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Headless CMS RFP — How to Run Vendor Evaluation Right
Running a headless CMS RFP is one of the highest-stakes technical decisions a B2B team makes. The vendor you pick will define your content team velocity, frontend architecture flexibility, and developer experience for the next three to five years. Most teams under-run the evaluation — they shortlist by feature checklist, demo the top three, and pick the one with the best account executive. Six months in they discover the pricing model breaks at scale or the editor experience pushes content people back to Google Docs.
What a headless CMS RFP should evaluate
Five dimensions matter for headless CMS RFP evaluation: content modelling flexibility (can it handle nested references, localisation, and content versioning?), editor experience (do non-technical content people actually want to use it?), developer experience (GraphQL or REST quality, webhook reliability, preview-mode plumbing), pricing model at scale (per-user, per-record, bandwidth — picks are durable only if pricing stays sane at 10x current volume), and vendor lock-in risk (how hard to migrate out in three years if the vendor pivots or gets acquired).
Headless CMS RFP template — what to include
A workable RFP document has six sections: context (your company, content volume, team structure, integration ecosystem), functional requirements (content types, workflow needs, languages, governance), technical requirements (API style, performance SLA, security posture, deployment model — cloud or self-hosted), commercial terms (pricing transparency, contract length, exit clauses), proof points (case studies from comparable teams, references from accounts of similar scale), and your evaluation timeline. Send the same document to 4-5 vendors. Score responses with the same rubric.
Vendors that should be on your headless CMS RFP shortlist
Default shortlist for B2B SaaS marketing sites: Sanity (best editor experience, GROQ query language, lock-in risk via proprietary studio), Strapi (open-source, self-host or cloud, full control, weaker editor UX), Contentful (mature enterprise option, complex pricing, lock-in via proprietary delivery API), Storyblok (visual editing, smaller community), WordPress headless (familiar to content teams, mature ecosystem, but headless adds operational complexity). For commerce-heavy: Shopify Hydrogen, Commerce Layer, Saleor. For media-heavy: Sanity or Contentful (both handle DAM at scale).
Headless CMS RFP — frequently asked questions
Five weeks end-to-end for a typical B2B engagement: 1 week to write the RFP, 2 weeks vendor response window, 1 week demos with prepared content-modelling exercises, 1 week pricing negotiation and reference calls. Shorter RFPs (2-3 weeks) usually skip the content-modelling exercise and lead to mid-implementation surprises.
Default B2B shortlist: Sanity, Strapi, Contentful, Storyblok, WordPress headless. Add Shopify Hydrogen or Commerce Layer if commerce-heavy. The right shortlist depends on content team size, language requirements, integration ecosystem, and pricing tolerance. We help narrow this in a 30-min consultation.
Letting developers pick by feature checklist without content team veto. The content team uses the CMS 40 hours a week — if the editor experience is bad, they go back to Google Docs and migration fails. The developer experience matters but is the #2 priority, not #1.
Depends on team size and lock-in tolerance. Open-source (Strapi, Directus) gives full control and predictable pricing but requires DevOps capacity. Proprietary (Sanity, Contentful) offloads ops but creates lock-in via proprietary studio / delivery API. Mid-size B2B SaaS typically lands on proprietary for the ops savings; enterprise often picks open-source for cost predictability at scale.
Weighted rubric across five dimensions: content modelling (25%), editor experience (25%), developer experience (15%), pricing at 5x and 10x scale (20%), vendor lock-in / exit risk (15%). Each vendor scored 1-5 per dimension with written rationale. Final score is weighted sum. Top score wins unless reference calls reveal disqualifying issues.
Yes — we have run 12+ headless CMS RFPs and migrations. Vendor-neutral scope: write RFP, prepare content-modelling tests, run demos with your team, score against rubric, join reference calls. Typical fee €4-8k depending on shortlist size and team scale. Often saves 4-6 months of post-purchase regret. Book a 30-min consultation to scope.