Strapi development for teams that want to own their CMS

Who Strapi suits

Strapi gives you a CMS you can run on your own server, with your own database, and extend in code. That is attractive if you have data residency rules, want to avoid per-seat pricing, or need custom logic around content. The trade-off is that you become the operator. Updates, backups and security fixes are yours.

If you want a fully hosted tool with no servers to look after, compare it with Contentful or Sanity. The comparison page Strapi vs Contentful covers the decision in more detail.

Self-hosted or Strapi Cloud

For EU and UK clients, region matters because personal data in form submissions and user accounts falls under GDPR. We note the hosting region in the data-protection notes we hand over.

A worked content type

Take a company that publishes webinars. In Strapi you create a Webinar content type with these fields.

• Title and slug, with the slug set to generate from the title and be unique.
• Start time, stored in UTC, with a separate time-zone label for display. This avoids the classic mistake of showing a US audience an Indian Standard Time start.
• Speakers, a relation to a Person type, so a speaker is edited once and appears everywhere.
• Recording link, optional, shown only after the event.
• Registration form ID, text, passed to your marketing platform.
• Draft and publish enabled, so editors can prepare the page before it goes live.

Each content type also gets its own permission switches, so you can allow the public to read published webinars while only editors can create them.

What we have built on it

We have no Strapi project published on our work page, and we will not invent one. The nearest published work is Aura Realty, where we built a website and a custom CRM that captures leads from the site, Instagram, WhatsApp and calls into one place. It shows our comfort with custom back ends and data models, though the case study does not say it runs on Strapi. For a new Strapi project we start with a content model workshop, as in the example above, and a small proof of concept.

Gotchas we plan for

• Public access is off by default. After you create a content type, the API returns nothing to visitors until you grant permission. We set permissions per role and test them from outside the admin panel.
• Relations are not included automatically. A request for a webinar does not return its speakers unless you ask. Developers must populate relations on purpose, and we cap the depth to keep responses fast.
• Do not run production on the default database. The file database used for local work is not suited to live traffic. We use PostgreSQL or MySQL and take scheduled backups.
• Uploads need a home. By default files are saved on the server's disk, which disappears if the server is rebuilt. We connect an object storage provider and a CDN.
• Major version upgrades are projects. Strapi 5 changed how entries are identified and how the API responds, so moving from version 4 needs a plan, a staging run and updated front end code.
• Rebuild triggers. A static front end needs a webhook from Strapi to start a rebuild on publish. We wire this and test it with real edits.
• Lock the admin panel. Use strong roles, two-step login where available, and keep the admin address off public sitemaps.

Timeline

So a typical project takes 7 to 13 weeks, with a longer plan for custom plugins or many integrations. Fixed quote after a short call: get in touch.