What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Contentful is that I built my personal brand called immediatetiger.com and I needed a section called blog where I could post articles from time to time about anything that I found interesting and related to my work. I needed something where I could log in and manage my articles with a basic API that would expose my data and I could read them through a microservice.
Because I use the Next.js framework, I found Contentful very easy to integrate and basically expose that to the front end so I can see articles and manage them through Contentful's content management system.
I use Contentful solo. I worked at one company and integrated Contentful as well, but for my personal brand, it is literally just a solo solution to manage my personal blog. That's why I also have a free account, because I set up my account a long time ago, but I didn't have a real solution that I could utilize Contentful for. I can see that right now it works for me long-term, so it's a great choice.
I have only four articles so far because it's been since January 2025, so it's just basically this year and we're currently in March, so it hasn't been a long time. What I found very interesting is that I can upload images. Because I can upload images and publish them through Contentful, that simplifies a lot of things because usually I use Google Cloud storage. When you write articles, it's better to keep images and articles in one place in Contentful because it's just so easy to think about. For now, because I'm very slow with doing my articles, it's a really great choice. I know that Contentful also does GraphQL, which is great as well.
What is most valuable?
Contentful offers several valuable features. The most valuable feature is Content, where I can create new articles. I also found the Media section interesting, where I can upload my images. When I look at the content, I found it interesting how I can model content. When I click on my article, I have ID, title, description, and images fields. This feature where I can add fields of a specific type is really great when you look at a project in the initial stage, because you never know how long-term you will expand or what will happen with the project.
Apart from these features, I found that it's easy to integrate, and the documentation is easy as well. I could easily create the API key and everything else. When you look at the API keys feature, I think it's very stable. I never had any problem. Webhooks also exist, but I don't use them right now. Maybe I will use them at some point. Because I publish my articles very slowly and not many, I use mainly these features for now.
Contentful has positively impacted my work because I have people browsing Google and because I use SEO as well, and my articles are indexed and written by me. People come and read them. The most valuable part is that some people find them attractive and actually read about topics like the difference between chatbots or agents, what is a chatbot, what is fine-tuning, or remote work. These are actually my articles, which are quite important looking at the market right now. Some people come and view and read them.
What needs improvement?
To be honest, I don't work so deeply with Contentful to see anything that I would change. Based on what I do, everything is really done in the sense that I don't need any changes. Maybe in the future something will change, but at this specific moment, I think I got everything I need from Contentful.
The only thing I would mention is basically fields and types. That's what I found quite difficult at the beginning to understand how all that works. So there is some space to improve. Apart from that, I didn't have really any big requirements in terms of any changes. I would need to look very deeply once again at what I did because I did that some time ago. For now, I don't need any updates from Contentful. At least, I don't see it at this specific moment. The job I really do by using Contentful is really little. I don't post every week or every single day to basically expect something more in terms of quality.
I just noticed that there's a new AI Automation tab. I have not seen that before. At this specific moment, I think everything works in a really great way. It's very stable. That's the most important when you post content. The last thing you want to see is that the service disappears or your content is somehow changed. For me, it's been very stable. Even though I have just four articles, they're very important for me, and my personal brand is very important for me as well. I just try to make sure that I stick to basically stable solutions. For one year and six months, I never had any problems with Contentful. Even when I was updating the module, I never had any problems.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Contentful for about one year and six months, starting when I began building my personal brand and one of my sections is a blog, where I needed to manage my blog articles somehow.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
At this specific moment, I think everything works in a really great way. It's very stable. That's the most important when you post content. The last thing you want to see is that the service disappears or your content is somehow changed. For me, it's been very stable. Even though I have just four articles, they're very important for me, and my personal brand is very important for me as well. I just try to make sure that I stick to basically stable solutions. For one year and six months, I never had any problems with Contentful. Even when I was updating the module, I never had any problems.
