Payload 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
Integrations
User Reviews

Overview

Payload

4.9

(48)

Pricing

Starting at $35.00 per month

About Payload

Payload is an open-source content management system built with React, GraphQL, and TypeScript. It caters to developers and agencies building websites and applications. It has a GraphQL API and REST API to retrieve and rewrite content on a unified platform.

Payload can be deployed on any infrastructure that supports Node.js, such as AWS, GCP, and Azure. The tool lets the open-source community and the team provide support to customers through GitHub.

Payload Screenshots

Payload Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $35.00 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$35.00

per month

No plan information available

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Payload Features

Popular features found in Headless CMS
Access Controls/Permissions
API
Content Publishing Options
Multi-Channel Marketing
More features of Payload
A/B Testing
Approval Process Control
Asset Lifecycle Management
Categorization/Grouping
Collaboration Tools
Configurable Workflow
Content Library
Content Management
Customizable Forms
Customizable Templates
De-Coupled Front & Back Ends
Document Management
Drag & Drop
Filtering
For Developers
For Marketers
Full Text Search
Historical Reporting
Image Editing
Mobile Access
Multi-Channel Distribution
Multi-Channel Management
Multi-Language
Preview Functionality
Rich Text Editor
Role-Based Permissions
Rule Based Publishing
Scheduling
SDKs
SEO Management
Single Sign On
Tagging
Template Management
Text Editing
Third-Party Integrations
Two-Factor Authentication
User Management
Version Control
Web Forms
Website Management
Workflow Management

Payload Integrations

Zapier

Stripe

Datadog

Okta

HubSpot CRM

Algolia

Payload User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.9

Ratings Breakdown

88%

13%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.8

Value for money

4.9

Customer support

4.8

Functionality

4.7

Charlie H.

Verified reviewer

Design

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2024

Seamless adoption by web agency

There's always a nervousness when adopting a new platform but looking back there was nothing to be nervous about. It's been an easy & seamless process and gaining support as an agency partner has been great. We look forward to a bright future with Payload!

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Show + Tell is a UK based Payload Agency... we've used payload as a web agency on multiple projects now as the feedback from IT & Marketing teams client side have been hugely positive. Client have found the content management process fare quick and more flexible to their needs meaning time saved in their day to day role. From development perspective the whole development team enjoy building on the platform and now dread if they have to develop on any of our legacy CMS systems we still support. It's been a big thumbs up from a programmers perspective.

Cons:

The Enterprise is expensive from smaller companies however the product is great and well worth it for larger Enterprise level clients.

Reasons for switching to Payload

Wordpress is 20 years old now and comes with a lot of bloat and performance issues. Payload solves these problems.

Mark B.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2024

Payload - The best application framework on the market

Been using Payload since summer 2022. The platform can be used as a CMS, or as an application framework. You can turn Payload into anything, either a rapid prototyping framework, or a content management hub

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Developer experience, speed of development, and ease of extendability

Cons:

Bundle size can be quite large for small scale projects

Reasons for choosing Payload

The developer experience is unparalleled, and the ability to change everything in the platform is a major plus.

Reasons for switching to Payload

Strapi was too slow, and Contentful had a frustrating developer experience.

Sanna J.

Verified reviewer

E-Learning

2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Highly customisable CMS with a great i18n model

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Payload's i18n model is incredible for large scale projects, and managing complexity. Additionally the admin panel is highly customisable and can be tailored to any kind of business.

Cons:

There is no way to generate admin thumbnails for files other than images. Mangling of node.js environment and browser environment pose a bit of an issue, but manageable.

Reasons for choosing Payload

Ease of use and it's self hostable.

Reasons for switching to Payload

Strapi's i18n model is not up to par for projects relying on data integrity (each translation has a unique id, despite the document in theory being the same).

Sandro W.

Verified reviewer

Telecommunications

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2024

Our go to framework

For us, Payload strikes the perfect balance between providing everything you need to not start from scratch while still being completely customisable for our requirements. We've built everything from websites, online shops to management platforms and our clients love it!

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

- No limitations for extending functionality - Super fast experience for the end user, low resource requirements especially compared to Wordpress - Open source, easy to self-host

Cons:

Some convenient functionalities are still missing, e.g. bulk upload, display where media elements are used across the system, locking documents for other users while being edited/live collaboration. I assume they will be available at some point in the future, currently you'd just have to implement them yourself

Reasons for switching to Payload

Extendability, option to self-host & own your data (GDPR)

Jacob W.

