An Express CMS like no other

Meet the headless Express CMS that integrates with your app using a straightforward API. Smooth, simple, and tasty content integration — that’s Butter.

Posted on November 17, 2023

Intuitive admin interface

So easy to use. So easy to customize. You’re going to love the content you build better with ButterCMS.

Handy integration with Express.js

Our Express CMS has a simple content API and drop-in Express SDK that makes the magic happen in minutes, not hours.

A truly zero-maintenance solution

With ButterCMS, you’ll never worry about security upgrades, hosting, or performance again.

Powerful CMS for Express . Zero headache.

Drop our API-based CMS into your Express app in minutes. 

ButterCMS provides a component-based CMS and content API for Express and Express.js apps. Use ButterCMS to enable dynamic content in your apps for page content, blogs, and anything else. Most customers get our Express CMS set up in one hour or less. 

That leaves plenty of time for you and your marketing team to do what you do best: create killer apps with killer content. 

Play video

See how Butter’s API enables you to compose flexible page layouts and easily reorder components, without a developer.

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“Best CMS on the market”

headshot of Hampton Catl

After shopping the market, it was clear that ButterCMS was the perfect choice. It allows our developers to build powerful components and makes it easy for our marketing team to drive a better customer experience. Hampton Catlin Creator of Sass and Haml

Deploy our Express Starter in 30 seconds!

Or follow the below commands to clone a copy of the repo from github, install dependencies, set your free Butter token, and run your local server on localhost:3000/.

$ git clone https://github.com/ButterCMS/expressjs-starter-buttercms.git
$ cd expressjs-starter-buttercms
$ npm install
$ echo 'EXPRESS_BUTTER_CMS_API_KEY=your_free_butter_api_token' >> .env
$ npm run dev

Built to make content marketing easy

ButterCMS is the best headless cms for Express for a simple reason: Express developers can build solutions that marketing people love. Our API allows your content gurus to quickly spin up high-converting, dynamic landing pages, SEO pages, product marketing pages, and more, all using simple drag-and-drop functionality.

  • SEO landing pages
  • Customer case studies
  • Company news & updates
  • Events + webinar pages
  • Education center
  • Location pages
  • And more...

The simplest Express CMS you'll find

Our simple setup saves you time and money. Take us for a spin to see for yourself!

headshot of LUKE GARDNER

It's the epitome of plug-and-play simplicity for content creators. It does exactly what I need it to. LUKE GARDNER, CONTENT SPECIALIST, PRINTAVO

Fast integration with any Express app

Our mission was to make it easy to integrate Butter with your existing Express app in minutes. It’s so simple! To demonstrate, here’s a mini tutorial to give you a feel for the process of adding marketing pages to your Express or Express.js app.

Of course, you can also use our Collections to do advanced content modeling. For a full integration guide, check out our Official Guide for the ButterCMS Express API client.

Play video

See how easily you can integrate the ButterCMS Pages API with your Express.js app.

Seamless Express components

Empower your marketing team with dynamic landing pages that align perfectly with your Express components. 

Components are the essential building blocks of any Express app, and ButterCMS handles them with ease. 

Our drag and drop interface makes it simple to structure your content to match existing Express components and to create new reusable components whenever you need them.

One Express CMS with everything you need

There’s a reason so many developers are choosing a headless Express CMS. It’s easy to set up, offers flexible, customizable content modeling, and gives you access to our full Express API.

  • Custom page types
  • Custom content modeling
  • CDN for assets
  • Webhooks
  • Testing environment
  • Customer case studies
  • Location pages

ButterCMS saves you development time

Most customers get our Express CMS up and running in less than an hour. Try it yourself!

headshot of DILLON BURNS

Simple as can be, with powerful features and great customer support. DILLON BURNS, FRONT END DEVELOPER, KEYME

How to integrate ButterCMS into your Express application

Just follow the simple steps below to complete the integration and begin creating pages with Butter. Be sure to check out our full guide to creating pages using the ButterCMS Express API.

To display posts we create a simple /blog route in our app and fetch blog posts from the Butter API. See our API reference for additional options such as filtering by category or author. The response also includes some metadata we'll use for pagination.

var express = require('express');
var butter = require('buttercms')('your_token');
var app = express()

app.set('view engine', 'ejs');

app.get('/blog', renderHome)
app.get('/blog/p/:page', renderHome)

app.listen(3000)

function renderHome(req, res) {
  var page = req.params.page || 1;

  butter.post.list({page_size: 10, page: page}).then(function(resp) {
    res.render('index', {
      posts: resp.data.data,
      next_page: resp.data.meta.next_page,
      previous_page: resp.data.meta.previous_page
    })
  })
}

Next we'll create an EJS template for displaying our posts and pagination links. This guide uses EJS templates but Butter works with any templating engine like Jade, Mustache, and React. If you need help after reading this, contact us via email or livechat.

<h2>Blog</h2>

<% posts.forEach(function(post) { %>
  <a href="/blog/<%= post.slug %>"><%= post.title %></a> by <%= post.author.first_name %> <%= post.author.last_name %>
  <br>
<% }); %>

<% if (previous_page) { %>
  <a href="/blog/p/<%= previous_page %>">Prev</a>
<% } %>

<% if (next_page) { %>
  <a href="/blog/p/<%= next_page %>">Next</a>
<% } %>

We'll also create an additional route for displaying individual posts:

app.get('/blog/:slug', renderPost)

function renderPost(req, res) {
  var slug = req.params.slug;

  butter.post.retrieve(slug).then(function(resp) {
    res.render('post', {
      title: resp.data.data.title,
      post: resp.data.data,
      published: new Date(resp.data.data.published)
    })
  })
}

The template for displaying a full post includes information such as author and publish date. See a full list of available post properties in our API reference.

<h2><%= post.title %></h2>

Published <%= published.getDate() %>/<%= published.getMonth()+1 %>/<%= published.getFullYear() %>

<% if (post.categories.length > 0) { %>
  in
  <% post.categories.forEach(function(cat) { %>
    <a href="/category/<%= cat.slug %>"><%= cat.name %></a>
  <% }); %>
<% } %>

<br>

<%= post.author.first_name %> <%= post.author.last_name %>

<div>
  <%- post.body %>
</div>

That's it! If you browse to your homepage you'll see your homepage populated with the content you created in Butter.

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Try Butter free for 14 days

See for yourself what makes Butter the best Express CMS out there. Click the button below to sign up for your free 14-day trial.