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

Hrithik U.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed August 2024

Best Headless CMS

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The packed-in features, robust scalability and support from the Payload team outperform every other option!

Cons:

I do not have anything to pinpoint as such, but there are absolutely more features to come in and once it does, Payload is going to be the top option for many.

Jay H.

Verified reviewer

Marketing and Advertising

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed August 2024

Payload: An open source Headless CMS you'll love

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Payload offers the best developer and content manager experience of all the headless CMSs we've tried. It's open source, and the Payload team are very supportive and easy to reach.

Cons:

Like all headless CMSs there's a learning curve compared to a traditional CMS like WordPress. It's dashboard UI can be a little underwhelming for users first trying the product.

Reasons for switching to Payload

Payload is open source, flexible and offers a great developer experience.

Amit T.

Verified reviewer

Health, Wellness and Fitness

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Bottom line: Recommanded

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Modular, easy to develop, and deploy. You can do basically everything you want w/ very ease.

Cons:

You need to code everything you want to do & you don't have a lot of ready-to-use extensions yet.

Jennifer E.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

Self-Employed

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

The Headless CMS every Dev has been waiting for

Overall it will be my go-to backend for any kind of software.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Payload CMS was a total gamechanger for my development experience. I have been researching a Headless CMS that is easy to customize and extend for over a year until I stumbled upon Payload. From the get go the documentation was very extensive, getting a hang on it was very easy and now the process of creating a CMS that is fit to the customers need is done in a fracture of the time. Easy WordPress replacement. Also the response times within the Community are very fast if you have questions and the founders are always there for a chat and take recommondations thoughtfully

Cons:

While extension of the UI is possible, a layout builder with Drag and Drop features (eg. as a Plugin) would be great.

Reasons for choosing Payload

Its easy to setup and features are easily integrated - nothing new to learn

Reasons for switching to Payload

Too much maintanance with 3rd Party Dependencies and Security Issues

Verified

Reviewer

Consumer Electronics

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

The CMS that everyone was waiting for!

Overall, the cms is great and easy to use for website backends, but also as apis or internal tooling.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Payload is the most user friendly and developer oriented cms I’ve used so far. Its customisability and ease of use while keeping the express app fully accessible works great for us. Also the localisation is a lot better, since it works perfect in combination with generating routes necessary for NextJS dynamic routes.

Cons:

Honestly, the only thing I’ve heard from our users is that the admin interface looks to basic. I rather see that as a good thing. It’s clean and easy to understand.

Reasons for choosing Payload

Prismic didn’t offer good functionally to generate localised paths needed for nextjs dynamic pages. Strapi made custom blocks and relations within far more difficult than necessary.

Reasons for switching to Payload

We are currently rewriting our Wordpress site to run on NextJS and payload as a cms.

Lou V.

Verified reviewer

Internet

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Amazing experience with Payload CMS!

Payload CMS makes a clear cut between the developer side and setup of the different fields and entries and the editor experience. It feels extremely nice to share the stack we work with between the frontend and the backend.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Payload is all we can want in terms of balance between developer experience and editor experience. The backend is extremely easily extendable, the administration panel UI is clean and easy to use. We love the tool and we truly believe this is the future of open-source CMSs.

Cons:

At the moment the CMS is only limited to MongoDB databases but we know the team at Payload is hard working on a Postgres adapter that will ceil the deal for us. It might even not be the case anymore when you read this review.

Reasons for choosing Payload

The technical stack and the way Payload is build suits our teams habits perfectly. It is extensible and hyper flexible. It bridges out backend and frontend setup nicely.

Reasons for switching to Payload

After switching to a fully headless setup, we quickly ran into limitations with the well known options on the market. Payload has solved many of these caveats and it is really evolving in the right direction.

Audrius L.

Verified reviewer

Design

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Unrivaled CMS experience both for website admins and for developers

Absolutely everything, from the community, to the actual product.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The developer experience which enables anyone who knows javascript to customize both how the admin panel looks and how the backend works is just mind blowing. We've recently went on a journey to find the perfect CMS for our react/next based websites and I can with 100% confidence say that absolutely nothing compares to Payload.

Cons:

When not using Payload Cloud, hosting Payload can sometimes be pretty confusing, having everything set up perfectly. But once you do it once or twice, it's a piece of cake. Other than that there are no negatives.

Reasons for choosing Payload

Historically, working with headless CMS'es for react/next projects has been pretty hard. There were no CMS products that would have both excelent DX and be completely customizable for the end user (client admins). Payload does it all and with flying colors.

Reasons for switching to Payload

In almost every part of the comparable product features, payload delivers and over-delivers.

Verified

Reviewer

Online Media

51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Best Headless CMS

I am using it in a federal organization and currently for a project where you can create templates via forms. It helped a lot because the setup was very quick and we could focus on the development and the Editors on the content.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The best thing about Payload is that it is very flexible- So you can use it for any kind of Project. Everything you need comes out of the box but you can also expand it as you like. You can create everything in code and you do not need any kind of GUI to create a Schema. Also everything is in Typescript so it makes the developement process really easy and fast. As a Big Compny you can easily White label it and customize it as you whish.

Cons:

The only thing is that it is pretty new on the market so you will not find many ressources - but that is not really a prolem because the documentation is really good and their discord server and the community behind it is even better.

Reasons for choosing Payload

because it met all the requirements - selfhosted- All in code- mongoDB- easy expandable

Reasons for switching to Payload

Payload is far better in every aspect

Eric J.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

Self-Employed

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Excellent CMS for developers who want easy customization

Payload provides a very fast, lightweight CMS solution that I can self-host for free and customize as desired. It works well with modern web frameworks like NextJS as well, which makes it a good headless CMS option or people using that framework.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It is developer-friendly, being code-first and written entirely in TypeScript. It is easy to self-host and deploy. The documentation is excellent and allows developers to add customizations and develop their own plugins. Unlike many other CMS's, Payload is relatively unopinionated. And their developer team is very responsive to issues raised on their GitHub page.

Cons:

There isn't much that I dislike about it. Because it is unopinionated, it is also a bit skeletal, so you do have to do a bit of work to get something you want up and running.

Reasons for choosing Payload

It is free and open-source. Its documentation is excellent.

Reasons for switching to Payload

Payload is less opinionated, faster, and easier to customize.

Zsolt S.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Best Headless CMS on the market

It helps us develop our sites faster than before. We do not need to code every CRUD page and it helps us to focus more on the custom elements that are necessary for the customers.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

We have tried many headless CMS projects, but Payload was the first that was easy to develop, and easy to extend and tailor it to the customers specification. It helps us build our projects faster and easier than other software.

Cons:

It only supports MongoDB at the moment, which is not always optimal, but they are working on supporting other databases. You need to have basic JavaScript/TypeScript knowledge to get started. It is not a con for us, but it may be for others.

Reasons for switching to Payload

It was easier to develop and deploy, and we had the most experience with Payloads tech stack, so it was faster to customize it.

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