Astro has no built-in content editor. Out of the box, content lives in Markdown files inside the code repository, and editing them requires Git access. For a developer, that’s fine. For a marketing director who needs to publish a blog post on Thursday morning, it’s a blocker. Here’s what the real options look like — not just the technical names, but the actual day-to-day experience, pricing, and when you’d choose each.
Why Astro Doesn’t Come with a CMS
Astro’s design philosophy is to be unopinionated about where your content comes from. It can pull content from Markdown files, from REST APIs, from GraphQL endpoints, from spreadsheets, from databases. This flexibility is genuinely useful for developers who need to integrate existing content infrastructure.
It also means Astro doesn’t make the “what CMS do you use?” decision for you. Every Astro site needs to answer this question, and the answer should come from who’s updating the content and how often — not from which CMS the developer knows best.
If no CMS is integrated and content lives in Markdown files, the workflow for a non-developer is: request a code change from a developer, wait for the developer to make the edit, wait for the deployment to rebuild and publish. That’s not content management. That’s a ticket queue.
The right CMS integration eliminates that dependency. The wrong one creates a different kind of friction. Here’s how the main options compare.
Option 1: Contentful
Contentful is the enterprise-grade choice. It’s been around since 2013, has the largest market share among headless CMS platforms, and is what most large organizations use when they need a headless CMS that won’t go out of business.
What it looks like to use: Contentful’s editor is a structured form interface. You have content types — “Blog Post,” “Service Page,” “Team Member” — and each has defined fields: title, body, featured image, publication date. You fill in the fields, click Publish, and the site rebuilds with your new content. No code, no Git, no waiting on a developer for routine content updates.
Pricing:
- Free tier: 5 users, 25,000 records, 48 content types — enough for most small sites
- Basic: $300/month
- Enterprise: custom
The jump from free to paid is significant. Contentful’s pricing was designed for enterprise customers, and the free tier, while functional, has limits that growing sites hit. If you’re a small business expecting to stay on the free tier indefinitely, verify your expected content volume against the limits.
Astro integration: Well-documented. Contentful has an official Astro integration guide. A developer sets it up once; editors use the Contentful web dashboard from then on.
When to choose it: You’re a mid-to-large organization, you need robust permissions (different roles for editors, reviewers, publishers), you need API reliability with enterprise-level SLAs, and budget isn’t the primary constraint.
Option 2: Sanity
Sanity is the developer-friendly choice that increasingly works well for non-technical editors. It’s structured differently from Contentful: your content types are defined in code (schema files), which gives developers more flexibility but means the initial setup requires a developer.
What it looks like to use: Sanity Studio is a customizable web interface that your developer configures to match your content needs. Once configured, it can look exactly like what your team needs: a clean blog editor, a drag-and-drop page builder, a rich text editor with custom formatting rules. It can also look confusing if it’s not configured thoughtfully. The editor experience is only as good as the developer’s setup.
Pricing:
- Free tier: 3 users, 200,000 API requests/month, 5GB bandwidth
- Growth: $15/user/month
- Custom enterprise pricing
Sanity’s pricing is per-user, which is more predictable than Contentful’s content-volume pricing. For a team of 3–5 content editors, the Growth tier runs $45–$75/month. That’s reasonable for mid-size content operations.
Astro integration: Sanity has an official Astro plugin. Setup requires a developer; ongoing content editing is done in Sanity Studio.
When to choose it: You want a highly customized editing experience (custom page builders, content previews, specialized fields). You have a developer who will invest time in configuring the Studio well. Your team doesn’t mind a slightly more complex setup in exchange for a better long-term editor experience.
Option 3: Storyblok
Storyblok is the most non-developer-friendly option on this list. Its visual editor shows a live preview of your website as you edit content — you see the change on the page in real time, not in a form separated from the output.
What it looks like to use: Open Storyblok, click on a text block on your website preview, type the new text, click Save. For someone who is used to visual editors like WordPress’s Gutenberg or Squarespace, Storyblok feels immediately familiar. The learning curve is the lowest of any headless CMS.
