Strapi Ventures into Platform-as-a-Service Territory with Alpha Launch of Headless CMS Cloud Offering

Strapi, the open-source content management system (CMS), is making inroads into the cloud by offering its headless CMS as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution. The new venture aims to simplify backend development for developers who don't want to deal with application infrastructure management, while maintaining Strapi's open-source nature.

Aurelien Georget, Strapi co-founder and Chief Product Officer, spoke to The New Stack about the alpha phase of Strapi Cloud, saying that the move to provide a PaaS option is a precursor to offering a full-fledged software-as-a-service (SaaS) experience in the coming years. “At Strapi, we have been focused on developers from day one,” Georget said. “It won’t change for Strapi Cloud.”

Strapi Cloud is currently in alpha with a dozen users until September, after which the beta stage will commence, involving a few hundred users by the end of the year. The company plans to have the offering widely available by January 2023.

Delving deeper into the technical aspects, Strapi is 100% JavaScript and built on the Node.js platform. The back-end framework employs Koa, an HTTP server that offers greater customization and flexibility than the SaaS model. Georget explained that Strapi Cloud users will be able to install plugins and add new endpoints, allowing for more personalized project configurations and deployment.

The platform already boasts an ecosystem of 2,000 community-developed plugins ready to be integrated with the PaaS approach. This move to PaaS is a beneficial step for both developers and Strapi. “We stick to the developer workflows, they enjoy the performance and they keep their productivity at their highest level by coding in their machine, while enjoying all the benefits of being in the cloud,” Georget said.

The headless CMS introduction into the PaaS landscape is designed to ease backend development burdens by handling complex tasks on behalf of developers. One of the primary missions is to give developers the freedom to choose their preferred front-end frameworks.

Georget believes the Strapi Cloud will particularly benefit frontend developers, allowing them to handle backend tasks while using their familiar tools and workflows, such as npm, VSCode, JavaScript, and git. Alongside its benefit for developers, the PaaS also simplifies the overall user experience for content editors. Georget mentioned that Strapi deployment has not always been unchallenging for users, even while following the company's guidelines.

Strapi has observed considerable interest from customers in DigitalOcean and Heroku PaaS offerings, with most clients deploying on one of the top three cloud providers - Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. Consequently, Strapi aims to be hosting service-agnostic by supporting frontend hosting providers like Vercel, Netlify, and Cloudflare, and building native integrations with those platforms.

The Paris-based company recently raised $31 million in Series B funding, an investment CEO Pierre Burgy Sid said will propel the launch of Strapi Cloud and help bring more technology and solution providers into Strapi's fold.

As the no-code and low-code landscape continues to evolve, platforms such as AppMaster and Strapi offer incredible opportunities to developers and businesses looking to streamline their application development process. With the upcoming Strapi Cloud release, developers can anticipate a more seamless experience when creating customized solutions for their projects.