In terms of Contentful, I would rate it 10/10 based on my usage and driven by the stability of the service. When I was building my personal brand for the last one year and six months, I never saw the service go down or break my articles in any way. So there was no downtime. At least I have not noticed that. This is the reason why I rate it 10/10 because when you publish your content and you have articles, even though you have just four of them, the company Contentful may not understand the value of my ideas and why I do it. However, it is very important that there are no downtimes periodically since I bought my domain and I build a lot of other things on that domain as well. My service is quite big. When I choose companies, I look at how stable they are, what's the downtime, and if I had any problems during the time I was working with that actual integration or something. There are companies where things fail and so on. To be honest with Contentful, since I signed up and used this service twice, I didn't have any problems in terms of downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Contentful scalability in my experience is great.
How are customer service and support?
There were challenges because when I was creating a solution, I didn't know Contentful very well. I found a lot of problems with types and matching in TypeScript types with the fields I was using and with the API and the full module. The biggest problem I found was to actually set up correctly and match types so I could build the project and deploy that correctly. This was causing me at the beginning a lot of problems when I was trying to pull data and display my articles. Also quite challenging was displaying the image. It took me a while before I actually did that. However, I managed to display everything the way I want it.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was using Drupal and Joomla a long time ago. I was also using WordPress. However, all these systems are not headless. I was using those content management systems for a while for different reasons. For my personal brand, I was looking for a solution where I could create different types of fields and I could connect to the API and get the actual values of these fields.
How was the initial setup?
I found a lot of problems with types and matching in TypeScript types with the fields I was using and with the API and the full module. The biggest problem I found was to actually set up correctly and match types so I could build the project and deploy that correctly. This was causing me at the beginning a lot of problems when I was trying to pull data and display my articles. Also quite challenging was displaying the image. It took me a while before I actually did that. However, I managed to display everything the way I want it.
What about the implementation team?
I use Contentful solo. I worked at one company and integrated Contentful as well, but for my personal brand, it is literally just a solo solution to manage my personal blog.
What was our ROI?
For one year and six months, I never had any problems with Contentful. Even when I was updating the module, I never had any problems.
Contentful has positively impacted my work because I have people browsing Google and because I use SEO as well, and my articles are indexed and written by me. People come and read them. The most valuable part is that some people find them attractive and actually read about what the difference is between chatbots or agents, what is a chatbot, what is fine-tuning, or remote work. These are actually my articles, which are quite important looking at the market right now. Some people come and view and read them.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm on a free plan just because I don't post a lot and the basic setup is free. So at the moment, I'm on a free plan.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was looking at Netlify or something, and looking at WordPress.
What other advice do I have?
I do use Google Analytics. I track my views and I can see how popular my articles are. It's not a lot of views, but people systematically come and read something, which is good.
I didn't check support, but when I was doing that I found out that it's easy to generate the API key and easy to look at the documentation and easy to integrate Contentful with Python as a module. Contentful's module in Python is easy to set up, plus the ability to create the API key easily. Looking at Contentful itself, adding articles is really easy. You upload the image first, then you create the content, you publish, and that's it. It works. Because of that, I think it's good as well. The UI is very normal. I could suggest to Contentful that maybe there are some ideas in terms of content. Now we have AI and a lot of great designs you can create with basically AI. Maybe that's where Contentful could look at, how to innovate or reinvent that part. Even though it looks good, maybe there is space to innovate something.
Make sure your API key is safe. That's what I would suggest. Focus on your content and try to divide your content into different sections and think about what type of section that is and what type of format that should be. That's how I would advise people to look at Contentful. Think about what you want to do, what you want to build, divide this into smaller pieces and think about what type of field that is, and then try to match this with Contentful fields.
There is an AI and automations tab. I didn't look at this section, but I don't see any chatbot available on the app when I sign in. Agents are very important right now because, for example, if you had a section when I look at content, I may have a question about anything. I could ask anything about my article and there's no chatbot that I could talk to when I log in myself. Probably something very important right now is that if you build an article and you are very new to Contentful, it's very hard to understand everything at once. Even though it may look very simple, it's actually not when you build and integrate the module in Python, for example, and then you need to expose that to the front end and so on and so on. You need to use Postman, make requests, and try to understand how it all works. It's actually a lot of things. A chatbot would help your clients for sure because they will have questions. For example, how to connect Contentful through GraphQL and how to connect Contentful through REST. Even though documentation is there, I think questioning an agent is actually much better for me.
I rate this product 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google