Headless CMS in Serbia 2026 — Sanity, Strapi or Contentful?

A headless CMS is a system that stores and edits content but does not render the website — the front-end (usually Next.js) fetches content through an API and displays it. It makes sense when the same content is used in several places (website, mobile app, in-store screens), when speed is commercially critical, or when you want full control over presentation without theme constraints. For a single presentation site with a blog edited by one person, headless is usually an unnecessary complication and WordPress does the job more cheaply.

Sanity: the most flexible, schema written in code, the editor (Sanity Studio) customisable in detail, excellent real-time collaborative editing. The best choice when developers and content teams work side by side. Strapi: open-source, self-hosted (you can keep it on your own server in Serbia — relevant if you have data location requirements), no monthly software fee, but you pay for hosting and maintenance. Contentful: an enterprise solution, the most mature ecosystem and support, but the most expensive and least flexible for custom content models. For most Serbian companies the choice comes down to Sanity (if you want hosted) or Strapi (if you want control and zero licence cost).

Real 2026 costs: Sanity — the free plan covers up to 3 users and 10k documents, Growth plan from $15 per user monthly; for a typical Serbian company with 2–3 editors that is $0–$45 monthly. Strapi — software free, VPS hosting €10–€30 monthly plus maintenance; Strapi Cloud from $29 monthly. Contentful — the free plan is very limited, Basic from $300 monthly, which is unjustifiable for most Serbian companies. Add development cost: integrating a headless CMS into a Next.js project typically adds €1,000–€2,500 to the initial budget compared with hard-coded content.

Headless does not make sense when: content is changed by one non-technical person a few times a year (WordPress or even static files are cheaper), the budget is under €3,000 (integration eats too much of it), no developer is available for future content structure changes, or when you need ready-made plugins for forms, booking and e-commerce that in a headless setup you would have to build yourself or pay for as separate services. The most expensive mistake is choosing headless because it is fashionable, then paying a developer for three years to do what an editor would have done alone in WordPress.

Migrating from WordPress has four phases in practice: 1) content mapping — which post types, fields and taxonomies exist and what is actually used (usually a third turns out to be unnecessary); 2) export through the WordPress REST API and transformation into the new content model; 3) building the Next.js front-end and connecting it to the CMS; 4) redirects — every old URL must have a 301 redirect to the new one, otherwise you lose SEO position. A realistic timeline for a site with 100–300 pages: 4–8 weeks. Feather Studio performs such migrations with full redirect mapping and Search Console verification after launch.