browsing the web, and traditional CMS platforms were slow to adopt responsive themes.
WordPress and others tend to fit the needs of many people, but a new format (headless CMS) is solving niches traditional CMS platforms cannot fill while seeming appealing to the broader market as well.
Headless PHP CMS
Headless PHP CMS completely decouple the front end and back end, typically foregoing the front end entirely and leaving that up to the developer.
How Headless PHP CMS Work
A headless CMS (such as Craft CMS, a PHP CMS with a headless mode) has a back end for managing content and serves that information through a REST API. While this makes a headless CMS extremely flexible, it also requires a lot of technical knowledge to digest that REST API and display the content with a front end.
Headless PHP CMS Features
Since all the content is served through an API, you have a lot of control over how it’s served to the end user and a lot of flexibility for multiple front ends. You can use the content API to build a robust front end for the web and a native Android or iPhone app to serve it to mobile devices. This gives you full control to build your front ends with React, Angular, Vue.js, or even vanilla HTML and JavaScript.
Again, this does require a lot more technical knowledge and development experience than the typical, traditional CMS for PHP, but it allows for robust, flexible, and (most importantly) performant front ends, because all the bloat of a fully tied CMS is gone in headless PHP CMS platforms.
Headless vs. Traditional CMS
The main difference between a headless CMS vs. traditional CMS is the decoupling of back end and front end resources.
This design pattern, decoupling resources, has become quite popular lately due to the flexibility and scalability it offers. The elegance of this difference shows in that the end-users get a familiar back end admin interface for maintaining content while the architecture allows for enterprise-level growth.
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Headless CMS vs. Traditional CMS: At-A-Glance Comparison
Use this table as a quick-reference guide to comparing headless CMS vs. traditional CMS for PHP web applications.
Feature | Headless PHP CMS | Traditional CMS for PHP |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Decoupled: Back end and front end are separate. The back end provides content via API (REST/GraphQL). | Monolithic: The front end and back end are tightly coupled, often using PHP templates to generate HTML directly. |
| Content Delivery | Content delivered through APIs, making it easier to deliver to multiple devices and platforms (web, mobile, IoT, etc.). | Content is delivered directly through server-side rendering (HTML), typically focused on a web interface. |
| Content Management | Managed through admin panels or custom interfaces. Content is stored as raw data, not tied to a specific presentation. | Managed through a traditional admin panel with templates, themes, and structured content. |
| Front-end Flexibility | Highly flexible; you can use any front end framework (e.g., React, Vue.js, Angular) for rendering. | Tied to PHP-based templating systems (e.g., Twig, Blade, or custom PHP code). |
| PHP Framework Integration | Can be integrated with PHP back end (e.g., Laravel, Symfony) to fetch and serve content via APIs. | Fully integrated with PHP frameworks like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, which handle both front end and back end. |
| Performance | Typically faster, as front end rendering can be done in modern JavaScript frameworks, reducing overhead. | May be slower due to PHP’s server-side rendering and the need to process templates on each page load. |
| Development Complexity | Requires more technical setup and development, including API handling, custom front end, and integration. | Easier to get started with, as everything is integrated (front-end, back-end, templating). Requires less technical skill for basic usage. |
| Customization | Highly customizable; the back end is independent of the front end, and developers have full control over both. | Customization is limited by the CMS platform's built-in themes, plugins, and templates, although many can be extended with custom PHP code. |
| Security | Potentially more secure because front end and back end are decoupled, reducing the attack surface. | May have more vulnerabilities due to the integration of front end and back end in the same system. |
| API Availability | Fully API-driven (REST/GraphQL), which makes it easy to integrate with other systems, apps, or websites. | Limited API support; typically requires plugins or custom PHP code to expose content for external use. |
| Scalability | Easier to scale, especially for multi-platform projects (e.g., mobile apps, websites, IoT devices). | Scalability may be limited to web-based projects unless additional plugins or customizations are used. |
| Multi-Channel Delivery | Can be used across multiple platforms and channels, such as mobile apps, smart devices, and websites. | Primarily focused on delivering content to websites. Multi-channel delivery is possible but more complex to implement. |
| Cost | Potentially higher, especially if custom development and hosting are required (e.g., using PHP for API handling). | Typically lower, especially for smaller or simpler projects, due to the availability of pre-built solutions like WordPress or Drupal. |
Considerations for PHP Developers Choosing Between Headless CMS vs. Traditional CMS
Both headless CMS and traditional CMS for PHP offer comprehensive content management capabilities, but which is right for your PHP web application? The answer will vary depending on your project's requirements, your developer team's skill set, and other factors.
