Contentstack cons

13 things Contentstack need to improve on.

1. No commerce capabilities

Contentstack is a massive proponent of headless commerce and eCommerce growth, but the platform lacks native commerce capabilities instead of requiring customers to integrate with a third party.

2. Needs more pre-built solutions out of the box

Similarly to the commerce problem, Contentstack features several available extensions and can connect with other third-party applications via API. However, there is a lack of pre-built solutions out-of-the-box that can make technical and non-technical users’ lives easier.

3. It can be hard to create the right content for your needs, and difficult to modify content types once they have been created

Content modelling in Contentstack starts at the design stage, meaning that errors made will be reflected in subsequent on the actual structure of the web application or page.

Unfortunately, these errors can be hard to rectify later down the line, requiring you to recreate models from scratch.

4. The lower plan (Start) has limited content types and user accounts

The lower pricing plan only supports 10 users, 100 content types and 4roles. This can limit growing teams that need a middle ground between the more expensive Grow plan, which costs thousands of dollars per month.

5. Changing the data structure of content types with many entries can be challenging

For example, when a document is updated, the URL within the document changes. This forces marketers to frequently implement URL redirects if they have many content assets that need to be updated on a weekly or monthly basis.

6. At times there are limitations to the number of items that can be associated with content types

A content type consists of a set of fields that define your web page or mobile property structure. These limitations need to be addressed with Contentstack’s support team’s help and can’t be changed on your own.

7. There’s a rate limit for content management API requests

Contentstack has a rate limit of 10 requests per second per organization. Your application will receive the HTTP 429 response code if the requests for a given period exceed the defined rate limits.

Given the lack of out-of-the-box functionality, this can be challenging for larger organizations with several API requests occurring simultaneously.

8. There’s been some confusion about the different kinds of API tokens and which functionality is supported by each

Contentstack includes the following API tokens: Delivery, Access, Authentication and Management.

The specifications, limitations and functionality of each token type differ, meaning that it can be difficult for developers to decide which one to use in which scenario.

9. Performing extensive operations spanning thousands of records can be relatively slow

Since there are API request limits and a requirement to throttle API requests, organizations with many data entries can find them challenging to manage. Instead, a bulkified API would be a helpful addition to the platform.

10. Localization is not ideal, as once something is localized, updating is very confusing

Localizing an entry causes the hierarchy between the master entry and other entries to break. Instead, an independent copy of the localized entry is created that is a separate entity with its own versioning system and publishing queue status.

This feature makes updating master content localized content simultaneously a challenge.

11. Pricing is confusing and somewhat difficult to understand

Contentstack’s three pricing plans can be somewhat difficult to decipher without contacting them.

For example, in the Start plan, only four roles are supported, but the number of roles supported in the Grow and Scale plans is not expressly stated.

This lack of distinction is also prevalent in other categories such as content type and content entries.

12. Requires a lot of technical expertise to implement

Contentstack includes extensive customer support, but much of that time is spent managing onboarding and implementation. Implementation isn’t possible without this customer support for most organizations and those without an extensive technical background.

13. Authors may not be able to view their content before pushing live.

Contentstack lacks preview capabilities that allow authors to see and modify content before publication. Contentstack facilitates content staging for publishing blog content, but for other channels, post-publication editing may be required.