Shopify Glossary Terms

Headless CMS

A headless CMS is a content management system that separates the content repository (backend) from the presentation layer (frontend). Content is stored, managed, and delivered via APIs rather than being tied to a specific template or rendering engine.

In a Shopify Plus context, a headless CMS sits alongside Shopify in a composable commerce architecture. Shopify handles products, inventory, checkout, and orders. The headless CMS handles everything else - editorial content, campaign landing pages, lookbooks, brand storytelling, and any content that lives outside the product catalogue.

Popular headless CMS options for Shopify include Sanity (our default recommendation), Contentful, Prismic, and Storyblok. The choice matters more than most teams realise - it's where your non-technical team lives day-to-day for the next three to five years.

Think: the place your content lives, independent of wherever it gets displayed.

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