Directus

RATING:

4.5

(60)

About Directus

Directus is a cloud-based headless content management system (CMS), which helps businesses connect custom SQL databases with dynamic API and view and manage database content. Features include customizable branding, bookmarking, revisions and rollback, single sign-on (SSO), status tracking, multi-language and data filtering. The application comes with pre-defined content authoring workflows, which enable supervisors to set project statuses as a draft, under-review, published or soft-delete along with role-based permissions for users. Directus API imitates actual SQL database schema by using the database mirroring feature and triggers custom code through event and webhooks. Professionals can create or delete projects consisting of database, storage adapter, and conf...

Directus Pricing

Build your hobby or proofs-of-concept projects for FREE with our Community Cloud. If you are looking for a production-ready and highly performant offering, check out the pay-as-you-go usage-based pricing on our Standard Cloud. Configure the exact hardware you need and apply customized auto-scaling rules, starting at just $.0347 per node, for every hour you use the platform. Our Enterprise team is ready if you require support and an SLA for your project. Head over to directus.io/contact-enterprise to get started. At Directus Cloud, there's a place for everyone and every project!

Starting price: 

$25.00 per month

Free trial: 

Not Available

Free version: 

Available

Directus activity tracking
Slide 1 of 6

Directus Reviews

Overall Rating

4.5

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4.5

Value for money

5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Directus

1 - 5 of 60 Reviews

User Profile

Jens

Verified reviewer

Management Consulting, 11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2021

Best headless CMS on the market - powered by Open-Source

I loved the previous versions, but especially the new V9 really excites me. I never experienced any smoother experience setting up any content management system (including the old guys like WordPress or Drupal). From a product and/or IT lead perspective, it brings you so much power for so many use cases - without a huge price tag or complexity.

PROS

It is free, if you are able to host it yourself! It is completely white-label, which makes your employees love it even more. It is perfectly customizable. In case you miss something, you can easily jump on the train and add it for your project - or all Directus users (contributing in the open-source community). If you want it fully managed, there is a cloud-version at a fair price (cheap compared to others) too.

CONS

Potential con for some people: The PHP version got more or less deprecated. There might be one version again, but focus is definitely with NodeJS. If you want to host it yourself and are not able to run Node or Docker, you might run into problems. File management could be better and more customizable (in terms of conditional rules how uploads get processed per collection and field).

Reason for choosing Directus

One though, of course, always is, if those guys are able to maintain their speed and perfection. Especially compared to better funded companies. The answer lies within the dynamic open-source approach. It enables the tool to benefit from the community to keep up with things like Contentful. At the same time, it is also some kind of guarantee for the future. While every company might get closed down in the future, open-source lives on. Picturing the worst case, you could still take over and manage it all by yourself. Other tools simply go offline and bring you headaches. This, combined with the awesome feature set (see pros) and the beautiful UI, puts it above the mentioned Contentful, but also tools like Strapi or GraphCMS. I skip the part, why headless "kills" full CMS like WordPress ;). And, of course, this kind of tool provides you with more flexibility than complete no-code-solutions like Webflow or Squarespace (but this would be an unfair comparison anyway).

Alan

Computer Software, 1 employee

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2021

One of the greats

PROS

I'll start with the flexibility, you can create and edit every table in real-time and in an easy-to-use GUI. Best part is this can be clamped onto any SQL database and it will just start working then you can setup the table existing into the software.

CONS

Well I mean it's not quite and intuitive as something like WordPress but point people in the correct direction and they soon get the hang of it

Reason for choosing Directus

Simple to use compared to other platforms and the awesome community support from them!

Reasons for switching to Directus

Limitations in WordPress and customisability you just can't, won't, and will never get with that platform. (Not to mention being slow and sluggish)

Davide

Design, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed February 2020

Fantastic concept, medium user experience

Until now the experience is good: I like the idea and it works for the project that we started with Directus. We still need to resolve some issues, like how to properly manage pages and SEO data or how to overcome the lack of the repeater field, but it's working well. The experience with the support was fantastic. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] was kind and friendly, in spite of my incompetence. I appreciate the enthusiasm and the open source spirit. Sometimes I experienced some limits for the reasons mentioned early, but I'm happy.