Pricing:
- Free tier: 1 user, 250 content entries, 1 content source
- Entry: $9/month (3 users)
- Team: $49/month (10 users)
- Business: $99/month (25 users)
Storyblok’s pricing is competitive for small teams. The $49/month Team tier covers most small-to-medium marketing teams.
Astro integration: Storyblok has an official Astro SDK. More complex to set up than Contentful or Sanity because the visual editor requires additional configuration to render live previews. A developer comfortable with Storyblok can handle this; a developer learning it on your project will need extra time.
When to choose it: Your content team is non-technical and values visual feedback while editing. You’re willing to pay for better editor UX. Your site has complex page compositions where a visual editor is more intuitive than a structured form.
Option 4: Decap CMS (formerly Netlify CMS)
Decap is the free, open-source, Git-based CMS. It stores content directly in your code repository — edits through the Decap interface create Git commits. The interface is a simple form-based editor.
What it looks like to use: Decap loads in your browser and shows a list of your content entries. You click an entry, edit the fields in a form, click Save, and the content commits to Git and triggers a deployment. The interface is basic — no visual preview, no advanced workflows, no role-based permissions beyond “can commit to this repository.”
Pricing: Free. Decap is open-source with no paid tiers.
Astro integration: Works with any Astro site deployed to Netlify or Cloudflare Pages. Configuration is a YAML file. A developer can set this up in 2–4 hours.
The real limitation: Because Decap is Git-based, it has the same limitation as editing Markdown files directly — but with a nicer interface. Non-developers don’t need to know Git, but they’re still creating commits under the hood. Content rollback means reverting Git commits. Publishing workflows require branch configuration. For a team that just needs to publish blog posts, Decap works. For a team with complex editorial workflows, it falls short.
When to choose it: Small sites, tight budget, simple content needs (blog posts, basic service page edits). A team that can tolerate basic tooling in exchange for $0/month in CMS costs.
Option 5: TinaCMS
TinaCMS is an emerging option built specifically for Git-based content with a better editor experience than Decap. It offers inline visual editing — click directly on page text to edit it — while still storing content in Markdown files in your repository.
What it looks like to use: Open a page preview in Tina’s editor, click the headline, type the new text, click Save. The visual editing experience is comparable to Storyblok. Content is stored as Markdown in Git, so there’s no separate CMS database to manage.
Pricing:
- Free tier: 2 users
- Starter: $29/month (5 users)
- Team: $79/month (20 users)
Astro integration: TinaCMS has Astro support, though it’s newer and less battle-tested than Contentful or Sanity integrations. Some features require configuration time.
When to choose it: You want visual editing without paying Storyblok’s rates. You prefer content stored in your repository rather than an external database. You’re willing to work with a newer, less-established platform.
The Honest Answer About WordPress
Here’s where the clean narrative about headless CMSes and Astro gets complicated.
WordPress’s content editor — Gutenberg — is a mature, visual, non-developer-friendly interface that millions of people already know how to use. WordPress has 15 years of editor documentation, community tutorials, and plugins for nearly every content need. It’s hosted on the same server as the site. There’s no separate CMS platform to integrate, configure, and maintain.
For a site where the primary concern is content editor independence — a blog-heavy business, a news site, a company where marketing runs content without any developer support — WordPress with a custom WordPress development approach (no page builders, optimized templates) can match Astro’s performance closely while giving non-technical teams a more familiar, capable editing environment.
See Astro vs WordPress for business sites for the full comparison. The short version: Astro wins on raw performance metrics. WordPress wins on ecosystem depth and content editor capability. The right answer depends on your team’s technical capacity and how much developer involvement you want in your day-to-day content operations.
How to Pick the Right Option
Ask these questions in order:
1. Who updates content, and how often? If it’s a developer or someone with Git access: Markdown files or Decap. Free and simple. If it’s a non-technical marketing team updating daily: Storyblok or Contentful. Visual or structured form interfaces that don’t require code. If it’s a mixed team with some technical members: Sanity. Flexible enough for both.
