Directus

Vorteile

It is free, if you are able to host it yourself!
It is completely white-label, which makes your employees love it even more.
It is perfectly customizable.
In case you miss something, you can easily jump on the train and add it for your project - or all Directus users (contributing in the open-source community).
If you want it fully managed, there is a cloud-version at a fair price (cheap compared to others) too.

Nachteile

Potential con for some people: The PHP version got more or less deprecated. There might be one version again, but focus is definitely with NodeJS. If you want to host it yourself and are not able to run Node or Docker, you might run into problems.
File management could be better and more customizable (in terms of conditional rules how uploads get processed per collection and field).

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

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Vorteile

After reviewing and trying a few headless CMS’, we selected Directus. We found that Directus was a comprehensive, feature rich, well supported and intuitive. The main differentiator for us was their implementation of a multi tenancy solution. I would highly recommend this platform to anyone who is looking to deliver a single CMS product across multiple organisation with discrete and granular controls and permissions.

Nachteile

They’ve increased (not by that much) their lowest tier pricing. For us the previous pricing was a low barrier for entry for a lot of rich features. However saying that for the new pricing you are still receiving a lot of value.

Vorteile

I love the concept behind Directus: the idea to freely create a database in an easy way, organizing the content as you need or as you imagined it. I come from Kirby CM and Craft CMS and doing websites in which the custom design is the key, it's important to us to shape our content as we want.

It's easy to install, the Slack support is friendly and helpful. In the search for the perfect headless CMS solution, it was my choice, also because it's open source and at the moment the pricing of others options is over budget for our clients. We were ok paying a fee for a license, but not a perpetual subscription.
Moreover, a key point in the decision to adopt it is the self-hosted solution: we wanted to avoid every possible lock-in.

Finally, the stack: working in a communication agency, we are not software engineers: PHP + Vue.js it's a perfect combination. React and node.js onthe server was a switch too big to take another leap.

Nachteile

Above all, the bugs: being open source and free it's normal, but it is frustrating in the measure we decided to use it for clients works.

Second: the lack of documentation for the interfaces or for the detailed use of the JS SDK.

Moreover, sometimes I felt overwhelmed by the technical details of the interface. I don't have competence in relational databases and to me too much things doesn't have a meaning. But I'm mainly a front-end developer that try to be "independent", so I think that it's normal.

Finally: the lack of a good repeater. At the moment it's impossible to use a file field in it, or to repeat a group of field. For us it's almost a strict requirement for clients projects.

Vorteile

You can manage your collections and content through good looking administration, you create (even complex) relationships between the collections, there is a support to manage localized content. Your content is served through REST or GraphQL API that is simple learn. Good support of roles and permissions who can consume the content through API. There is a good extensions support for both APP and API. Easy deployement with Docker.

Nachteile

Performance of API calls for more complex data (relation) can be a bit sluggish, but it can be solved by setting up cache. There are bugs that take a long time to solve. GraphQL API has still lacking features compared to REST API.

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Vorteile

This is Free and Open Source Software at its best. Directus has a great, well tended community, excellent developers, many options and lots of friendly answers to real questions. I have not found any other headless API I can self host in amazon or wherever I want. This makes for a local development cycle, short time to market, very easy to prototybe setup for example for react/gatsby apps.

Nachteile

The app where you manage the database still needs a bit more documentation. It does not lack features, but some features lack propper documentation. I hope to help on this in the future!

Vorteile

It's community support, open-source, and features. Nothing to envy from really expensive proprietary CMS.

Nachteile

Breaking changes in updates, lack of Many to Any support on App, failures updating large datasets with relationships, lack of a tool to perform migrations between environments and long URLs to consume. All of which are getting addressed at the moment :)

Vorteile

The interface is very friendly, and as the product matures, the installation is becoming better.

Nachteile

This is not an enterprise-level application, yet. It has a number of tiny gotchas that one has to learn about. One can still do most anything they desire.

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Vorteile

Directus will allow you to create instant database with all security layers you may need for an api (auth, ...)

Nachteile

The data ownership by users is quite a pain (e.g : You want to create an item through a webhook and attribute it to a specific user) and user registration through api require some custom code to follow your expectation.

