Craft CMS vs Headless: Choosing the Right Architecture
A practical guide to deciding when to use Craft CMS in traditional mode versus going headless with Craft as a backend API.
When a client comes to us with a new website project, one of the first architectural decisions we face is whether to use Craft CMS in its traditional "coupled" mode or go fully headless.
What's the difference?
In the traditional approach, Craft CMS renders your templates server-side using Twig. Your content, logic, and presentation layer all live in the same application. Simple, fast to build, and very capable.
In the headless approach, Craft acts as a content API (via GraphQL or REST), while your frontend is a completely separate application — typically a Vue/Nuxt or React/Next.js app consuming that API.
When to go traditional
- Your team is comfortable with Twig
- SEO is critical and you don't want to deal with SSR complexity
- The project is relatively straightforward and speed of delivery matters
- Budget is a key constraint
When to go headless
- You need maximum frontend flexibility
- You're building a rich single-page application
- You need the same content across multiple channels (web, mobile app, other platforms)
- Your team is more comfortable in JavaScript than Twig
Our recommendation
For most client websites, the traditional approach is the right call. It's faster to build, easier to deploy, and Craft's Twig templating is powerful enough for even complex marketing sites.
Go headless when you have a compelling technical reason — not just because it's trendy. The added complexity of managing two separate applications, two deployment pipelines, and the API layer is only worth it if you genuinely need what headless gives you.
When in doubt, start traditional. You can always migrate the frontend later — and Craft's GraphQL API will be there when you need it.