What is Umbraco Heartcore?

Ahoy there. In this article, we’ll take an overview of Umbraco Heartcore. Umbraco Heartcore is the headless CMS version of Umbraco. Headless? Yep, headless. We’ll get onto that in a minute.

You’ll learn about Umbraco Heartcore, what it is, what it provides and how your business might benefit from it.

So, read on and prepare to lose your head. Kind of.

What is a headless CMS?

A headless CMS chops off the front-end i.e., the “head” from the CMS. In a traditional CMS, there’s a body (the backend) and a head (the frontend or presentation layer). So, when you create and edit content in the backend (your CMS), you can see how it looks on the frontend (your CMS’ “head”). There’s a strong connection between the backend and frontend, which worked well when websites were just viewed through desktop computers. But these days, people view web content through many different types of screens and devices. Through many “heads”.

So, a headless CMS chops off the “head” from the CMS, but still lets you create and manage content. With a headless CMS, you can create your content and deliver it to any device. This is sometimes referred to as an “omnichannel delivery”.

But why use a headless CMS?

Lots of reasons.

Content is delivered via APIs to whatever device or platform is required.
You don’t need different content for different platforms. You won’t need to update your content in several places.
Your frontend developers can focus on building heads for different platforms or devices without worrying about compatibility issues.

Umbraco Heartcore Headless CMS

Umbraco Heartcore is one such headless CMS. And a rather good one too. You might also see it referred to as a headless SaaS (Software As A Service). Let’s take a brief look at some of the important Umbraco Heartcore Headless CMS technical features. (Pssst…don’t worry if the next section makes absolutely no sense. It’ll make sense to your developers.)

Some technical features

APIs

Using APIs (Application Programming Interfaces, essentially software that allows 2 applications to talk to each other), your content is delivered to any - and multiple - devices or platforms. Heartcore’s APIs and GraphQL (see below) effectively connect a head to the headless CMS. A head makes calls to the API and this allows your content to be displayed on the chosen device (the head). It could be a website, an app, smart devices, POS (Point of Sale) screens in a shop, mobiles, anything really.

Your Umbraco CMS is still the editor, repository and deliverer of your content though. Umbraco Heartcore comes with a managed API. This means your content and media are automatically exposed via a REST API.

The REST API is divided into two main areas:

- Content Delivery API

A read-only API for retrieving content and media and then delivering it to any website, app or device.

- Content Management API

This API manages creating, reading, updating and deleting content, media, languages, members, etc.
As this API deals with content management there is also authentication and authorisation applied when actions are carried out.

GraphQL

If these APIs get your technical pulse racing, then it’ll be doing backflips over Heartcore’s built-in GraphQL functionality.

With GraphQL, the number of API calls is reduced, and the returned data will only contain the information requested, in a structured output that’s easy to use. Your platform only retrieves exactly what is needed from the server.This means reduced loading time for users and more control and flexibility over what content and data are retrieved.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Your content gets sent through a CDN (Content Delivery Network) using Cloudflare. This ensures fast, stable delivery of your content to your chosen frontends, anywhere in the world.

Webhooks

Webhooks essentially help your headless CMS react to content changes straight away. They help it to push – rather than pull - content changes to other systems.

User roles

You can control who has access to what areas in a project. From all-access roles to limited-permissions roles, you can control what access you give to other users. For example, you may want “Freelance Writer A” to only be able to create and edit page content in your blog section.

Support

As with all Umbraco products, your developers will enjoy access to superb support channels within the Umbraco community, one of the world’s largest and friendliest developer communities.

Umbraco Forms

From simple contact forms to more complex surveys, Umbraco Forms make it easy. You can collect and analyse data from within Umbraco rather than a 3^rd party service. And it comes free with Umbraco Heartcore.

Some editor features

Where to start?

The Umbraco CMS is chocka-block full of clever, easy-to-use features for your website editor. There are too many to mention in this article, but here is just a selection:

Language variants
Umbraco Forms
Preview functionality
Scheduled publishing
‘Infinite Editing’
Image cropping and focal point

For more details on Umbraco CMS features, try these other articles:

Umbraco Heartcore benefits

Still with us? Great. As you can see, there are enough benefits to using Umbraco Heartcore to fill a small football stadium (when crowds are allowed back, obviously).

Here’s a brief summary:

Quickly manage content for multiple devices and platforms.
Great support and developer community.
Easily deliver content on any device.
Fast-loading websites and applications.
Easy integration with other platforms.
Multi-language support.
Easy management of user roles and authorisations.
Built-in CDN.
Free Umbraco Forms.
Backend based on familiar Umbraco user experience.
Managed REST APIs

Umbraco Heartcore cost

It’s completely free to get started with Umbraco Heartcore – there’s a free 14-day trial. After that, their various pricing options ranging from $49 per month to $999 per month, so something for everyone.

Concluding summary

So, maybe it’s time to go headless with your CMS. You’ve read about the benefits and potential…

Easy editing
Omnichannel delivery
No need for different content for different platforms
Fast-loading pages

How to get started? If you’re a business owner, it’s best to talk to your existing developers or simply give us a ring at Intuitiv, details below. We can help you set up your free trial.

Or if you’re a developer, take a look at the Umbraco website. This Getting Started with Umbraco Heartcore page is probably a good place to start.

Don’t Lose your head! We’re an experienced Certified Umbraco Partner.