Vorteile

I'll start with the flexibility, you can create and edit every table in real-time and in an easy-to-use GUI. Best part is this can be clamped onto any SQL database and it will just start working then you can setup the table existing into the software.

Nachteile

Well I mean it's not quite and intuitive as something like WordPress but point people in the correct direction and they soon get the hang of it

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Vorteile

It's really easy to setup and encourages to learn new technologies

Nachteile

It's not really done yet, I mean Directus is switching from PHP to Nodejs and this is a long proccess that is still happening and the documentation is not complete yet.

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Vorteile

We used it on a few projects as easy to setup API for the various projects. Overall it's a good product, some issues are solved by the new versions.

Nachteile

Recent price changes make it very expensive for small projects.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Vorteile

Extremely pleased and surprised that this a open-source software. The features provided out of the box is extremely robust and reliable. I've never had an issue with it and have been onboarding a lot of clients to switch to Directus from other CMSes for the past few years.

Nachteile

There are pretty much no cons except that we have to set it up ourselves, but it's not too difficult once you get the hang of it.

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Zuvor genutzte Software

Vorteile

Directus is Open-Source and provides an easy-to-use interface that allows myself and my users to navigate the system and update data and content as needed. The Rest API is well-documented making integration into any system very easy! I love being able to get setup with a new project in minutes rather than hours.

Nachteile

There's nothing I don't love about Directus, there's always something that could be added to make the product better, but it all requires financing and I can't complain when it's free

Vorteile

The admin panel has an intuitive interface for managing database relationships (collections), users, fields for your data types. I feel excited to present my non-technical media producers with a way to add their media files, tag them appropriately by creator, relate them to 'topics' stored another table, and be able to update and add new topics with no technical expertise.

Nachteile

I had some challenges in setup that came down to outdated or incomplete documentation, but that may also be lack of experience on my side. Perhaps some things that were not explicit were actually expected knowledge that I was lacking.

Vorteile

Directus peut s'adapter à tout les environnement de développement et permet ainsi de mettre en place très rapidement un outil de gestion de contenu.

Nachteile

La fonctionnalité flux n'est pas encore en place.

Vorteile

I am impressed with the continuous development of Directus and the commitment to deploying frequently. There are always new features and fixes and the team releases at a pace that would make a commercial team sweat, let alone an Open-Source team.

Nachteile

The only challenge I faced while setting up Directus was a little confusion about the config of setting up multiple projects on the same install. However, the documentation was thorough and the Slack talkative, and I was soon up and running with a shared instance that eliminates the maintenance of multiple instances.

Vorteile

1. Documentation has been on point.
3. The easie in which it is to get started is excellent with multiple alternatives like docker, 1click digital ocean setup etc.
2. I love the "project" aspect that allows you to connect multiple database instances within the same Admin App.
3.The Admin App is written made in VUE . Its super easy to pull it locally and connect it to your existing api if you need to fiddle with it. It also has a very modern design which is appealing.
4. Easy to add custom extensions in both the API and Admin App.
5. Good code design. For example the Admin App makes use of the same API endpoints intended external use. Anything the Admin App can do you can replicate with your own API calls. I use this as a cheat sheet when i'm too lazy to look at the documentation.
6. New release come regularly, and it's really getting better all the time.
7. Can import databases that were not created within the CMS

Nachteile

1. Support for only mysql. MongoDB support would have been magical. I have seen it in the roadmap, so let's hope it comes soon.
2. API response time. It's not bad, but its not great. I know they are working on it.

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Vorteile

Directus, as a Headless CMS pioneer, offers entirely free software that within a few minutes can have a full API, an easy to travel and learn app, and available with an SDK to easily develop applications. The GraphQL has been a great addition to the latest technology, and additionally, the community support is one the best I have had experienced. As I said, you will love it!

Nachteile

The latest version is written on NodeJS but uses a snake case compared to camelcase which is a JavaScript standard.

Vorteile

I really appreciated the potentialities to adapt the CMS to many various environments and contexts.

Nachteile

It it sometimes cumbersome to understand the logic when discovering Directus. It lacks a comprehensive support for beginners, for usual and advanced use scenarios.

Vorteile

I really liked the headless aspect and how easy it is to build up the overall construct for your data. The API is nice documented and easy to understand.

Nachteile

In version 6 the API is really slow when your database is quite huge. The issue was reported but couldn't be solved in this version so we had to upgrade the whole project (loading time for a site was 6s+...)

