What is ButterCMS? Put simply, it’s a modern content management system (CMS) for growing businesses that need a faster, easier way to deliver content to any digital channel or device.
It gives developers the freedom to use any frontend framework they like, marketers the independence to publish on their own timeline, and the entire team gets the speed to match business growth.
This guide breaks down what ButterCMS is, how it works, and the most common use cases. If you want to know if ButterCMS is a good fit, this is a great place to start.
Let’s dive in.
ButterCMS is a headless CMS. It stores your content in a central hub and lets you publish it to any channel you choose (like websites, mobile apps, or IoT devices), all while ensuring it looks exactly how you designed it to.
Unlike traditional CMSs, it doesn’t lock your content inside one set of templates or a single tech stack. You decide how and where it’s displayed, and ButterCMS delivers it through clean REST APIs, SDKs, and webhooks.
The architecture is fully composable, so you can plug it into your existing tools without ripping anything out or replatforming. Developers set it up quickly in modern frameworks like React, Next.js, Vue, or Angular, and build modular content blocks to define layouts and control how content looks. This sets up guardrails for the marketing team. Marketers then use those modular content blocks to create and manage digital experiences on their own.
ButterCMS is built with developer- and marketer-friendly tools that make it simple to launch, manage, and scale content. Here’s a list of our most popular features.
Write API, API Explorer, and webhooks: Push content programmatically from other systems with Write API. Use webhooks to trigger actions automatically when content changes. Test and troubleshoot API calls with API Explorer. Use REST for core read/write operations, Image API for on-the-fly asset handling, and event-driven workflows.
SDKs, clear docs, and starter kits: These help you get up and running quickly. Most teams have ButterCMS running in production in weeks, not months. Check out our Developer Hub for the full range of support at your disposal.
Components, collections, pages, and page types: These are ButterCMS’s modular content blocks. Each one plays a specific role, and developers can define them however the business needs.
Collections are structured sets of content like product specs, FAQs, or testimonials. Components are flexible blocks (like cards, CTAs, and banners) that can include content fields of their own and/or pull content from one or more Collections. Lastly, pages and page types bring components and collections together into full layouts.Developers assemble these building blocks into defined structures with set guardrails for the marketing team. From there, marketers can safely mix, match, and update those structures on their own, without needing to know code.
Roles and permissions: Control exactly who can change what. Give marketers their own space to work while locking down production-critical areas.
Components, Live Preview, and Visual Editing: Use ready-made Components (built by your developers) to quickly assemble new pages without touching code. Make text edits, swap out images, and adjust layouts as needed with Visual Editing, and see exactly how updates will look before publishing with Live Preview.
Roles, Permissions, and Workflows: Set clear workflows so creators write content, editors make changes, reviewers approve them, and content gets published when you say it’s ready.
Blog Engine and SEO Metadata: Create and manage blog posts with categories, tags, and SEO fields using Blog Engine. Update titles, descriptions, alt text, and other metadata yourself. Preview before publishing so pages are optimized the moment they go live.
Media Library / DAM: Keep all your images, videos, and documents in one searchable library. Find what you need quickly, reuse assets, and avoid duplicates.
For a more complete breakdown of our features, check out our capabilities.
We built ButterCMS to be a launchpad for your business. Here’s how we deliver on that promise.
At its core, ButterCMS streamlines workflows so that developer and marketing teams can work together in parallel, instead of creating bottlenecks for each other.
You don’t have to let rigid traditional CMSs or complex homegrown systems bog you down. ButterCMS is a lightweight, flexible headless CMS that fits neatly into your existing tech stack.
You’ll escape the constant stream of content requests. Set it up once, hand it off to marketing, and get back to the work you’d rather be doing. Teams have told us they’ve saved tens of thousands of developer hours this way.
And because ButterCMS is fully managed (hosted on Heroku and AWS with a global CDN), you don’t have to worry about infrastructure, maintenance, or performance tuning. It’s ready to handle a landing page launch or a million-request traffic spike with the same reliability
After your developers set it up, you can use the simple, no-code dashboard to create and store content on your own. If you need to change a headline, replace a banner, or add a seasonal promo, you can do it yourself, on your timeline.
Live Preview shows exactly what the page will look like before anything goes live, so you can make adjustments with confidence. Scheduling lets you line up blog posts and campaign launches in advance. And reusable components let you create new landing pages quickly, without starting from scratch.
When your teams are working in sync, you can really get moving. A central content hub helps you manage multiple sites, brands, and languages. Localization tools make it easier to publish in different markets. And reusable content blocks let you create new pages quickly.
