Everything Your Headless CMS Does. Plus the Features You Always Wanted.

Open source CMS. Self-hosted. No license fees. No lock-in.

Official Partners

3 scenarios where it makes the biggest difference

Marketing runs the site without dev bottlenecks

Select blocks, pick a preset, fill in copy, publish. Involve developers only when you need to extend the platform.

Clone the repo and start building immediately

Pre-built component sets and demo content mean your team is publishing on day one - no blank-page paralysis.

Production-ready architecture for high-growth teams

Production-tested content models, TypeScript throughout, and zero vendor constraints to hold you back

What's Inside

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Visual Page Builder

Build pages from blocks. Select, fill in, publish — no developer needed.

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AI SEO

Auto meta, structured data, FAQ schema. Citable by LLMs from day one.

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Block Presets

Same block, multiple designs. Design once, reuse everywhere.


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A/B Testing

Test any block. Weighted split, stable assignment - no third-party tool.


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Multi-Language

Add a locale via config. AI-assisted translation. No per-locale fees.


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Multi-Tenancy

Multiple brands from one instance. Subdomain isolation, role-based access.

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SSO & Enterprise Auth

Auth0, Keycloak, Okta. Four role levels out of the box.

From zero to publishing in 4 steps

01

Clone the repo

02

Run setup

03

Invite your team

04

Publish & extend

Outcomes, not features

Where the ROI actually comes from

5–10h

Saved per week on content production

New pages in 15 minutes, not 2 days.

4–6 weeks

To find your best-converting audience

Real data from your visitors, not guesswork.

Days → Hours

Faster editorial review cycles

Comment on drafts, fix, resolve. No Slack.

×N markets

New organic traffic per locale

Each language is a revenue channel, not a cost.

12%

Of AI-cited pages rank in Google top 10

A discovery channel most CMS platforms ignore.

$50–100K

Saved per year in license fees

$0 license + hosting. Budget redirected to growth.

Everything you'd expect - and the parts most platforms skip

$50K–$100K+ per year, price increases every renewal
Hosting only - starting from $20/mo. No license fee, ever
Your data lives in the vendor's API. Limited export, high switching cost
Your PostgreSQL database, your infrastructure. Full SQL access
Proprietary codebase - you depend on their roadmap
Open source, MIT license, your Git repo. Extend anything
A/B testing requires a third-party tool or doesn't exist
Built-in on any content block. No integrations needed
Per-locale surcharges - every new market costs more
Unlimited locales. Add a language via config, no extra cost
No tooling for AI search - ChatGPT and Perplexity can't cite you
Automatic structured data and schema markup on every page
New pages require a dev ticket. Content teams wait
Visual builder with presets - marketer ships a page in 15 minutes
Per-seat pricing that grows with every hire
Unlimited users and roles. Scale the team, not the invoice
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SE company logo
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Betway logo in bold white text
Not So Ape logo in white hand-drawn text
QuantHealth logo with Q icon and white text
Vaisala logo in white bold text on dark background
EasyPark logo in light peach on white background
Real Thread logo in cursive script
Arriva company logo
CV company logo
Unive company logo
NF company logo
Arrive logo in white on transparent background
SE company logo
Tipico company logo
Betway logo in bold white text
Not So Ape logo in white hand-drawn text
QuantHealth logo with Q icon and white text
Vaisala logo in white bold text on dark background
EasyPark logo in light peach on white background

FAQs about Ideal CMS

Yes. Open source, MIT license. You pay only for hosting — $20 to $500/mo depending on scale. No license fee, no per-seat pricing, no per-locale charges. Ever.

Payload is the foundation. Ideal CMS adds the page builder, presets, A/B testing, AI SEO, multi-tenancy, inline comments, and scheduled publishing. The difference between a framework and a ready-to-run platform.

Yes. Next.js 15, TypeScript, React. Any developer who knows this stack can extend it. AI coding tools work natively with the codebase. You're not dependent on us - that's the point.

Yes. FocusReactive offers migration services - content, SEO equity, integrations - with fixed estimates. We've done this enough times to scope it accurately without breaking organic traffic.

Code-first. Build anything in TypeScript - it's your repo. Or we build it for you. No vendor roadmap, no feature request queue.

Ready to own your content stack?

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  • Proposal within 2-3 days