Vorteile

I like that Directus is free and open source, with an active community over Slack and that the software evolves very quickly. I also *love* the fact that you can access the whole SQL DB schema besson Directus.

Nachteile

New versions sometimes introduce critical bugs. The Directus team is responsive on GitHub and Slack, but it needs some time to validate new versions before upgrading production DBs.

Vorteile

Directus is quite impressive about the potentials it have from a business point of view.
The software is easy to configure and the community is very active continously improving the available functionalities and solving known issues

Nachteile

Some features are still not fully working (i.e. forgot password and reset password needs some work)
PHP in my opinion is not very flexible for developer, so it require lots of components to be added

Vorteile

Directus covers almost entirely the needs of the project. Many improvements are currently being developed that help make things easier, in addition to new features

Nachteile

There is a lack of regression tests that validate when new features are developed, that everything is still working correctly. Sometimes some new developments break previous ones.

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Vorteile

The interface is so user friendly and has a solid and highly customizable backend for all the needs.

Nachteile

The new version is fully functionnal but still has some issues that can appear during the implementation.

But the team is phenomenal and is pushing updates and fixes all the time and have a helpful community to guide you to use properly the platform.

Vorteile

The best thing about Directus is the community. It is great to be able to ask questions and get a real person to walk you through a solution.

Nachteile

Difficult to get started. Documentation is a bit lacking / confusing.

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Vorteile

CMS looks very mature, with lots of functionality already there. No need for installing tons of plugins, modules, extensions... Open source and i18n were our main perks when we chose Directus over others.

Nachteile

We've pinpointed bad time to start with it. Directus Team just started rolling out v8 where available documentation was for v7. Some small issues were visible, but quickly ironed out with swift releases. On the other hand - Slack support + Git issue tracking worked for us very well.

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Vorteile

+ Minimalistic interface
+ Cool features (e.g. to create those individual "views" on tables in the interface)
+ JS SDK that makes authorization in vue-apps a breeze
+ Token-refreshing
+ Fast
+ Easy to setup
+ "Readable" SQL-structure
+ Extensive roles & rights management

Nachteile

- There is no relation-type, that can handle relations between items of multiple collections (This is my most wanted feature, and for others too as i saw in the slack-workspace)
- sometimes things happened (i dunno exactly when) that made the DB or tables crashed (maybe referred to a faulty operation from my side)

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Vorteile

I love that it is open source and the new version 9 is rewritten in JavaScript instead of PHP, so it is super fast and has modern features, like a GraphQL API. It is also versatile and open-source, making it possible to write extensions. The maintainers are super active on their Discord community and are super friendly.

Nachteile

Version 9 is still in pre-release (as of writing), so some parts are still a work-in-progress, but is otherwise pretty stable for pre-release.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Vorteile

The CMS is quite feature-rich and already provides most of the functions we need for our customers' scenarios. Beyond that, it is fairly easy to extend it to special requirements using modules and custom endpoints; we are now using it for several projects over the period of several month, and the CMS and its functionality gets better and better; The new v8 Admin panel looks great too.

Nachteile

Since the project is Open-Source and community-driven, it's a bit hard to get support for very specific problems. Sometimes nobody responded to my questions on the official Slack channel.
Debugging errors and custom endpoints is a bit cumbersome, since every change needs to be first deployed to the final staging or production environment.

Vorteile

Easy of use, the dashboard is done really well, i think one of the best i’ve seen in a Headless CMS.

Nachteile

A lot of bugs:
- the main problem are sql queries, there was a lot of bugs when tried to create/update data or fields
- if you enable cache (via redis for example) login is broken
- when you choose the size of the fields there isn’t a grid for 3 fields

Vorteile

The well designed user interface and how I can plug it in into any MySQL database. One big plus are also the developers of directus who react quickly and helped a lot.

Nachteile

Sometimes its bugs due to rapid development of the software itself.

Vorteile

it's for free.
You can customize any data.

Nachteile

whenever there is a new version some of the items some functionalities doesn´t work.

Vorteile

It handles tabular data very very well, provides an easy API to fetch and modify these and also has a fine-grained role based access control system in which you can grant or deny specific users specific fields. If simple data tables are still not sufficient, there's a ton of built-in components and even support for custom integrations/views.

