My Experience Using PayloadCMS with Next.js

From Idea to Blog

After finishing the development of my personal website, I knew it was just the beginning. There was much more I wanted to implement as I continued learning and building.

One of the features I envisioned was a blog/dev logs page that would dive deeper into each project. While the primary goal of each project was to learn, I also wanted to document:

• The technologies I used
• Why I made certain decisions
• What I would do differently next time

At the same time, I was working on a freelance project where the client also wanted a content management system (CMS) to manage their own content. This prompted me to start researching CMS options.

Since both projects were built with Next.js, I narrowed my CMS choices down to two: Sanity and PayloadCMS. These two offer very different developer experiences, but both are capable. From what I read, PayloadCMS can be a bit harder to get started with due to limited documentation, while Sanity requires a hosted backend.

To keep my deployment on Vercel serverless, I ultimately chose PayloadCMS. Personally, I did not find the documentation too difficult to navigate, though I was not doing anything overly complex like implementing live previews.

I also had the chance to try out Sanity, which I ended up using for the client project. Between the two, I found that:

• Sanity has a more polished UI, making it friendlier for non-technical users. It integrates easily and offers many built-in plugins.
• PayloadCMS offers a better developer experience and is less restrictive in terms of customization.

What I Like About PayloadCMS

• Open Source: Maintained by a great team and recently acquired by Figma.
• Serverless Deployment: I deployed everything on Vercel, keeping it all within a single deployment.
• Email Integration: I used Resend, a developer-first email service, for my contact form.
• Database Flexibility:
  • Vercel Blob for image storage
  • Supabase for structured data
• Lexical Rich Text Editor: Makes writing and customizing blog posts like this one super easy.

Conclusion

While my use case for PayloadCMS was relatively simple, it is clear that it can handle much more complex projects. I will definitely consider using it for future freelance work where it fits the requirements.