Why Hygraph is a better alternative to ButterCMS?
ButterCMS is good for blog sites, marketing websites, or small-scale projects. However, unlike Hygraph, it lacks important capabilities required for large scale projects such as building an e-commerce site, portal, knowledge base, or digital products that require user-generated content.
Even for smaller projects, ButterCMS has limitations as it only provides a REST API; and no GraphQL API. This API is only for read operations on the standard plans, and read-write on the enterprise plans. There’s no API for content management or mutations.
From an extensibility perspective, you can’t connect ButterCMS to any third-party REST or GraphQL API. There’s no SDK to build custom plugins or applications to add functionalities to the platform.
Lastly, ButterCMS does not offer audit logs and neither the ability to choose your datacenter location; important capabilities needed by enterprises.
Challenges you are likely to face with ButterCMS
You are likely to face these challenges when using ButterCMS:
- It offers a REST API for content delivery. Having a REST API as opposed to a GraphQL API, has its own limitations in terms of performance and functionality.
- It does not offer a management or mutations API.
- It only offers high-level permissions for content and no detailed permissions. For instance, you can allow a user to access “blogs”, but can’t add a condition (e.g., { "author": "John" }), or define stages.
- Custom roles and permissions are only available on enterprise plans.
- It does not offer the ability to create multiple Permanent Auth Tokens with detailed permissions for the API.
- It does not allow you to connect to any third-party API.
- It does not offer an app framework, plug-ins or UI extensions to connect to other platforms or add functionalities to the CMS.
- There are no other options to choose from and this is a challenge if you are looking to host in your own region.
- It offers no audit logs at the moment.
- It lacks depth when it comes to certain content management capabilities. For instance, it doesn’t offer custom content stages, batch edits, scheduling content as part of a release, advanced content search, and more.
On the other hand, Hygraph offers the capabilities to solve all of these challenges. Sign up for a free developer account to experience the difference.
API and Core Features
| Hygraph | ButterCMS |
|---|
| Cloud Hosted (SaaS) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Regions | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL Content API | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL Management API | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL Mutations | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL Native | ✓ | ✗ |
| Public API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public API Permissions | ✓ | ✗ |
| API Playground | ✓ | ✓ |
| Front-End Agnostic | ✓ | ✓ |
| Image Delivery and Transformation API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Migration Tools | ✓ | ✓ |
| Simple User Permissions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Granular User Permissions | ✓ | ✗ |
| On premises hosting / Self | ✗ | ✗ |
| Open Source | ✗ | ✗ |
| Permanent Auth Tokens | ✓ | ✗ |
| Webhooks | ✓ | ✓ |
| Global CDN | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced Cache Invalidation | ✓ | ✗ |
| Environment Management (Master, Sandbox, etc.) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Connect to a Third-Party REST API | ✓ | ✗ |
| Connect to a Third-Party GraphQL API | ✓ | ✗ |
Learn more about Hygraph's core features.
Content Modelling
| Hygraph | ButterCMS |
|---|
| Schema Builder | ✓ | ✓ |
| Field Validations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Components | ✓ | ✓ |
| Nested Components | ✓ | ✗ |
| Filters | ✓ | ✗ |
| Flexible Content Modelling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Localisation (i18n) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Nested Fields | ✗ | ✗ |
| Required Fields | ✓ | ✓ |
| Saved Queries | ✓ | ✗ |
| Searchable Content | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sortable Relations | ✓ | ✗ |
| Sorting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unique Fields | ✓ | ✗ |
| Validations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Versioning | ✓ | ✓ |
Editorial Features and Content Management
| Hygraph | ButterCMS |
|---|
| Batch Overwrites | ✓ | ✓ |
| Batch Operations (Editing) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch Operations (Publish/Unpublish) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Batch Operations (Delete) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Asset Picker | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Booleans (Checkbox) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Color | ✓ | ✗ |
| Content Type: Date and Time | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Enumeration (Dropdown) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Float (Decimals) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Content Type: Integers (Numbers) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: JSON Editor | ✓ | ✗ |
| Content Type: Map | ✓ | ✗ |
| Content Type: Markdown | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Multi Line Text | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: References | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Rich Text Editor (WYSIWYG) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Single Line Text | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Metadata | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Roles | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Stages | ✓ | ✗ |
| Custom Workflows | ✗ | ✓ |
| Global Content CDN | ✓ | ✓ |
| GraphQL Unions (Polymorphic Relations) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Image Editor | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multiple Environments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Project Cloning | ✓ | ✗ |
| Rich Editing Interface | ✓ | ✓ |
| SEO Friendly | ✓ | ✓ |
| Static Site Generator Friendly | ✓ | ✓ |
Explore all of Hygraph's capabilities on our features page and docs.
