What is Statamic, and is it really headless?
Statamic is a content management system built as a package on top of Laravel. It stores content either in flat files (Markdown and YAML) that live in your git repository, or in a database through its Eloquent driver. It renders pages itself with the Antlers or Blade templating, and the Pro edition adds a REST API and GraphQL so a separate frontend can read the same content. The Core edition is free to use. As of October 2026 Pro is $349 per site with a year of updates included, and updates after that year are $99 per year, according to statamic.com/pricing.
So it is headless when you want it to be, and a classic CMS when you do not.
Who Statamic suits
It suits teams that already write PHP and Laravel and want the CMS to live inside the same codebase and deploy pipeline as their application. It suits marketing sites where developers and editors both work from blueprints (Statamic’s field definitions) and where content in git is an advantage: reviewable, branchable, easy to roll back.
It is a weaker fit if nobody on the team knows PHP, if you need thousands of editors working at once, or if your content must be queried like a relational dataset. Flat files are quick to deploy and slower to scale in volume, which is when the database driver comes in.
When we would pick something else
- A JavaScript team that wants the CMS in its own language: Payload or Strapi.
- Python in the stack, with heavy editorial workflows: Wagtail.
- Content that editors change from a visual preview in React: TinaCMS.
Our list of free headless CMS platforms shows where Statamic sits among them.
What we build on Statamic
- A content model that mirrors how editors think, with fieldsets reused across page types, taxonomies and global settings.
- Replicator and Bard fields set up so editors compose pages from approved sections and cannot break the layout.
- Antlers templates for a monolith, or the GraphQL API feeding a Next.js or Astro frontend when design and performance teams want to ship separately.
- Locales, shared and per-site entries, and sensible fallbacks.
- Form handling, search indexes, CRM and analytics connections through Laravel’s own queues and events.
- Content from WordPress, Craft or a bespoke system, imported to collections with redirects mapped. Start with our migration checklist.
What it costs to own
The licence is a small line next to engineering time. The real drivers are PHP hosting, how many blueprints and sections the design needs, the volume of content to import and whether you run a decoupled frontend. We scope all four after a short audit.
How a Statamic project runs
We start with a blueprint workshop: editors list the pages they change each week, and we turn that into collections, fieldsets and sections. The repository is set up with environments and a deploy pipeline before any design is built, since content in git means a release process matters from day one.
Then we build templates or the decoupled frontend, import content to a staging copy, and let editors work in it. Before launch we test the control panel permissions with real user roles, and we agree on who owns updates for Laravel, PHP and Statamic itself after handover.
Running Statamic in production
Flat file sites deploy by pushing content with code, so editors working in production need a plan: either they edit locally and merge, or the control panel commits to git on save. We set one of these up, plus caching, image presets and a staging copy, so editors never lose changes.
To add a developer to your team instead, see how to hire a Statamic developer. For the full set of options, read our headless CMS overview.