2. How complex is your content structure? Simple blog posts and static pages: any option works. Decap or Contentful free tier. Complex page compositions, modular sections, varied layouts: Storyblok (visual) or Sanity (flexible schema).
3. What’s your CMS budget? $0: Decap or WordPress (self-hosted). Under $50/month: Storyblok Entry or Team tier. Under $100/month: Sanity Growth (5 users) or Storyblok Business. $300+/month: Contentful Basic.
4. How important is live visual preview? Very important: Storyblok or TinaCMS. Not important: any option.
5. Are you migrating from WordPress? If yes, and your team is comfortable in WordPress: consider whether the migration is worth it. A well-optimized custom WordPress site may serve your team better than Astro + headless CMS. If performance benchmarks justify the move, Contentful or Sanity are the closest to WordPress’s content editing mental model.
What the Integration Setup Looks Like
Every headless CMS integration involves roughly the same developer work:
- Set up the CMS account and define content types (matching whatever content exists)
- Write Astro data-fetching code to pull content from the CMS API at build time
- Configure webhooks so content changes trigger a site rebuild automatically
- Set up environment variables (API keys) in the deployment platform
- Test the editing workflow end-to-end before handoff
This takes 15–40 developer hours depending on the CMS and the content complexity. Storyblok’s visual editor setup takes longer because of the live preview configuration. Decap’s setup is fastest.
Budget this time into the build. If a proposal includes “CMS integration” as a line item, make sure it includes the webhook configuration and end-to-end editor testing, not just the initial API connection.
FAQ
Can non-developers really manage an Astro site without developer help? Yes, with the right CMS. With Contentful, Sanity, Storyblok, or Decap properly configured, a non-developer can publish new pages, update existing content, and manage a blog without touching code or knowing what Astro is. The CMS is their entire interface.
What if my team already uses HubSpot for content? HubSpot can function as a headless CMS for Astro via API, but the integration is less straightforward than dedicated headless CMS platforms. If your team is content-operations-heavy and already on HubSpot, it may be simpler to build in WordPress (where HubSpot integrations are plug-and-play) than to build a custom HubSpot-to-Astro pipeline.
Is Contentful free tier enough for a small business? Usually, yes. Contentful’s free tier allows 25,000 content records and 5 users — more than enough for a small business site with a blog. The main limit you might hit is content types (25 types max). If you need more than 25 distinct content structures, you’d need a paid plan.
What happens to content if I switch CMS providers? Content export formats vary by platform. Contentful exports JSON. Sanity exports JSON with their schema. Storyblok exports JSON. Migrating content from one CMS to another requires a developer to map fields and transform the export format. It’s a defined project (4–16 hours depending on content volume) rather than an ongoing dependency.
Does the CMS choice affect Astro’s performance? No. Astro fetches content from the CMS at build time — the CMS is not involved in serving pages to visitors. Your site performance depends on Astro’s build output and your CDN, not on which CMS you’re using.
Can I use multiple CMS platforms with one Astro site? Yes. Astro can pull content from multiple sources in the same build — Contentful for blog posts, Sanity for product pages, a spreadsheet for pricing data. This is common in larger organizations. It adds configuration complexity but is technically straightforward.
What’s the simplest possible setup for a small business? An Astro site with Decap CMS deployed on Netlify. Free hosting, free CMS, straightforward editing interface. The trade-off is Decap’s limited features. For a site with 5–10 static pages and a basic blog, it works well.
Whether you need Contentful’s structure, Storyblok’s visual editing, or Sanity’s flexibility depends on your team and your content volume. If none of the headless CMS options feel right for your operation, it’s worth asking whether Astro is the right framework — or whether a custom WordPress development build gives your team more independence from day one. Our fixed-price packages include a framework recommendation based on your specific workflow, not on whatever we built last.