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What is CMS SaaS?

  • By Optimizely Education
  • Published: Sep 4, 2024
  • Difficulty Beginner
  • Rating
    Average rating: 5.0 2 reviews

Outline

Welcome

Learn about Optimizely’s CMS SaaS with all new visual builder. CMS SaaS is a versionless, composable CMS architecture fully managed by Optimizely. With the launch, Optimizely CMS SaaS comes with brand new features and capabilities designed to empower you with enhanced editing experience in a completely headless manner, enabling you to use any technology stack you prefer on the front-end.​

After completing this course, you should be able to:​

  • Describe where CMS SaaS fits within Optimizely’s product portfolio ​

  • Recognize who uses CMS SaaS and why ​

  • Differentiate between CMS PaaS and CMS SaaS​

  • Explain CMS SaaS architecture, Optimizely Graph and Visual Builder​

  • Perform basic navigation in CMS SaaS user interface​

Where does CMS SaaS fit within Optimizely One

The CMS SaaS is one of two options available in Optimizely’s Content Management System (CMS), a part of Optimizely’s Orchestrate suite of services highlighted below. Both CMS SaaS and CMS PaaS allow you to manage the entire content lifecycle in one place. ​

CMS SaaS is built on the same platform as CMS PaaS, which means it comes with an identical user interface and the same content modeling capabilities. However, they differ in terms of provisioning and client capabilities. ​

While the common approach with CMS PaaS is either head-on or hybrid, CMS SaaS is headless and fully decoupled that takes an API first approach to deploy content, unveiling the Optimizely CMS as a system with truly composable architecture.​

Who uses CMS SaaS?​

  • Web Developers: Developers can create and configure the CMS SaaS application without needing to know .Net. They get to use the tools and frameworks of their choice on front-end and deploy content using Optimizely Graph with ease. Out-of-the-box integrations will soon be available for faster deployment and optimization.
  • Digital Marketers: Marketers can create no code templates and deliver content to multiple channels seamlessly. The all-new visual builder empowers marketers to create engaging and personalized experiences for their audiences. Built-in integrations and automatic upgrades enhance productivity and allows them to make data driven decisions.

CMS PaaS vs CMS SaaS

In order to understand the difference between Optimizely PaaS CMS and SaaS CMS, first you need to understand the core difference between Traditional CMS and Headless CMS. Optimizely PaaS CMS is commonly used as a traditional CMS or a hybrid of both traditional and headless, while Optimizely SaaS CMS is headless.

Traditional CMS

A traditional CMS is a single solution that manages both the content and the presentation layer. It stores and manages content in the back-end database and deliver them to the front-end in an integrated manner without the help of any API.

Headless CMS

On the other hand, a headless CMS is a solution that separates the presentation layer from the content. It consists of a back-end content repository that can be accessed only through a RESTful API, providing flexibility to display content on multiple devices and channels.

How is CMS SaaS different from CMS PaaS?

Read this article to learn the differences between Optimizely CMS SaaS and CMS PaaS in terms of attributes and features.

CMS SaaS Architecture

The CMS SaaS architecture consists of five major components.

  1. CMS Platform – Drives the solution at its base. This is the same popular platform that drives CMS PaaS.
  2. CMS UI – Provides the user experience for Content Editors and Administrators; it is the same interface used by thousands of CMS editors. New addition to the CMS SaaS UI is the visual builder.
  3. Optimizely Identity aka Opti ID – Handles authentication and user management for the UI.
  4. Optimizely Graph – Delivers content to any frontend with high performance and precision using the GraphQL standard.
  5. CMS REST API – Manages resources in the CMS programmatically.

These components run on the same Optimizely Digital Experience Platform (DXP).

Optimizely Graph

CMS SaaS introduces a bunch of new features, two of which are crucial to ease composability, Optimizely Graph and Visual Builder.

Optimizely Graph, built on GraphQL standard, is the default content delivery API of CMS SaaS. Just like how a search engine crawls the web to build a graph-based index of content, Optimizely Graph transforms your CMS content into a format you can search, query and deliver across channels. While CMS SaaS is fully headless, this is the API that helps you deploy your content on the front-end.

Using Optimizely Graph, you can also synchronize data from external sources and manage it all from a single hub. It's a developer-first way to aggregate and unify your data in one place and get data out of the system for use across any and every digital experience, ensuring consistent brand message across multiple channels.

Wrap up

Congratulations! You have completed the Introduction to Optimizely CMS SaaS course.

You should now be able to:

  • Describe where CMS SaaS fits within Optimizely’s product portfolio
  • Recognize who uses CMS SaaS and why
  • Differentiate between CMS PaaS and CMS SaaS
  • Explain CMS SaaS architecture, Optimizely Graph and Visual Builder
  • Perform basic navigation in CMS SaaS user interface

Learn more

While we covered a lot, there's always more to learn about products and how to work with them!

Check out the Resources Page for CMS SaaS for an up-to-date collection of helpful guides and technical documentation.