Verified reviewer

Marketing and Advertising

51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

No more WordPress

Very quick adoption. A couple small snags here and there. Generally very pleased.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It provides the most useful aspects of WordPress out of the box and does away with many of the aspects that holds WordPress back.

Cons:

While it has been around for a couple of years, it still has plenty of ways to improve. As a result, there is definitely more time necessary to investigate what is possible to do with it. However, the codebase is purposefully left as non-abstracted as possible which makes understanding it that much easier.

Reasons for choosing Payload

Open source, not a paid SAAS that forces me to pin to a service dependency that limits us. Code-oriented definition of data structures. Replacements for Gravity Forms and ACF. A plugin that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars to store assets on a CDN.

Reasons for switching to Payload

PHP is expensive when upgrades need to happen. Node.js has no such problem thanks to NVM. WordPress is difficult to work with in a modern way due to its old code practices. Payload CMS is very open and easy to extend and modify while covering for most normal use-cases.

Shubham K.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Seamless Control and Effortless Customization

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I've been using PaylaodCMS for my website development, and I must say it's been an incredible experience. As an Express.js user, having full control over my application is essential, and Paylaod CMS delivers just that. It strikes the perfect balance between low-code convenience and customization, allowing me to create and manage my web applications.

Cons:

I've encountered some challenges with Paylaod CMS's loading time during development. To enhance the development speed, I would love to see it replaced with a more modern solution like Vite.js.

Reasons for switching to Payload

We were familiar with Sanity CMS, but it did not give us the granular control we needed for our custom applications.

Alessio G.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

Self-Employed

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Best Headless CMS

I've tried MANY headless CMS options, and Payload has been the best so far

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I'm able to customize every single aspect of this CMS. Support is amazing

Cons:

Limited support for alternative databases, although more will be added in the next releases.

Reasons for choosing Payload

Payload is more customizable and easier to use. Both the User-Experience, as well as the Developer Experience, beat everything I've used so far.

Reasons for switching to Payload

Other CMS's did not support everything I wanted to do. I felt very limited in what I could do.

Christopher S.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

201-500 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed September 2023

The best option for developers

It has been a pleasant experience to use Payload as my backend option. Only one place to configure my DB, API, and CMS in a simple way. It's awesome to have a backend so fast and easy.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

Developer friendly. It's very useful and beneficial that we can customize and extend almost anything. We can define rules for each collection or field and create our own endpoints. The admin panel is easy to use and nice-looking.

Cons:

I'm waiting for that Postgres adapter so we can have a relational database alternative. I believe Payload would be almost perfect if we could also customize the admin panel with Svelte components instead of React components.

Reasons for choosing Payload

I thought I could use Firebase as a CMS but I discovered that I was totally wrong. I also tried Strapi, because it's leading in GitHub stars, but I didn't like the admin panel, I found it complicated to use for non-tech users and I didn't find how to customize it to work and look the way I wanted.

Seth S.

Verified reviewer

Food Production

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed January 2022

Hands down the best modern CMS

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Lightweight, robust, feature rich, extremely extensible. IMO the best modern CMS.

Cons:

Doesn't have enough traction in the community at the moment, and still missing some features that I'd love to see.

Reasons for choosing Payload

We need a CMS that checks all the basic CMS feature boxes while at the same time providing a robust framework for extending functionality and building custom business logic alongside basic CMS functionality.

Reasons for switching to Payload

Strapi is considerably lacking in some basic CMS functionality and surprisingly difficult to build custom functionality / business logic on top of.

Lou M.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed February 2025

Payload: The Next-Gen CMS You've Been Waiting For

We needed a quick solution that would allow a content admin to control content for a multi-faceted marketing site. The flexibility to create new pages and re-use content across the site. It allowed us to develop a custom solution tailored very closely to the customers needs with ease.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The documentation was clear and effective, there were many examples that could be found on their own GitHub, and they have a very active discord community that are always willing to help when you run into problems. Extremely fast turn around time from blank slate to production. The ease of use, one command and you're up and running. Having Typescript across the project helps to not shoot yourself in the foot. It's a very modern and sleek workflow, and can solve many of the required tasks out of the box. Their hosting solution was very easy to use and at an affordable/fair price.

Cons:

Nothing at this time, they have a great roadmap of future implementations that solve all niche issues as well.

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