In 2016, WordPress + ACF was one of the best ways to build a headless CMS. ACF made it useful. But it was never ideal.
The Payload team has built so many projects with headless WordPress + ACF, and at one time, it was the best tool for the job. ACF features like Conditional Logic and the "Flexible Content" field made it worth the WP headache.
But it always felt so wrong in so many ways. When we started building Payload, part of our goal was to take what ACF did well—but do it even better. We were set on not making any compromises. If ACF had a core feature that we used, Payload should have it as well. The same experience created in WP should be better in every single way if built in Payload.
That means in regards to developer experience, editor experience, speed, maintainability—everything.
Payload is a strong WordPress alternative
Now that Payload 1.0 is released, there's no longer a reason for developers to build on headless WP. We built a repo that shows how you'd typically build something in WP, and how you can replicate the same thing with Payload.
Check out the video below to see what makes headless WP a bad choice for modern devs, and why Payload is so much better suited to the job.
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Join our community on Discord
We've recently started a Discord community for the Payload community to interact in realtime. Often, Discord will be the first to hear about announcements like this move to open-source, and it can prove to be a great resource if you need help building with Payload. Click here to join!
Get up and running with one line
Getting started is easy—and free forever. Just fire up a new terminal window and run the following command: