We recently set out on a journey of discovery, aiming to understand how you, our cherished users, feel about DatoCMS. Delving into deep conversations with customers and gathering responses from over 600 surveys, our mission was to get under the skin of your experiences and preferences related to our product, particularly when set against some of the other - often bigger - players in the Headless CMS space.
Your feedback has been incredibly motivating. 94% of respondents said they would be disappointed if they no longer could be with DatoCMS. We're over the moon to receive all this love for DatoCMS and our team, so much so that we want to share a few highlights. Here are some key themes that surfaced.
Developer Experience
Many of the folks we surveyed had high praise for DatoCMS for its developer-friendliness, thanks to the flexible API and absence of restrictive quotas. As one agency put it:
"I've never run into API limit problems with DatoCMS, and I've sent some insane queries. It just works."
Integrating DatoCMS is straightforward since “it just gets out of the way" and lets developers build custom functionalities fast with our Plugin SDK. The documentation and starter projects also speed up development, with customers giving them two thumbs up - on this note, you should really check out our Next.js Marketing Website starter, an all-inclusive marketing, blog, and documentation site with reusable sections, multi-language support, validations, real-time preview updates, SEO analysis, and more.
Our developer audience also values the freedom to quickly create content models and page structures without limitations. This enables swift iteration and response to new initiatives. DatoCMS also scales to support business expansion and growth into new markets and languages, without the hefty price tags that other solutions put on that aspect.
Authoring Experience
Those we interviewed shone a spotlight on the intuitive UI that makes DatoCMS accessible for non-technical users. In addition, role-based permissions enable safe delegation of content management safely, so that customers can hand off content editing without much training, as DatoCMS is oftentimes self-documenting. As one customer told us:
DatoCMS does exactly what I need it to do. It's super user-friendly, and it's easy to ask someone to use it. It's not an intimidating "enterprise-y" experience that people don’t even want to log into.
Pricing
Many survey respondents feel that DatoCMS delivers strong value for money. Our pricing scales reasonably as they grow rather than forcing expensive enterprise tiers. The predictable model allows for accurate cost planning, which was a key driver for many customers selecting DatoCMS. As one of them pointed out:
“One of the reasons we chose DatoCMS was that we knew it wouldn't break our budget even if we just decided to go all in using it."
Customer Experience
Interviewed customers appreciate our fast support response time and overall customer-centric approach. The transparency around our roadmap and funding provides confidence in the product's future, with survey respondents placing a lot of trust in DatoCMS's future.
What we should improve
While the feedback on DatoCMS was overwhelmingly positive, our research also uncovered some areas where we can enhance the product experience. There is an appetite for advanced features like Visual Editing that currently sit behind the enterprise paywall. We understand how these capabilities could significantly improve your experience with DatoCMS, and we're exploring how to make them accessible to a wider audience.
You've also pointed out some tweaks that would make your life easier. Organizing media assets could be simpler, managing models and localizations smoother, and migrating content more seamless. We're taking this feedback to heart to refine these areas, and make DatoCMS more intuitive and frictionless for both developers and business users.
We always have an ear open to your challenges and suggestions - please keep the feedback coming in our community portal as well!
Thanks for your support!
A big thank you to everyone who took part in the research - we're buzzing with your enthusiasm and trust in DatoCMS. We are committed to building on this foundation and continuing to enhance the product and experience for our community. We're eagerly looking forward to connecting in more ways in the upcoming year!