TYPO3 CMS vs. Strapi CMS

The enterprise CMS TYPO3 

TYPO3 is a PHP-based enterprise CMS that has been established for decades. It is particularly popular with large institutions in German-speaking countries, as it offers an enormous depth of functions for complex editorial processes. It usually follows a classic, monolithic approach, but also allows hybrid setups. 

The headless CMS Strapi

Strapi, on the other hand, is a modern, Node.js-based headless CMS. In contrast to TYPO3, Strapi strictly separates the content management (backend) from the presentation (frontend). This gives us as a studio the freedom to deliver content via an API to a wide variety of end devices such as web apps, mobile applications or smart TVs. 

User authorizations 

A critical point for our customers is the management of access rights. TYPO3 is the absolute heavyweight here. You can break permissions down to the level of individual database fields. This is ideal for organizations with hundreds of editors, where it must be precisely defined who is allowed to edit which teasers or content elements. Strapi also offers very granular Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in its Enterprise edition. While the community edition covers basic roles, the professional version allows the definition of specific roles for different content types. For most modern web apps and medium-sized projects, this approach is often more intuitive and quicker to configure than TYPO3's complex permissions system. 

Multisite capability 

If you want to manage multiple websites or brands from a single installation, multisite capability is crucial. TYPO3 was built to do just that. In a single "page tree", you can manage dozens of domains and easily share content and media resources between instances. This saves maintenance effort and ensures consistency. Strapi solves the multisite requirement via an API-centric approach. As the content is delivered via interfaces anyway, different front-ends (e.g. for brand A and brand B) can query the same Strapi instance. By using internationalization (i18n) and specific content structures, multisite scenarios can be implemented very elegantly and efficiently in Strapi without having to carry the ballast of a grown page tree. 

Advantages for our customers

You benefit from a high level of data sovereignty with both systems. Since we host both TYPO3 and Strapi on secure, mostly European servers, you retain full control over your data - an essential aspect for data protection. While TYPO3 impresses with its stability and enormous range of functions, Strapi offers a significantly faster time-to-market and a modern, very simple user interface for your editorial teams. 

Advantages for us

As a studio, we value the "developer experience" of Strapi. As it is based on JavaScript and Node.js, it fits seamlessly into our modern tech stack. We can quickly define data structures and access them via clean REST or GraphQL interfaces. TYPO3, on the other hand, we use for projects that require a very rigid, hierarchical structure and extremely complex workflow approvals, as the system already offers many ready-made solutions for this.

Our opinion 

TYPO3 is a powerful tool, but often seems a bit cumbersome and requires specialized knowledge for maintenance. Strapi is the future for flexible, interface-based projects. We see the greatest potential in headless systems, as they often make accessibility and performance easier to realize. Nevertheless, TYPO3 has its raison d'être in highly complex enterprise environments with decades of history. 

Useful combinations with other technologies

We work particularly efficiently when we combine Strapi with Vue.js or Nuxt.js in the frontend. This ensures lightning-fast loading times. We consistently rely on Tailwind CSS for styling. In scenarios where a classic CMS structure is not sufficient, we also combine these systems with the Laravel Framework to implement customized business logic that goes beyond pure content management.