Behind the scenes, a global CDN and caching keep performance steady, even under heavy traffic. Role-based workflows and approvals make sure content moves fast but stays accurate. And the lean, API-first design means you’re not weighed down by plugins or extra complexity.
ButterCMS isn’t just a piece of software. Our team backs you up every step of the way. When you hit a snag, you’ll talk to a real person who knows the product. With a 9.6 out of 10 Quality of Support rating on G2, we’re known for being fast, friendly, and human.
Whether you’re a developer or a marketer, ButterCMS works in three simple steps.
Plug it into your existing stack. Pick your framework and use a starter project to get connected.
Model your content. Build reusable content blocks for your marketing team.
Hand off to marketing. Show them the ropes, explain the guardrails you set up, and let them take it from here. You can get back to building.
Create and preview. Add content in a no-code editor. See exactly how it will look with instant previews, scheduling, and approval workflows.
Publish and deliver anywhere. Hit publish when you’re ready, and the content instantly goes live everywhere you choose.
Update and scale. Make updates once, and they go live across all connected channels. Manage multiple brands, languages, or sites from the same account.
These workflows open the door to a wide range of use cases across web, mobile, and ecommerce.
Here are some of the most common use cases for ButterCMS.
Websites and landing pages: Launch new pages without bottlenecks.
SEO-rich blogs and content hubs: Add content and use SEO fields and fast load times for better rankings.
Multi-site, multi-brand, and multi-language content: Manage multiple sites all from one dashboard.
Ecommerce: Power product pages, banners, and seasonal content without touching backend code.
Mobile apps: Update in-app content instantly, no redeploys required.
Agency and partner deployments: Build client sites quickly, reuse components across projects.
ButterCMS is designed for growth-focused teams who want to move fast, scale smoothly, and avoid the complexity of outdated platforms and other headless CMSs. It’s a strong fit for:
Startups or small teams needing to launch campaigns, MVPs, or microsites under tight deadlines.
Mid-sized companies scaling across brands, regions, or markets that need a lightweight, flexible content engine to support multi-site and multilingual operations without adding complexity.
Companies migrating from WordPress, Drupal, or a homegrown CMS and looking for a modern, flexible tool and better collaboration between dev and marketer teams.
Mobile teams creating dynamic app experiences that need content changes without redeploys.
Agencies and partners who need to manage multiple clients and their websites or projects with reusable tools.
ButterCMS’ transparent pricing is designed to grow with you. Unlike other CMSs, there are no seat limits, gated essentials, or surprise fees. Every plan includes unlimited users, components, collections, and locales, plus core features like Visual Editing, Live Preview, AI Assistant, SEO tools, and Version History.
Plans scale based on API calls, bandwidth, and asset storage, so you pay for what you actually use, not for access to features. Paid plans range from $79/month for Basic to $399/month for Professional, with a 10% discount if you pay annually.
Custom plans are available for enterprise customers and include custom thresholds, SLA-backed performance, hands-on onboarding, implementation planning, technical guidance, and enterprise support with a dedicated customer support manager.
You can test ButterCMS with a 14-day free trial. And if you need more time, the Free plan is perfect for extended testing. It’s also great for scrappy teams looking to start small and scale later.
For more details, check out our full pricing page.
Whether you need to launch your next campaign in hours, replatform from a legacy CMS, or manage content across multiple sites and markets, ButterCMS gives you the speed, flexibility, and support to make it happen.
Try it for free to see if it's a good fit for your team.
A headless CMS stores your content in one central place and delivers it to any digital screen through APIs. In a traditional CMS, the backend (where content is stored) and the frontend (where it’s displayed) are locked together. It’s like a laptop: the backend is the hard drive and the frontend is the monitor; you can’t separate them.
A headless CMS breaks that link. It’s backend only, by design. You have complete control over the frontend, so you decide where and how to display your content. That flexibility is what “headless” really means: one backend, unlimited frontends.
Traditional CMSs (like WordPress or Drupal) lock your content to a single frontend, which limits flexibility and slows down updates. ButterCMS is just the backend, so you can connect it to any frontend you like. Developers get full freedom to build with their favorite frameworks, while marketers can publish updates instantly.
Yes. The Enterprise plan offers custom usage thresholds, SLA-backed performance, advanced security controls, dedicated onboarding, and enterprise-level support with a dedicated customer support manager. ButterCMS is built to scale globally, integrate with complex tech stacks, and meet enterprise compliance needs.
ButterCMS works with any framework, including React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, and more. Official SDKs, starter projects, and clean API docs make it fast to integrate and easy to maintain.