Customization and Flexibility Needs
While traditional CMS for PHP have done a decent job to support most needs throughout the years, these platforms will always have their limitations, the worst of which comes with performance impacts as they grow more complicated with plugins and extensions.
Headless PHP CMS enable full customization and flexibility with little impact on resources and performance, but they do require an experienced developer to configure the back end and build front ends for the application.
Scalability Requirements
In the context of PHP scalability, the monolithic nature of traditional CMS for PHP can introduce issues. Since everything is tied together, many resources are loaded on each page whether they are needed or not. Some traditional CMS have workarounds for this, like plugins that allow for defining resources per page, but there’s still a lot of unnecessary overhead on each page load. This is particularly true for enterprise web applications.
In contrast, headless PHP CMS decouple all of that. You’re in complete control of the front end and what resources get loaded when, since you’re simply digesting the API to access content from the headless CMS back end. This allows for indefinite scalability without impacting the performance of the website or mobile application.
Developer Skill Set and Resources
As mentioned before, the main goal of a traditional CMS for PHP was usability for non-technical users, and they achieve this very well. You don’t need to be a developer or even have much technical knowledge at all to start up and use WordPress to build a website.
For a headless PHP CMS, especially when it comes to building out a front end for the content, being a developer or having access to developers is pretty much a requirement.
Security Considerations
Since a traditional CMS for PHP is monolithic, it’s possible for PHP vulnerabilities to crop up and be accessible from the front end. This is the nature of monolithic applications.
With a headless PHP CMS, the front end simply loads in content from the API provided by the back end. This creates a single point of failure, and it’s easier to lock that down with authentication and security.
Multichannel Delivery Requirements
One of the major advantages of using a headless CMS for PHP is that your content is accessible through an API, which can be used by virtually any application on any channel or device. The same content can be accessed by a website front end, mobile application, or even applications on proprietary company devices. Write content once, and deliver it in an infinite number of ways.
Back to topHeadless CMS vs. Traditional CMS: Use Cases
When comparing headless CMS vs. traditional CMS, keep in mind that neither option is inherently better than the other one. However, they each are suited to different use cases, and the success of your PHP CMS web application will depend on using the right CMS for your purposes.
Headless PHP CMS Use Cases
A headless PHP CMS lends itself to large, ambitious projects that require flexibility, scalability, customization, and multi-device support to the point that responsive design isn’t enough. If you or your team have the developer skill set, then any one of these requirements could be enough to make a headless CMS appealing.
As an example, a large, enterprise-size company may want to serve the same content over multiple applications, and instead of maintaining the same content across multiple backends, it makes more sense to take advantage of a headless CMS that serves all that content through an API.
Traditional PHP CMS Use Cases
A traditional, monolithic CMS lends itself to most use cases, especially for small businesses. If all you need is one informational website with a responsive design that works on both desktop and mobile, then a traditional CMS should fit fine. They’re even scalable to a certain point, and it’s important to take your future growth and goals into consideration before making a decision on which route to take.
Back to topFinal Thoughts
Choosing between a headless CMS vs. traditional CMS for PHP web applications ultimately comes down to your project's demands, available resources, and developer capabilities. Where headless CMS provides greater flexibility, improved scalability, and multichannel delivery, a traditional CMS for PHP will deliver a user-friendly and easy-to-maintain experience.
Whether you opt for a headless PHP CMS or traditional CMS, Zend is in your corner. With over twenty years of PHP experience, we are ready to tackle your PHP CMS application's toughest problems through secure PHP runtimes, a full suite of Professional Services, and long-term support for EOL PHP versions.
Secure and Supported Runtimes for PHP CMS Applications
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Additional Resources
- Case Study - mittwald Managed Hosting Customers Stay Secure With Zend
- Webinar - Modernizing Legacy Web Apps
- Blog - 2025 PHP Usage and Deployment Trends
- Blog - When to Rewrite vs. Refactor Your Web App
- Blog - CMS or Framework: What's Best for Your PHP Application?
- Blog - Drupal Module Development: The Ultimate Guide for PHP Developers
- Blog - Unpacking the Drupal PHP Support Lifecycle
- Blog - The State of WordPress PHP Support
- Blog - Laravel vs. Symfony: Which Is Right for Your Web App?