Trusted by 200+ brands across 15 countries — let’s grow yours next.
+1 (830) 377 3635 sales@hitmandigital.com
Get a Free Proposal
CMS Development Agency

CMS Development — headless or coupled, built around your editorial workflow.

Headless or coupled CMS builds on WordPress, Strapi, Sanity and custom Laravel — editorially friendly, developer happy, and built around your team's actual workflow.

Get a Free Proposal See How We Work
  • Editorial UX designed around your team's workflow
  • Headless or coupled — chosen per project
  • No "this is how the CMS works" excuses
What is CMS Development?

CMS Development — explained without the jargon.

A CMS that editors hate is dead weight. A CMS that developers hate is technical debt. A CMS that does both is unfortunately the norm. We design CMS builds around two equally important constituents: the editorial team that uses it daily, and the developers maintaining it long-term. WordPress, Strapi, Sanity, Payload, custom Laravel — we choose per project based on workflow needs, not what we're used to.

Why it matters

Three things most teams get wrong about cms development.

01

Editorial adoption decides ROI

If your marketing team avoids the CMS, you'll never get value from it. Editorial UX matters more than CMS feature lists.

02

Headless ≠ better

Headless CMS is the right call sometimes. Other times it adds complexity for no return. The decision matters.

03

Customisation creates lock-in

Heavy customisation in one CMS makes migration painful. We design for portability where it matters.

What's included

Everything we ship under CMS Development.

01

CMS platform selection

WordPress, Strapi, Sanity, Payload, custom Laravel — chosen for your editorial + dev needs.

02

Editorial UX design

Custom content types, fields, workflows designed around your team's actual day-to-day work.

03

Headless front-end (if chosen)

Next.js, Astro, Nuxt — connected via REST or GraphQL. Best of both worlds.

04

Custom blocks / components

Gutenberg blocks (WP) or component libraries (headless) matching your design system.

05

Migration from old CMS

Drupal → WP, WP → Sanity, custom → headless WP — content migrations done properly.

06

Editorial training

Live training sessions, documentation, video walkthroughs — adoption baked in.

Our process

How we deliver cms development.

A predictable 5-step engagement — no surprises, no scope creep, no theatre.

  1. 1

    Editorial workflow audit

    Shadow the editorial team for a day. Understand actual workflow vs theoretical.

    Week 1
  2. 2

    CMS decision

    Recommendation with cost / capability / longevity trade-off model.

    Week 2
  3. 3

    Architecture

    Content types, taxonomies, field schema, workflow states, role permissions.

    Weeks 2-3
  4. 4

    Engineering

    2-week sprints. Editorial UX usability tested every sprint.

    Weeks 3-10
  5. 5

    Migration + training

    Content migration from old system, live training for editorial team.

    Weeks 10-12
Tools we use

Battle-tested stack.

WordPress Sanity Strapi Payload Contentful Storyblok Next.js / Astro GraphQL
Industries we serve

Vertical expertise.

Publishing
Marketing-led SaaS
D2C Brands
Education
Non-profit
Hospitality Chains
Real Estate (Listing Sites)
B2B Marketing
CMS Development · Case Study

Publisher: Drupal → headless WP + Next.js, editorial velocity 4×

A B2B publisher on a 9-year-old Drupal CMS was losing editors and rankings to faster competitors. We migrated 12K articles to headless WordPress + Next.js, designed custom Gutenberg blocks matching their editorial patterns, and trained the editorial team over 2 weeks. Editorial velocity 4×, PageSpeed 38 → 95, time-from-draft-to-publish dropped 71%.

See all case studies
4×
Editorial velocity
95
PageSpeed
-71%
Time to publish
0
Lost rankings
Why Hitman Digital

Four reasons clients choose us for cms development.

Editorial UX discipline

We shadow your editorial team before we design anything. Workflow first, CMS second.

Platform-agnostic

WordPress, headless, Strapi, custom — we choose per project, not by reflex.

Migration safety

Content migrations with zero data loss and zero ranking loss. 30+ CMS migrations shipped.

Long-term maintainability

CMS builds we ship are still running 5+ years later. We design for the long arc.

FAQ

Questions you were going to ask anyway.

Headless or coupled CMS — which is right?
Coupled (WordPress + theme) for editorial-led content sites where dev resources are limited. Headless (WP + Next.js, Sanity + Next.js) for sites needing React-level performance, complex interactions, or multi-channel publishing. We model the trade-off per project.
WordPress vs Sanity vs Strapi vs Payload?
WordPress for largest editorial ecosystem and plugins. Sanity for structured content with developer-friendly schema. Strapi for self-hosted Node-based stack. Payload for TypeScript-first projects. Each has trade-offs we walk through during discovery.
Can you migrate from our current CMS?
Yes — Drupal, Joomla, custom CMS, Adobe Experience Manager, Wix, Squarespace, you name it. Migration projects run 8-16 weeks depending on content volume.
Will my editorial team need re-training?
Yes — and we provide it. Live training sessions, recorded walkthroughs, written documentation. Adoption is part of the project, not an afterthought.
Do you do enterprise CMS (AEM, Sitecore)?
We don't build new AEM or Sitecore instances. We do migrate FROM them to lighter modern stacks, and provide AEM / Sitecore SEO and performance consulting.
Related services

You'll probably also want…

Most clients combine cms development with one or two related services. Here's where it usually leads.

Web Development

WordPress Development

Custom WordPress themes, headless WP architectures, Gutenberg blocks, ACF setups, and the kind of editorial workflow your marketing team will actually use.

Explore
Web Development

Custom Website Development

Bespoke websites engineered from scratch — built around your brand, your funnels and your stack. No templates, no compromises, no "this is how the theme works" excuses.

Explore
Web Development

Web Application Development

SaaS apps, internal tools and dashboards built in React, Next.js, Laravel and Node — production-grade from day one, designed to scale with your business.

Explore
Free · No obligation · 30 minutes

Get a free cms development audit.

Tell us your goals in 30 minutes. We'll show you the biggest 2-3 levers — and you keep the insights either way.

Claim Your Free Audit See Case Studies
Chat with us