In the early days of the web, building a website was a lot like building a house from scratch without any tools or blueprints. Every detail, from the layout to the colours, had to be carefully written into the code. If you wanted to change something on your website, even a small typo, you had to go back to the code and edit it manually. It was time-consuming and could be quite challenging for people who weren’t tech-savvy.
Then came content management systems (CMS). A CMS is like a special tool that helps you create, edit and manage the content on your websites without touching the code. It helps you keep your websites organised and looking good, even if you’re not a computer whiz.
One of the most popular CMS is WordPress, but it’s not very flexible or versatile. That’s because it doesn’t separate the content management backend from the frontend display. And these days, you may want to use your content not only on your website, but also on your mobile or wearable apps.
It seems logical that the next evolution of CMS should allow you to manage your text, images and video centrally, while giving you the freedom to use your content in the apps and social media you want. This evolutionary step is called a headless CMS.
Sanity is an example of a headless CMS. It separates the display of content in the frontend from the management of content in the backend. In other words, it allows you to manage your content and then your IT department can build whatever they want to pull that content into a web application, mobile application, social media or whatever you need.
Pros and cons of Sanity
Sanity is a little different in that it is a headless CMS. It stores all your content, whether it’s text, images or video, separately from the way it’s displayed. With Sanity, your content can be used in multiple channels, be they websites, apps or any other digital platform, without being tied to a specific format.
Similar to traditional CMSs, it’s a cloud-based content management platform. It allows you to manage your content in one place and publish to multiple channels. This means that if you’re looking for a tool that lets you build and launch your website, you’d be better off with something traditional like WordPress. Sanity isn’t an out-of-the-box solution, and you’ll need some time for planning and setup, as well as technical expertise.
Pros
- Generous free forever plan
- Not tied to a specific language or framework
- Easy to collaborate with colleagues
- No lock-in as you can easily export your content
- Highly customisable
- Good support for developers
- Comprehensive and easy to understand documentation
Cons
- You need time and developers to set up and maintain everything
- Learning curve
Who is Sanity for?
Sanity’s flexibility and versatility allows it to integrate seamlessly with any front-end framework you can think of. It’s obvious that developers will love this as it gives them full control over the structure and presentation of content on websites or applications.
Digital agencies will also find Sanity very practical, allowing them to design unique user experiences and seamlessly integrate content across multiple platforms and devices.
If you’re running an e-commerce business with complex content and product structures, Sanity will also appeal to you as you can efficiently manage product information, promotions and customer data, and easily adapt your content for different sales channels while ensuring a consistent brand experience.
If you’re a marketer, you’ll love the ability to create personalised and dynamic content for targeted audiences. You can experiment with different content formats and refine your strategies based on real-time analytics and user behaviour.
Of course, if you’re working across multiple platforms, including websites, mobile apps, social media and IoT devices, Sanity lets you work and manage your content from a single interface.
Sanity is not for you if you have limited resources in terms of financial budget or technical expertise. It’s also not for you if you just want to get a website up and running quickly.
How easy is Sanity to use?
If words like Netlify, Github or deploy don’t mean anything to you, then Sanity is not for you. If it does, or if you have access to technical expertise and a budget, then go for it.
In the 7-step onboarding process, Sanity asks you questions such as how well you know Javascript and what technologies you’re using.
Your Sanity dashboard is where you manage all your projects and organisations. It’s pretty straightforward, and the clean interface will appeal to both programmers and marketers. Even better, you can customise the interface to suit your needs.
Notable features
Collaboration
Imagine being able to collaborate on content with your team members, just like in Google Docs. You can see what your team has written in real time, track changes and see who is working on a piece. And you can comment on each other’s content. It’s really just like Google Docs. You can do it all in Sanity and collaborate in real time.
You may need some technical knowledge to set up Sanity, but thanks to its intuitive interface, your team members don’t need to be tech-savvy to work as a content team. You can adapt and make changes to your content strategy at any time without having to wait for developers.
Adaptable environment
With Sanity, you can build your user experience, your solutions, the way you want. You can start from scratch, use existing tools, adapt your designs and content quickly without worrying about breaking existing functionality.
You are not tied to a specific language or framework because Sanity provides SDKs that support most popular programming languages.
You’ll also find that Sanity offers integration with a wide range of third party services such as e-commerce services, search engines and marketing tools. These integrations are a great help as they can make it nice and easy to work with online stores, manage products or connect to search tools to give your users a fast and relevant search function.
Sanity Developer Support
You can find the Sanity support team on the Sanity Slack channel during business hours. The team is competent and helpful and doesn’t differentiate between paying and non-paying customers.
You’ll also find well-organised and comprehensive documentation and plenty of templates to help you get started.
Sanity pricing
Sanity has no hidden fees and offers a pretty generous free forever plan. If you’re a larger team or need more features, you’ll need to upgrade.
Is Sanity the right tool for you?
Sanity can really be seen as the next step in the evolution of the digital landscape. It offers a comprehensive set of features and a developer-friendly environment. Its adaptability is really great because everything is up to you. But it can also be a burden and a great responsibility because everything is up to you.
Sanity is a great tool, even if you’re a lone developer. It’s probably the most comprehensive yet affordable CMS out there. Sanity is great in conjunction with a service like V0.dev or Startup.
It may not be for you if you
- Are not tech-savvy or have access to technical expertise
- Your site is simple and doesn’t require frequent updates
- Have a limited budget
- Want to build and launch quickly
If that’s the case, look at something like Tilda or Webador.
Original post here: Sanity Review
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