The best way to build a modern backend and admin UI. No black magic, all TypeScript, and fully open source, Payload is both an app framework and a headless CMS.
Hey Product Hunt!
Today is a BIG day for the Payload team and I'm ecstatic to be here. We've released 2.0 and have shipped a ton of new stuff.
If you haven't heard of us yet, we're a headless CMS / app framework that's quite a bit different from the thousands of nameless, faceless SaaS headless CMS out there. We're open source with an MIT license - and with Payload, you control and own your own data. Magic happens when you actually have control over your backend.
But let's talk 2.0!
First and foremost, we've modularized our codebase to play nicely with more tooling and ecosystems.
Payload now supports Postgres! We've built an entirely new database abstraction layer which uses the fantastic Drizzle ORM under the hood. The best part is that Payload exposes the entirety of Drizzle to the developer, so that you can make use of anything Drizzle does in addition to Payload's already powerful APIs.
Our database layer also now comes with full, first party migration support as well as database transactions which will allow you to build better products.
We've also made the move to Vite over Webpack, so you can shave off some HMR / build time as you develop locally.
We've refreshed our UI and added live preview directly into the CMS, so your editors can now see what they're working on immediately as they're working on it. It's super simple to configure.
Image cropping and focal point selection are now both supported natively in Payload, which is one of our most requested features.
And last but not least, we've completely rebuilt our Rich Text Editor.
Admins will spend most of their time in the rich text editor, so for a CMS, this is hugely important. We had a pretty nice rich text field, but our vision has been to take the beauty and polish of the Medium writing experience and combine it with the power of the Notion editor. And today is a massive first step toward realizing that goal.
We now support Lexical, which ships a ton of new stuff. Not only is the entire editor redesigned, but it's packed with a ton of new features as well.
Payload is the most powerful headless CMS on the market and I think it can truly change the way you think about CMS.
We'd love to know what you think. I'll be here in the comments all day, so if you have any feedback for us, I'd love to hear it!
This is sweet. I’m a developer and I can see how this could be super useful. Good luck!
The image cropping and focal point selection additions are music to my ears! How user-friendly is this feature for content creators, and does it support various image formats?
I’ve recently gone through all the headless CMS’s out there and came out not terrible impressed. Payload looks great. Im still kicking the tires with a couple options, and will definitely check payload out.
I really like how you've modularized the codebase to work with different tools. And the fact that you now support Postgres with full migration support and database transactions is really impressive.
Payload is a great choice for building modern backends and admin UIs. It's fully open source, written in TypeScript, and easy to use
I've used Strapi in the past, which was really cool, but it looks like your solution might be even better. I'll definitely try it out next time I need a headless CMS. Well done 👏
