Essentially, an API-first CMS is a headless CMS. To explain what this is, let’s quickly familiarize ourselves with what a traditional CMS is.

Traditional CMS platforms, like WordPress and Drupal, come with a frontend presentation layer that is tightly joined to the backend component, which stores all the content, files, and folders.

The templating and editing tools that usually feature in this frontend presentation layer dictates how the content needs to be distributed and presented. And in most cases, they can only push content to web browsers on laptops, smartphones and tablet devices. Since both the frontend and backend are tightly glued together, there is little room for flexibility.

(What API-first CMS looks like)

With an API-first CMS, there is no frontend component (i.e. no head), only the backend.

The backend, which acts as a central repository, can push content to any IoT device, including smartwatches, voice assistant devices, and connected cars, via API calls. This is the reason why it is called API-first.