A Node CMS like no other

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

Posted on November 15, 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 Node.js

Our Node CMS has a simple content API and drop-in Node 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 Node. Zero headache.

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

ButterCMS provides a component-based CMS and content API for Node and Node.js apps. Use ButterCMS to enable dynamic content in your apps for page content, blogs, and anything else. Most customers get our Node 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 Node 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 Node for a simple reason: Node 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 Node 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 Node app

Our mission was to make it easy to integrate Butter with your existing Node 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 Node or Node.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 Node API client.

Play video

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

Seamless Node components

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

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

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

One Node CMS with everything you need

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

First you would set up a new Customer Case Study page type in Butter and create a page. With your page defined, the ButterCMS API will return it in JSON format like this:

{
    "data": {
        "slug": "acme-co",
        "fields": {
            "facebook_open_graph_title": "Acme Co loves ButterCMS",
            "seo_title": "Acme Co Customer Case Study",
            "headline": "Acme Co saved 200% on Anvil costs with ButterCMS",
            "testimonial": "<p>We've been able to make anvils faster than ever before! - <em>Chief Anvil Maker</em></p>\r\n<p><img src=\"https://cdn.buttercms.com/NiA3IIP3Ssurz5eNJ15a\" alt=\"\" caption=\"false\" width=\"249\" height=\"249\" /></p>",
            "customer_logo": "https://cdn.buttercms.com/c8oSTGcwQDC5I58km5WV",
        }
    }
}

This guide uses the Express framework and EJS templates but Butter integrates with any Node.js server and templating engines like Jade, Mustache, and React. To create these pages in our app, we create a dynamic route that fetches content for the page by using a URL parameter. This is how the app.js file might look:

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

var app = express()

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

// Routes
app.get('/customers/:slug', function() {
  butter.page.retrieve("customer_case_study", params.slug).then(function(resp) {
    var page = resp.data.data;

    res.render('case_study', {
      case_study: page.fields
    })
  });
});

Display the results in views/case_study.ejs

<html>
  <head>
    <title><%= case_study.seo_title %></title>
    <meta property="og:title" content="<%= case_study.facebook_open_graph_title %>" /> 
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1><%= case_study.headline %></h1>
    <img width="100%" src="<%= case_study.customer_logo %>">
    <p><%= case_study.testimonial %></p>
  </body>
</html>

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

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