CMS Brew vs Decap CMS, compared honestly.
Both keep content in your Git repository. The difference is the handoff: an admin panel your client has to learn versus a chat, and publish-on-save versus per-field guards that hold the risky edits for you.
No credit card, cancel anytime.
The short answer
Choose Decap CMS if you want free, self-hosted, and open source, and your editors can live with a form-based admin panel you configure and maintain. Choose CMS Brew if you hand finished sites to non-technical clients: they describe the change in chat instead of learning a panel, every field carries a guard level so risky edits wait for your approval, and requests that are really your job are refused in the editor and routed to you with the client's own words.
Why developers go looking for a Decap alternative
Decap CMS, the old Netlify CMS, is still a solid free option, and it is still maintained by the community. The pain is everything around it. Netlify deprecated Git Gateway, the repository bridge the classic one-click login runs on, so those setups now owe an auth migration to a self-hosted OAuth app or a third-party bridge.
And even with auth sorted, the day-two problems stay: you model every collection and widget in config.yml by hand, for every client site, and your client still faces a form-based admin panel they use twice a year and never quite learn.
An admin panel is still an admin panel
Decap's editor is collections, forms, and markdown widgets. A client who edits twice a year forgets it between visits. In CMS Brew they type what they want changed and see it in a live preview before it publishes.
Nothing stands between the client and production
Whatever the config exposes, an editor can change and publish. Editorial workflow adds a draft board, not a rule about which fields are safe. In CMS Brew every field category has a guard level, and anything you set to Review reaches you before it reaches the site.
The easy auth path is gone
Git Gateway is deprecated and new configurations are not recommended. A new Decap setup means wiring your own OAuth app, or adding another service, just to log the client in. CMS Brew ships sign-in out of the box: Google, or a 6-digit email code.
Side by side
CMS Brew vs Decap CMS
| CMS Brew | Decap CMS | |
|---|---|---|
| What the client sees | A chat. They describe the change in plain words and watch a live preview. | An admin panel with collections, forms, and markdown widgets to learn. |
| Setup per site | Connect the GitHub or GitLab repository. Content is mapped automatically. | Write and maintain config.yml: collections, fields, widgets. |
| Client sign-in | Built in: Google or an emailed 6-digit code. | Bring your own OAuth. Git Gateway is deprecated. |
| Guardrails | Per-field guard levels: Open, Warn, Review, Locked. Code is never editable. | Clients can edit any field the config exposes. Editorial workflow adds drafts, not per-field rules. |
| Out-of-scope requests | Refused in the editor and escalated to you with the client's original words. | Not a concept. The request reaches you as an email or a phone call. |
| Publishing | One commit to your repository, one-click revert. | Also Git commits. Both tools keep content in your repo. |
| Running the CMS | Hosted. Nothing is added to your site, no admin page to ship or update. | A self-hosted admin page you ship with the site and keep updated. |
| Price | $39/mo for 5 sites, unlimited editors, 7-day free trial. | Free and open source. Decap Turbo, its paid team add-on, is separate. |
The honest trade-off
Where Decap wins: it is free, open source, and self-hosted, and if your auth is already wired and your client is comfortable in a form admin, it keeps working. CMS Brew earns its fee when the panel itself is the problem: rare editors, no appetite for config and auth upkeep, and changes you want to review before they go live.
Stick with Decap CMS if
- Your OAuth is already wired and working, and nobody is asking you to change it.
- Your editors are technical enough to be comfortable in a form admin with markdown widgets.
- The budget for the site is zero, and your time spent on config and auth upkeep does not count.
- You need a feature CMS Brew deliberately does not have, like clients creating whole new pages.
How it works
Three steps, then it's live.
- 01Connect
Point it at the site you built
CMS Brew turns every page, blog post and language into a simple list of things your client can edit. No rebuild, no plugin.
- 02Edit
Clients edit in plain words
Your client says what to change in chat, or clicks the words on the page and retypes them. They see it live before it ships.
- 03Publish
Safe changes go live
Safe edits publish in one click. Bigger requests, like a new page or code, come straight to you.
How to switch from Decap CMS to CMS Brew
- 1
Connect the repository
Sign in and connect the site's GitHub or GitLab repository. There is no content migration because there is no content to move: your Markdown, frontmatter, and images already live in the repo, and CMS Brew maps the editable content automatically.
- 2
Set your guards
Review the mapped fields and set a guard level per category: Open publishes freely, Warn asks the client to confirm, Review holds the change for you. Structural and code fields are locked from the start.
- 3
Invite the client
Send the client an invite. They sign in with Google or an emailed 6-digit code, no GitHub account and no new password. Their first edit is a message, not a training session.
- 4
Retire the panel when ready
Run both side by side as long as you like; both write plain commits. When you are confident, delete the /admin page and config.yml from the repo, and the OAuth app or auth bridge that served it.
FAQ
What people ask before switching.
Stop being the person who updates the phone number.
Give your client the keys to the content. Keep the keys to the code.
Prefer to talk first? Book a 30-minute call