How do you decide what to buy when there are too many options?
Most of us start by looking at features. We want the latest version and the most high-tech option. So we read reviews, compare brands, and dive into all the details.
Take running shoes, for example. You might head straight for the ones with carbon plates, smart sensors, and ultra-light foam. Impressive. But once you get home, you realize… You didn’t need any of that. You just needed something comfy for daily walks.
That’s because you didn’t stop to ask the most important question: What do I actually need this for? A marathon, jogging twice a week, or just walking?
That kind of mismatch happens all the time when teams choose a CMS.
There are tons of platforms, each promising big things, headless, scalable, AI-powered. But none of that matters if you haven’t figured out what your project really needs.
Choosing a CMS is a big decision. The wrong CMS causes problems for your whole team, slowing down content creation, development, and growth, and can eventually lead to expensive rebuilding. That’s why the best way to start isn’t with comparison charts or vendor demos. It’s with two simple questions:
- What kind of website are you building?
- How complex is your project?
Question 1: What kind of website are you building?
This may sound like a basic question, but it’s one that too many teams skip or oversimplify. When someone says, “We need a website,” they might mean anything from a single landing page to a big content site or a full online store.
Each of these scenarios comes with very different requirements around content modeling, user experience, scalability, collaboration, and infrastructure. A blog isn’t the same as an e-commerce store. A marketing site for a startup has different needs than a news platform or a corporate site with dozens of departments.
To make things easier, websites can generally be grouped into four core categories, each with its own traits and challenges:
1. Corporate websites
These are the digital front doors of a business, designed to communicate brand, culture, and core information. They share info about the team, company goals, news, jobs, and more. While they may seem simple, corporate sites often need to reflect sophisticated design standards, support multiple stakeholders (e.g. HR, PR, leadership), and stay flexible for future updates. A CMS for this type of site needs to make it easy to manage and update content without involving developers every time.
2. Content-heavy platforms
These include blogs, news sites, online learning hubs, or any site where content is the main focus. They need strong tools for organizing and managing lots of articles, videos, or other media. That means the CMS has to support a robust editorial workflow: flexible content modeling, categorization, scheduling, rich media, and possibly user-generated content. Speed, scale, and search are also critical.
3. Lead-generation sites
These sites are all about turning visitors into customers or leads. They’re usually high-performance marketing sites designed to guide users through a sales funnel. Speed, personalization, and testing are top priorities. The CMS must support dynamic content, segmentation, A/B testing, and integration with CRM or analytics tools. Success is measured by how well the site brings in new business.
4. Commerce platforms
These websites exist to sell, whether physical products, digital subscriptions, or services. They need more than just a simple CMS; they require tools for managing products, orders, payments, shipping, and more. Content like product descriptions, guides, or promotional content is still important, but it needs to work closely with the sales system behind the scenes.
Why this question matters:
Knowing exactly what kind of site you’re building helps you focus on the CMS that fits your needs. A tool that’s great for publishing lots of articles might be too much for a simple corporate site — or not strong enough for a big online store. Instead of chasing every shiny feature, start by picking a CMS built for the type of website you want.
Question 2: How complex is your project?
Once you know what kind of website you’re building, the next step is to figure out how complex your project really is. Because not all websites of the same type are created equal.
A small lead-gen landing page for a local event is worlds apart from a multi-language, multi-brand platform designed to serve thousands of daily users across regions. And complexity affects everything, from how fast you can launch, to how much development work is needed, to how well the site will scale as your needs grow.
Projects usually fall into three levels of complexity: small, medium, and large.
Small projects
These are typically fast, focused, and handled by small teams. Maybe it's a microsite, a simple landing page, or a company homepage with a few static pages. You’re working in one language, with a single team, and there are only a handful of content types. Speed to launch is key. These projects usually don’t need much development work, so you can use easy-to-manage CMS tools (Website builders or traditional CMS platforms) that let you get online quickly without much technical help.
Medium projects
Now we’re talking about a broader content scope: more pages, more contributors, multiple workflows, and some integrations (CRM, analytics, forms, etc.). You may have a marketing team working alongside developers, and you're starting to need more flexible content structures. Development effort becomes necessary, and collaboration tools inside the CMS are increasingly important. Headless CMSs start to become a viable option here, paired with a frontend framework for more control over UX.
Large projects
This is where things get serious. You’re likely managing content across multiple brands, languages, teams, or regions. Content reuse, versioning, workflow approvals, permissions, and omnichannel delivery are all essential. Your CMS might also need to connect with other tools, like data platforms, e-commerce systems, or marketing automation. For this kind of setup, you need a CMS that’s flexible, powerful, and built to scale. In most cases, a headless or data-driven CMS is the best match.
Why this question matters:
Understanding the complexity helps you pick a CMS that fits your team’s skills and your project’s demands. It determines how much structure and flexibility your CMS needs to offer. A lightweight platform might be perfect for a quick launch, but fail as your content demands grow. On the other hand, overinvesting in a complex stack for a simple project can slow you down and drain resources.
Turning these answers into action
So, where do these two questions lead you?
Together, they form a framework, a way to map your project before you pick a platform. In fact, we’ve created a visual model called the CMS Market Map that places website types (horizontal axis) against project complexity (vertical axis). The intersection of these two variables helps you identify not just what kind of CMS you need, but why certain platforms make sense.
For example, a small corporate site might work great with a website builder like Webflow or Wix. A large content platform with multiple languages and teams might need a headless CMS like Sanity or Contentful. And a lead-gen website needs testing, personalization and data, so you need to look near the center of the map, where data-driven headless platforms like Prepr are.
The CMS Market Map takes what can feel like an abstract, chaotic search and grounds it in reality. It helps teams stop asking, “Which CMS is best?” and instead ask, “Which CMS is best for us?”
If you’re curious about the five modern CMS categories and how they compare, we broke them down in this article to help you explore them in more detail.
Lesson learned: Don’t choose a CMS without answering these two questions first
Just like buying the wrong pair of shoes for the wrong kind of run, choosing the wrong CMS creates friction across your entire team, slowing down content, code, and growth.
It’s tempting to chase the most advanced features or go with the biggest brand name. But remember, long-term success doesn’t come from having the most impressive tech; it comes from having the right fit for your team, your goals, and your workflow.
That’s why these two questions are the starting point for every smart CMS decision. They aren’t technical, but they are strategic. They force clarity. They get everyone on the same page.
Before you go deep into product comparisons or vendor calls, pause. Ask yourself:
- What kind of website are we building?
- How complex is our project?
The answers might seem simple. But they’ll save you time, avoid frustration, and make a choice that actually supports your team and your goals.
Check out the full CMS Market Map guide to explore the five modern CMS categories and how they line up with real-world project needs.
