--- title: Payload CMS Reviews meta_title: 'Payload CMS Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 59 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Payload CMS works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.9 review_count: 59 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-07' parent_category: name: Content Management url: https://www.g2.com/categories/content-management --- # Payload CMS Reviews **Vendor:** Payload **Category:** [Headless CMS Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/headless-cms) **Average Rating:** 4.9/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 59 ## About Payload CMS Payload is a free and open-source Headless CMS built with React and TypeScript. It's the happy medium between application framework and CMS, boosting your development process, while staying out of your way as your apps get more complex. ## Payload CMS Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **active and supportive community** of Payload CMS, enjoying quick assistance through Discord and GitHub. (3 reviews) - Users love the **ease of use** of Payload CMS, appreciating its quick setup and supportive community assistance. (3 reviews) - Users highlight the **excellent documentation** of Payload CMS, facilitating fast development and easy onboarding for projects. (2 reviews) - Users praise the **easy integration** of Payload CMS with Next.js, enhancing development speed and overall usability. (2 reviews) - Users praise the **easy setup** of Payload CMS, enabling fast development and smooth deployments. (2 reviews) - Users praise the **seamless integrations** in Payload CMS, enhancing efficiency and streamlining workflows with external tools. (2 reviews) - Intuitive (2 reviews) - Performance Optimization (2 reviews) - User Interface (2 reviews) - API Integration (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users note the **lack of customization** options with Payload CMS, relying heavily on community plugins for workaround solutions. (1 reviews) - Users find the **limited community support** poses challenges with maintaining plugins, impacting long-term project planning. (1 reviews) - Users experience **slow loading** times during website building and backend navigation, affecting their overall experience. (1 reviews) - Users find the **slow performance** of Payload CMS affects both building and navigating the site effectively. (1 reviews) - Users note a **dependency on community plugins** for Payload CMS, which may not always be actively maintained during updates. (1 reviews) ## Payload CMS Reviews ### 1. Great admin panel **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexander G. | Frontend Web Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** Actively developed, with open source. Can be self hosted. Offers ability to translate content into multiple languages. Admin panel has multiple interface languages. **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** Some features are not implemented yet, such as hot reload during development. Restarting server after each change using nodemon works, but it is significantly slower. **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ability to host it alongside frontend on the same server. Translated interface for my clients who are not proficient in english and prefer using it in their native language. ### 2. Quick, Fast and Easy **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** After comparing various CMS platforms, PayloadCMS provides the most flexibility. Everything in Payload is or can be, a function. **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** Some portions of the Admin UI are still not as flexible as I'd like them to be, but they continue to be making progress in this direction. **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed a CMS that would allow us to define various Content Types with inheritance dynamically. The flexibility of PayloadCMS will enable us to do this. ### 3. An awesome new player in a saturated market **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew M. | Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 22, 2023 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** Easy to use, beautiful, great onboarding videos (youtube) **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** Small community, inexperienced community so hard to find extra support. **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** A easy to use admin area for our clients. ### 4. easy to start and integrate **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ulvi S. | Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2023 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** being code first makes it easy to work for me as I dont like low-code platforms to much. **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** no support for other databases. also more extension would be helpfull **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** For me it is easy to use and start. I was looking for something I could begin quickly and scale. Payload was my choice as it is code-first ### 5. A perfect and flexible fit for the CMS I always looked for **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Arts and Crafts | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** Extremly configurable with already familiar syntax and patterns. Easy to get started and helpful examples and templates. **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** Needs to be run on an express server and at the moment of writing it is limited to MongoDB which will be extended in the near future **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Dynamic page creation for editors with an easy-to-understand interface and a lot of possibilities for multi-language support and drafts. ### 6. Great CMS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andre C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** Excellent focus on Developer experience. Although there are a lot of options in terms of CMS', payload seems to be the only one getting it right. **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** It could use some work on the authentication side of it. **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Content management systems are hard to maintain and are not very developer friendly. It's the best experience I've had with a CMS. ### 7. Best Headless CMS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alessio G. | Marketing, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 07, 2023 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** Payload CMS is the most flexible CMS out there. Best UX + DX out of any CMS **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** Does not support alternative databases yet **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Payload allows me to manage complex data for my blog, and even other applications not related to website. It's super customizable, which allowed me to add any feature I needed without coming across road-blocks. ### 8. Smooth developer experience **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Romain H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2023 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** The ease of the typescript configuration **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** I haven't had a sticking point yet that caused me problems **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** A clean, ready-to-use tool on which to graft any client site ### 9. Hands down the best modern CMS **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Seth S. | Technical Director **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2022 **What do you like best about Payload CMS?