Sanity.io - The Most Popular Headless CMS Platform in 2023

Are you looking for a suitable headless CMS to power your website or application? Sanity CMS is an increasingly popular choice that's been gaining traction in the developer community. With Sanity CMS, you can easily create, manage, and publish digital content with minimal effort.

In this review, we'll take a closer look at what makes SanityCMS stand out from the competition and evaluate its features and capabilities.

A Quick Overview of Headless CMS

A headless CMS, also known as a decoupled or API-driven CMS, is a content management system (CMS) that provides an editor-friendly frontend environment for creating and managing content. It separates the content’s delivery layer from the backend. In fact, a headless CMS is a back-end-only web content management system that makes content accessible via an API for display on any device.

What is Sanity.io?

Sanity.io is a content platform for building digital products and websites. It is an open-source, cloud-based headless content management system (CMS) that helps businesses create custom content solutions.

Sanity allows users to create and manage structured content, design customized user experiences, and build powerful applications with custom data models.

It is the most popular headless CMS and has been awarded as the second top fastest-growing headless CMS software by SaaSworthy.com. 

According to the Jamstack Community Survey 2021, Sanity got the highest developer satisfaction score, which means more people want to continue using it. 

Its cloud-based platform provides developers with an intuitive user interface as well as powerful APIs to allow for custom development. Sanity APIs enable seamless content presentation across various platforms from a hassle-free hosted backend. It's also compatible with most Jamstack frameworks, making it a great choice for those who want to build sites using static site generators such as Gatsby or Jekyll.

One of the main benefits of using Sanity CMS is its flexibility. Additionally, it supports multiple data types, meaning developers can create and manage any type of content they need for their sites. Furthermore, it allows for custom schemas to be created so that developers can tailor their content models to specific requirements. This makes it easy to add new content types when required without going through a lengthy setup process.

Sanity prioritizes customization, promotes efficient collaboration, and supports seamless scalability on secure and compliant cloud infrastructure.

Overall, Sanity CMS is a powerful yet easy-to-use headless CMS that provides developers with all the tools they need to create and manage their websites or applications. Its flexibility and range of features make it a great choice for those who are looking for an efficient way to create and maintain content for their web projects.

Sanity CMS is trusted by Big Companies such as Nike, Sonos, Cloudflare, National Geographic, Eurostar, and Invision.

How Does it Work?

Sanity provides an open-source editing environment named Sanity Studio. It is a real-time collaborative application for content creation and handling. Sanity.io treats content as structured data and stores data in a content lake. 

Sanity Studio supports queries from a CDN using GraphQL, webhooks, and real-time updates.

Sanity Studio allows users to effortlessly generate schema types for their content models using JavaScript objects. The editing environment that is automatically created provides numerous features, including document version control, live collaboration, linked and nested content, conditional fields, and pre-set form values.

Sanity Studio provides a framework for customizing editing experiences; developers can create input components with React and include functions like custom form validation through JavaScript.

To get started with Sanity, first install the Sanity CLI.

• npm i -g @sanity/cli && sanity init

Or go to sanity.io/create to get started. 

• Watch the getting started video on YouTube.
• Read the introduction in the documentation.

Check out the guides and plugins and start building.

Key Features of Sanity CMS

Sanity CMS comes with a bunch of astonishing features to create a robust system that can be used to deliver digital experiences without any additional overhead.

Let’s see the notable traits of Sanity.io.

• API Driven: Sanity APIs to enable seamless content presentation across various platforms from a hassle-free hosted backend.
  
• Built with React.js: Sanity.io is based on React.js. It allows users to create unique content models using JavaScript and adapt the editing interface with customized React.js components.
  
• Version Control: It offers versioning to keep track of changes over time.
  
• Workflow Automation: Its workflow automation capabilities make content creation much simpler and faster.
  
• Collaboration Tools: Sanity CMS offers collaboration tools that make it easy for teams to work together on digital projects. With features like real-time comment threads, threaded conversations, and a shared clipboard, teams can create, share, and review content more efficiently.
  
• Flexible data types allow custom schemas to be created for specific requirements.
  
• Structured Content: Sanity treats content as structured data. Breaking contents into the smallest reasonable pieces make it easy to reshape, reuse, filter, and combine data. 
  
• Image transformations: An image processor for uploading and manipulating images
  
• Powerful indexing and search engine to help users locate content quickly 
  
• Custom integrations: Integration with third-party services such as OAuth providers for authentication and authorization.
  
• A real-time editor that allows multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously.
  
• Support GraphQL API and Zero config Graph Oriented Query Language (GROQ)

Why Should You Use Sanity CMS?

Sanity headless CMS is a powerful headless content management system (CMS) built for modern web development. It is created by developers for developers, to make website content management and creation more straightforward and faster.

Its wide range of features makes it an ideal solution for content creators. Sanity includes an intuitive editor, which makes it possible for non-developers to manage content within the system. It allows users to configure and customize their CMS experience as needed.

Sanity CMS is also a great choice for those who need to manage content across different platforms. Sanity's APIs are designed to make presenting content on web pages and mobile devices easier. This means developers don't need to waste time creating separate versions of the same content for different platforms. Additionally, with its hassle-free hosted backend, developers don't have to worry about hosting or administering their backend.

Pricing Plan

Sanity offers simple, transparent, and affordable pricing plans. The platform’s pricing plans are based on four levels: Free Forever, Team, Business, and Enterprise. Each level offers different features and benefits, including access to the Sanity Studio, the ability to publish content, and storage and bandwidth limits.

• The Basic plan is free, with access to the Sanity Studio, 5GB of storage, and 10GB of monthly bandwidth.
•  The Team plan costs $99/month and gives users 50GB of storage, 500GB of monthly bandwidth, API access, content previews, custom webhooks, and more. 
• The Business Plus plan costs $949/month and includes everything from the Pro plan plus 500GB of storage and 1TB of monthly bandwidth. 
• Lastly, the Enterprise plan is for organizations that need a custom content solution with enterprise-level features.

Pros & Cons Of Sanity CMS

Here are some pros and cons of Sanity CMS

FAQs

Q: Does Sanity.io have an API?

Ans: Yes, Sanity.io has an API.

Q: Does Sanity.io have a free trial?

Ans: Yes, Sanity.io offers a free trial.

Q: What kind of organizations use Sanity?

Ans: Businesses of all sizes use Sanity CMS such as: solopreneurs, midsize businesses, small businesses, enterprises, freelancers, nonprofits, and governments.

Q: Is Sanity self-hosted?

Ans: You can host the studio on Sanity or use other hosted services like Netlify or Vercel. 

Q: Is Sanity CMS open-source?

Ans: Yes, Sanity is an open-source CMS

Final Verdict

Sanity CMS provides both flexibility and customizability while maintaining strong performance; these features make it superior to the other alternatives for headless content management. It is the most versatile and user-friendly option on the market.

Experience the ultimate fusion of innovative developer tools and unlimited customization with Sanity. Unleash your content creativity and power up your business velocity like never before.

N.B. Buckle up, folks! The pricing plan for Sanity CMS could be changed at any moment. Stay tuned for updates!

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Note: Our editorial team independently picked and reviewed each of the products, frameworks, and platforms we listed. All of the mentioned product’s features and other information were collected independently and dependent on the date this article was published. We cordially request that, before making any decision, please visit the featured websites. Posts may contain affiliate links.