Nachteile

Since it has support for custom integration and views, there really are none as far as I know

Vorteile

- Free
- Easy to use
- Faster Development possibilities for Mobile Apps
- Support on Discord

Nachteile

- The documentation is not the best, I hope it will improve
- No Spatial Data Types (searching by distance is not possible)

Vorteile

Pretty Easy to setup.
Conceptually it's easy to understand, just a wrapper on mySQL.
Very powerful API
Very easy to use admin interface.

Nachteile

There's a considerable number of bugs, and some features just flat out don't work anymore (caching).
The documentation for docker wasn't great, but it is getting better!
PHP isn't that fast, I haven't been able to get sub 100ms response times.
PHP isn't a well loved language anymore, and fewer developers know it each year.

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Warum Directus gewählt wurde

Vorteile

- Very flexible
- big community and support

Nachteile

- many small bugs in depth
- often new bugs in new releases
- many things missing in the documentation

Vorteile

Directus allows me to do everything I want with a simple and rich UI.

Nachteile

For the moment there is no way to have automatic migration when you modify the database from the app, but I heard it’s coming soon.

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Vorteile

The flexibility in that it can be used with our without the api

Nachteile

It very occasionally has bugs, but the support is fantastic and very quick to listen to users and out things right

Vorteile

- Open-Source
- Lightweight
- On-Premise Version available
- Great support

Nachteile

- Sometimes too breaking changes in the minor versions
- Support mostly only for the last main version

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

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Vorteile

- Data is 1:1 mirrored for the End User and you can implement DD interfaces as a dev yourself.
- JSON REST API
- User and Groups

Nachteile

- There are still some rare bugs. (But the team will squish them afap as soon as it is reported)

Vorteile

Customizable cms with a lot of options and is improving in each version. Further, you can suggest changes and improves and usually they add in the next version.

Nachteile

In some improments some old functionalities stop working.

Vorteile

Quick to install and upgrade, just clone the GIT repository. Bugs get fixed quite fast, and there is an active community. The software brings a ready-to-use REST- and GraphQL-API and permission management.

Nachteile

While the community is quite active, there is an initial delay when asking questions in the Slack space.

Vorteile

Feature rich
Customization
Extendable
Modern
Great UI/UX
Open Source
Free

Nachteile

Not all v8 interfaces are available in v9

Vorteile

Truly open source gives commercial products a run for their money, super helpful community, rapid development, easy customization

Nachteile

I'm sure it'll get there and it's improving day by day, but documentation of some of the features/functionalities can be better.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Vorteile

Easy to setup, no code configuration was a big time saver.
Once I figured out what was necessary for deployment, it was a breeze. Future deployments (if we ever even need to deploy it again) will be drag-and-drop.

Nachteile

The docs for deploying to Elastic Beanstalk were pretty much useless. I had to figure it out by myself even though there is a whole page dedicated to saying that it's easy to deploy. Lost about a day when it would've taken half-an-hour with some good documentation.

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Vorteile

Getting started with Directus is pretty easy because the documentation is very beginner friendly.
Due to its simplistic style, it's easy to understand, but not restricting in any way. Its easily expandable and customizable and can be used anywhere.

Nachteile

There are only a few people working on the project so progress can be slow sometimes.

Vorteile

The easily AND possibilities of doing whatever we want with.
With the last version, we can do everything we imagine. This was not possible with the previous version, we met problems, but the last one resolves all problems. (we add problems with multi tables connection in database, M2A, M2M, etc.)

Nachteile

If we create some fields, some can't be edited, we can only delete theses and do it again.

Vorteile

The documentation was really good and I found it easy to figure things out without needing to contact the support guys all the time

Nachteile

Not having available plugins to use out of the box and having to build them.

Vorteile

With Directus I could built an MVP from zero to hero in a few days. It's user interface is pretty friendly and it's community on discord is amazing

Nachteile

Integrations with existing projects and services like Stripe, Google Drive, etc.

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Warum Directus gewählt wurde

Zuvor genutzte Software

Vorteile

Open source and non opinionated.
Easy to extend.
Flexible.
Customer service on Slack.

Nachteile

Documentation could be a bit more in depth for developers looking to extend the open source code, but some help is provided on Slack.