Digital Asset Management
| Hygraph | ButterCMS |
|---|
| Asset Transformations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assets from Facebook | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assets from Google Drive | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assets from Instagram | ✓ | ✗ |
| Assets from Search | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assets from System | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assets from URL | ✓ | ✓ |
| Digital Asset Management (DAM) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Add Fields to the Default Asset Model | ✓ | ✗ |
| Global Asset CDN | ✓ | ✗ |
| SEO Optimized Asset Management | ✓ | ✓ |
Community and Resources
| Hygraph | ButterCMS |
|---|
| Examples : Blog | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : Gatsby | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : Gridsome | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : NextJS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : NuxtJS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : ReactJS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : Sapper | ✓ | ✗ |
| Examples : Svelte | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : Union Types | ✓ | ✗ |
| Examples : VueJS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reference App : eCommerce | ✓ | ✗ |
| Reference App : Events and Conferences | ✓ | ✗ |
| Reference App : Marketing Website | ✓ | ✗ |
| Reference App : Podcasts | ✓ | ✗ |
| Reference App : Travel & Hospitality | ✓ | ✗ |
Explore more references on our GitHub profile, or view examples created with Hygraph and popular frameworks like Gatsby, NextJS, Svelte, Gridsome, and Vue, amongst others.
Plans and Pricing
| Hygraph | ButterCMS |
|---|
| Additional API Operations | 1,000,000/month 10c/10,000 On top | |
| Additional Asset Traffic | 500GB/month 10c/1GB On top | |
| Content Entries | 10,000 - Unlimited | 50 - Custom |
| Custom Pricing | ✓ | ✗ |
| Enterprise Plans | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free forever community plan | ✓ | 30 day trial |
| Free trial for Premium features | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly and Annual Plans | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plans in EUR | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plans in USD | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pricing By | Project | Project |
| Self Service Plans | ✓ | ✓ |
Get started with a free forever developer plan or explore our other pricing options to accommodate your scaling needs.
Security, Compliance, and Support
| Hygraph | ButterCMS |
|---|
| 24/7 Infrastructure Monitoring | ✓ | Unknown |
| Advanced Firewall Rules | ✓ | Unknown |
| Audit Logs | ✓ | ✗ |
| Authentication | ✓ | ✓ |
| Backups | ✓ | ✓ |
| Choice of Data Center | ✓ | ✗ |
| Community Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer Success | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dedicated Infrastructure | ✓ | Unknown |
| Email Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Encryption at rest | ✓ | ✓ |
| Encryption in transit | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR Compliant Infrastructure | ✓ | Unknown |
| Implementation Partner Network | ✓ | ✓ |
| Login with Github | ✓ | ✓ |
| Login with Socials | ✓ | ✗ |
| Onboarding and Architecture Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Onsite Chat | ✓ | ✓ |
| Project Backups | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public Slack Channel | ✓ | Unknown |
| SLA Performance | ✓ | ✓ |
| SLA Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Solution Architects | ✓ | ✓ |
| SSO Support | ✓ | Unknown |
| User Management | ✓ | Unknown |