PROS

I love the concept behind Directus: the idea to freely create a database in an easy way, organizing the content as you need or as you imagined it. I come from Kirby CM and Craft CMS and doing websites in which the custom design is the key, it's important to us to shape our content as we want. It's easy to install, the Slack support is friendly and helpful. In the search for the perfect headless CMS solution, it was my choice, also because it's open source and at the moment the pricing of others options is over budget for our clients. We were ok paying a fee for a license, but not a perpetual subscription. Moreover, a key point in the decision to adopt it is the self-hosted solution: we wanted to avoid every possible lock-in. Finally, the stack: working in a communication agency, we are not software engineers: PHP + Vue.js it's a perfect combination. React and node.js onthe server was a switch too big to take another leap.

CONS

Above all, the bugs: being open source and free it's normal, but it is frustrating in the measure we decided to use it for clients works. Second: the lack of documentation for the interfaces or for the detailed use of the JS SDK. Moreover, sometimes I felt overwhelmed by the technical details of the interface. I don't have competence in relational databases and to me too much things doesn't have a meaning. But I'm mainly a front-end developer that try to be "independent", so I think that it's normal. Finally: the lack of a good repeater. At the moment it's impossible to use a file field in it, or to repeat a group of field. For us it's almost a strict requirement for clients projects.

Reason for choosing Directus

For the pricing, but above all for the requirement of our managers to have the code and the data on our servers. In addition to that, the idea to have the opportunity to customize it was very important. But please, takes Dato CMS as a reference: it has everything a digital agency could dream!

Reasons for switching to Directus

I wanted a database to manage complex dataset, like products catalogues and a product in which the headless concept was at the basis. Moreover, Kirby comes with the concept of "pages", that it's perfect for hierarchical content but a nightmare in some situations.

Vendor Response

Hi Davide, thank you very much for your review of Directus 8. Over the past year, we've worked nonstop on bug fixes and improvements to our open-source platform. Now on Directus 9 (a major release since your review, and now in node.js), we'd love the opportunity for you to take another look. Our open-source platform is far more stable now, thanks to the full API rewrite, and also includes the Repeater interface you were looking for. Hopefully you'll consider checking out the latest release of Directus and updating your review to reflect this improved version. :)

Replied March 2021

Brian

Consumer Electronics, 5,001-10,000 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2020

Great product that is still young

We had departments using many different CMS's. They ranged from extremely expensive to open source projects. While Directus is not perfect, it has proven to be better than all the others. We have actively tried to improve the product, and we find that the others in the community do the same. Also, and this is a HUGE value, the response to questions and issues within the Directus-Slack channel is amazing! Actually, the communication and support from this organization is impeccable. Friendly, helpful, understanding. Just out of a sense of loyalty to such good people, I will want to stay with them.

PROS

The interface is very friendly, and as the product matures, the installation is becoming better.

CONS

This is not an enterprise-level application, yet. It has a number of tiny gotchas that one has to learn about. One can still do most anything they desire.

Reason for choosing Directus

Regarding Adobe -- a CMS should have a small learning curve. With better documentation, Directus will be a product that is quickly adapted to any organization. Regarding Umbraco -- the decision here is hard to explain. We just found Directus to work better for us in more situations.

Reasons for switching to Directus

We also switched from Adobe, but I wasn't able to enter that. We switched off this product for it was really expensive with a really, really, really steep learning curve. We switched off of Umbraco due to design and small issues. Umbraco is actually a pretty decent product.

Ignacio

Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed February 2020

Best headless open source CMS

We're creating a completely custom web in which you can reuse components.

PROS

It's community support, open-source, and features. Nothing to envy from really expensive proprietary CMS.

CONS

Breaking changes in updates, lack of Many to Any support on App, failures updating large datasets with relationships, lack of a tool to perform migrations between environments and long URLs to consume. All of which are getting addressed at the moment :)

Reasons for switching to Directus

We had proposed Strapi to implement the solution because on paper was better, but once we started using it we got into many issues and features that at the moment weren't there. We tried directus and, even though at the moment was also lacking some things, got convinced quickly.

Vendor Response

Hi Ignacio, thank you very much for your review of Directus 8. Over the past year, we've worked nonstop on bug fixes, Docs, and improvements to our open-source platform. Now on Directus 9 (a major release since your review, and now in node.js), we'd love the opportunity for you to take another look. We've specifically addressed many of your Cons, including the very powerful many-to-any relationship type! Our open-source platform is also far more stable now, thanks to the full refactor. Hopefully you'll consider checking out the latest release of Directus and updating your review to reflect this improved version. :)

Replied March 2021