Where we lose, up front: if your marketing team expects to drag a hero section into place, Draftbase gives them a typed form UI and they will hate it. Prismic and Storyblok are honest answers to that requirement. Pretending otherwise wastes a month of evaluation.
Everyone else, keep reading.
Choosing a CMS for Next.js comes down to three tests, not a feature grid: can a webhook clear your cache tags, can the API serve unpublished entries for draft mode, and is the schema typed. Draftbase was built against that path, with webhooks on every entry event and per-fetch taggable delivery.
The roundups list ten logos and a price column. None of the top results we read ship a line of code. So, the code.
Two things most Next.js CMS guides still get wrong:
revalidateTag(tag) with one argument is deprecated in Next.js 16. It works today only if you suppress the TypeScript error, and it may be removed. The current call takes a profile, and a webhook wants immediate expiry, not stale-while-revalidate:
revalidateTag(templateId, { expire: 0 });
updateTag is not available in a route handler. It sounds right for a webhook. It throws:
Error: updateTag can only be called from within a Server Action
CMS webhook uses revalidateTag. An in-app edit form uses updateTag. Two call sites, two functions.
Then the quiet failures. Tags are case-sensitive and capped at 256 characters, so a fetch tagged blog-posts against a webhook sending blogPost never throws. The page simply stays old forever. Derive both sides from one constant.
And draft mode is an auth feature wearing a preview costume. The __prerender_bypass cookie is a bearer token for unpublished content. /api/draft is a public endpoint until you check the secret. Redirect to the slug you looked up in the CMS, never the one from searchParams, or you shipped an open redirect.
Full version, with the working route handlers and the free-tier metering table, is on the canonical: How to Choose a CMS for a Next.js Project.
The only comparison that counts takes an afternoon: wire one route, publish an edit, time it, then break the webhook secret on purpose. Draftbase Hobby is free, Startup is $49/mo, published on the pricing page. Post your revalidation horror stories at r/draftbase_cms.