** Lightweight, robust, feature rich, extremely extensible. IMO the best modern CMS. **What do you dislike about Payload CMS?** Doesn't have enough traction in the community at the moment, and still missing some features that I'd love to see. **What problems is Payload CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need a CMS that checks all the basic CMS feature boxes while at the same time providing a robust framework for extending functionality and building custom business logic alongside basic CMS functionality. ## Payload CMS Discussions - [What is Payload CMS used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/payload-cms-what-is-payload-cms-used-for) - [What is Payload CMS used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-payload-cms-used-for) - [View Payload CMS pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/payload-cms/reviews?page=2&qs=pros-and-cons§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-09+19%3A10%3A27+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=c5f5bfeb-89b2-4f1d-8cb2-e655e51346d0&secure%5Btoken%5D=ee1e67049d83dae6753fb14ba8064697dbe73cf1b940842ada2934fbaf703f3d&format=llm_user) ## Payload CMS Features **Content** - Content Authoring - Rich Text Editor - Versioning - Plug-ins/Widgets/Apps - Approval Process - Content Scheduling - Asset Management - Internal Search - Content Repository - SEO Management - eCommerce Management - Forms Management - Campaign Management - Media Management - Drag & Drop Editor - Audio Editor **Publishing** - Automated Publishing - Multi-language - AR/VR Capability **Headless Commerce** - Decoupling - REST APIs - Data Orchestration - Customization - Extensibility **Design** - Breadth of Pre-Built Templates - Mobile - Branding/Themes - Customization **Development** - Image Management - Reuseable Content - Unlimited Environments - Form Builder - Web Forms - Customizable Forms - User Management - Workflow Management - Template Management - Compliance Management - Asset Lifecycle Management - Website Management - Document Management - SEO Management - Content Management - Multi-Channel Management - Integrated Development Environment - File Management **Generative AI** - AI Text Generation - AI Text Summarization - Generative AI **Platform** - User Community - SEO - Flexible Navigation Structures - User, Role, and Access Management - Enterprise Scalability - Internationalization - Dashboards and Reports - API **Analytics** - Personalization - Content Performance - Interactive Content **Agentic AI - E-Commerce Platforms** - Autonomous Task Execution - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making - Accounting Integration **Additional Functionality** - Inventory Control - AI Copilot - Reordering - Bulk Ordering - Multi-Currency - Customer Accounts - Multi-Location - Reporting & Statistics - Drag & Drop - Shopping Cart - Alerts/Notifications - Data Synchronization - Order Tracking - Email Marketing - Activity Dashboard - Loyalty Program - Multi-Channel Marketing - Templates - Customizable Templates - Inventory Tracking - Customizable Branding - CRM - Kitting - Customer Touchpoints - Customer Segmentation - Web/Mobile App Development - Product Catalog - Inventory Optimization - De-Coupled Front & Back Ends - Customer Database - Activity Tracking - Conversion Tracking - Search/Filter - Access Controls/Permissions - Barcode/Ticket Scanning - Product Configurator - Data Import/Export - Inventory Auditing - Quotes/Estimates - Customer History - Invoice Creation - For Small Businesses - Abandoned Cart Saver - Sales Trend Analysis **Agentic AI - Web Content Management** - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction - Social Media Integration **Agentic AI - Headless CMS** - Cross-system Integration - Third-Party Integrations **Additional Functionality** - AI/Machine Learning - Reporting/Analytics - Collaboration Tools - Image Editing - Website Publishing Options - Chatbot - Content Publishing Options - Text Editing - Access Control - Website Accessibility Tools - Content Delivery - Content Personalization - Configurable Workflow - Generative AI - Alerts/Notifications - Video Editing - AI Copilot - Performance Testing - Activity Monitoring - Multi-Channel Distribution **Additional Functionality** - A/B Testing - Full Text Search - Two-Factor Authentication - SDKs - Content Publishing Options - Multi-Channel Marketing - Image Editing - API - Content Library - Mobile Access - Reporting/Analytics - AI Copilot - De-Coupled Front & Back Ends - Collaboration Tools - Activity Dashboard - Generative AI - Customizable Templates - Text Editing - Drag & Drop - Rich Text Editor - Scheduling - Tagging - Single Sign On - Configurable Workflow - Categorization/Grouping - Preview Functionality - Multi-Channel Distribution - For Marketers - Version Control - Approval Process Control - Filtering - For Developers - Website Analytics - Role-Based Permissions - Historical Reporting - Access Controls/Permissions - Email Marketing - Loyalty Program - Customer Touchpoints - Customer Segmentation - Web/Mobile App Development - Product Catalog - Inventory Optimization - Multi-Location - Data Synchronization - Inventory Tracking - Customer Database - Activity Tracking - Multi-Currency - Shopping Cart - Reporting & Statistics - Customer Accounts - Conversion Tracking - CRM - Search/Filter - Barcode/Ticket Scanning - SSL Security - Alerts/Notifications - Secure Login - Document Review - Content Delivery - Customizable Branding - Secure Data Storage - Document Storage - Mobile Capture - Offline Access - Templates - File Sharing - Data Capture and Transfer **Merchandising/Marketing** - Storefront Design Tools - Product Visualization - Recommendations / Personalization - Promotions and Discounts - Shopping Cart Abandonment - Product Reviews - SEO **Product Catalog** - Content Management - Product Configuration - Product Search and Filtering - Intangible Products - Discount Management **Order Process** - Checkout Process - Shipping Options - Tax Display and Processing - Payment Processing - Order Management - Returns / Refunds - Retail Inventory Management - Multi-Channel Fulfillment - Returns Management - Order Processing - Order Fulfillment - Purchase Order Management - Backorder Management - Special Order Management - Payment Options - Sales Order Management - Purchase Order Management - Credit Card Processing **Multi-Channel Support** - Omnichannel - Mobile - Social Commerce - Customer Service - Store Locator - 3rd-Party Store Integration - B2B - Multi-Store - Point of Sale (POS) Integration - Social Media Integration - Mobile Commerce **Platform** - APIs - Customization - Integrations to Add-on Tools - User Management - Reporting / Analytics - Security - Multi-Channel Management - Admin Access Rights - Test-to-Product Migration - Internationalization - Cross Browser Support - Performance and Reliability - Mobile Access - SEO Management - Shipping Management - Campaign Management - Catalog Management - Website Management - Promotions Management - Reviews Management - eCommerce Management - Price/Margin Management - Application Management - Product Data Management - Template Management - Multi-Channel Management - Invoice Management - Workflow Management - Warehouse Management - Sales Tax Management - Customer Management - Communication Management - Data Security ## Top Payload CMS Alternatives - [Sanity](https://www.g2.com/products/sanity/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (911 reviews) - [Strapi](https://www.g2.com/products/strapi/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (201 reviews) - [Contentful](https://www.g2.com/products/contentful/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (312 reviews)