What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Storyblok is that we use it as the content management system for our client websites, so we're an agency and nearly every website we build will use Storyblok as the system that we choose.
A specific example of a client project where we used Storyblok is one we did recently for a charity association where we live, and we integrated Storyblok into Laravel as the platform for running the website. Storyblok enabled us to build the templates and all the blocks that they required for the pages on the website to create all the content. What was useful about it, because it's platform agnostic, is we could also then use a Filament back-end as well on Laravel, allowing charities to have an individual back-end just for their content, but the richer branded pages we built fully in Storyblok so that our client could manage everything very easily and quickly, such as building new pages based off the block library we created for them, and enabling things including automatic image optimization, allowing them to choose icons, color them from their palettes using custom Storyblok plugins, and other features.
Storyblok gives us the flexibility to rapidly respond to client needs because every client project is going to be different, and it allows us to manage that in a simple interface which we love and our clients love too.
What is most valuable?
The best features Storyblok offers, from a developer perspective, are how easy it is to set up and the ease of working with their API, which gives me lovely structured JSON data that I can use for building the websites. From a marketer perspective, it's going to be the visual editor, which is really important, I think, for less tech-savvy people. The interface is actually surprisingly simple because you can design your content around what it represents, such as a service, a person, or a call to action. As you're modeling your data to match its requirement, it makes it easy to talk about and understand for people.
The visual editor specifically helps my clients because it gives peace of mind to them; they can see what they're editing as they're editing it. In some other platforms, there's more of an abstraction between the editing experience and the actual content and the presentation of that content, but with the visual editor, they can go and view the page they want to edit, click on the content they need to edit, and then the UI will update and just show them the content for that block. In terms of the JSON API, because I actually develop the Laravel Storyblok package, it gives an expected output and a structured output from what's been created in the visual editor. If a client wants to add a hero block and maybe a text block beneath and a call to action below that, I have that structure, so it allows me to then design or build the HTML for each block individually, and no matter how they're used on the website, it will then render them correctly. Or we can very easily drop in on a page specific variants of blocks if needed, and the API is just very simple to work with.
Storyblok has positively impacted my organization by giving us the scope and flexibility to be more creative with what we do, as we're very much a design-led business where we want to produce beautiful-looking websites that also perform well. Because you are making blocks or components that represent different types of content within a website, it's just a very quick and easy workflow for us to use. I could create a block and within my Laravel package, I can run a single artisan command and it will write me a blade template which automatically pulls in all the data with the correct file name. It just works out of the box for us, integrates very quickly, and all I have to do is apply the styling to that block because the whole integration is just working.
What needs improvement?
Storyblok is a great platform, and it's definitely the best CMS I've ever used, but maybe some of the more advanced features such as custom plugins have a little bit of a learning curve to implementing them. When you're on the lower plans, there's a bit less flexibility with how you can set up your system, such as user roles, and we've had cases before where clients went in and actually edited block definitions because they clicked on the wrong buttons. That's more of an issue with the cheaper plans or the free plan, which is great, but it doesn't give you the control that you need, but that's understandable and expected.
I don't want to add more about needed improvements in terms of documentation, integrations, or support, as the support is really good. I'm an MVP for them, so I probably get more direct support than other people, and the docs have been fine, but as I've written the package and that's been going for a couple of years now, I barely need to touch the documentation because things just work as they need to.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Storyblok for five or six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of Storyblok's scalability, it's not the best place to answer that as we only use it at a small scale, but I've seen some of the other MVPs, seeing what they're working on, and they're doing really large enterprise-scale deployments of it, but it also scales all the way down to some of the projects that I work on, which are small websites for smaller companies, and it seems to work well for both big and small deployments.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Storyblok has been good when I've needed to use it; they've always been responsive, helpful, and friendly. I do have the advantage of being an MVP, so I've got kind of backdoor access to some of the team, but they've always been really nice.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used all different CMSs before, with the primary one being a bespoke one built in-house on top of Laravel. We switched because while it was different to go to a hosted solution from a company, it just gives us much better flexibility. It means we don't have to manage the maintenance of it as well because one of the headaches with web development is keeping the content management system up to date as much as you're keeping the website up to date. We've also used, not by our choice, other platforms in the past such as WordPress, which we really don't prefer, but occasionally there were client requests to use that. We'd always try to push them towards Storyblok if we could.
How was the initial setup?
Before choosing Storyblok, I did evaluate other options, but it was many years ago now. It would have been things such as Contentful and some of the other headless platforms I looked at then.
What was our ROI?
I don't have any specific metrics because we never measured those; it's just a small agency, so it's not one of the factors that we do, but in terms of our turnaround time, it's definitely quicker and changes are way easier. In the past, using systems we had before, we didn't have the scope to add additional fields or adjust fields, and it just gives us the freedom to operate more flexibly.
I don't have any actual figures for return on investment, but it's definitely time saved because we can do a lot more in a lot less time.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Storyblok starts with the free plan, so obviously that pricing is brilliant. They did change the pricing about 18 months ago, and at the lowest paid tier, they did take away a bit of the features or the number of seats you can get, so it can get expensive quickly, which is an issue when you're working with smaller clients who still want to have some flexibility. They seem to have plans that are on par with other platforms that I've seen, but it'd be nice to have a bit more flexibility at the lower tiers for small websites just to be able to have more seats, even if you don't get more features, but just bringing more users in would be very helpful.
What other advice do I have?
Regarding Storyblok's AI capabilities, I haven't really used them very much; I think you can bring your AI models along if you want to, or you can use theirs, but it's not something I've played around with.
Regarding the accuracy and reliability of output based on my experience or what I've heard with Storyblok's AI capabilities, I've not used it enough to know. From what I've heard from some other people, I think it still has some issues to be resolved and some things to be worked out to make it work as well as it can, but they're definitely pushing the development there. Generally, from what I've heard, the feelings are good, but there are possibly some useful features to be added around controlling brand voice and making sure that the output is of the correct tone for individual companies.
The advice I would give to others looking into using Storyblok is to make sure that you are ready to go to a headless content management system. It is a big change when you change to any content management system, but the integration is straightforward; it's not necessarily simple, but it's platform agnostic, so you can integrate it with any stack that you want. As with anything, you've got to review it and make sure that within your pricing tier, it's going to have all the features that you require for your team because it can be a big investment.
I didn't purchase Storyblok through the AWS Marketplace; I got it directly, so I didn't use AWS.
I gave this review a rating of 10 because Storyblok is really great.