Why We Didn’t Use a Headless CMS: Lessons from Building TARS Blog with Free Tools

Our philosophy at TARS is simple: avoid paying whenever possible.

The reason -> so you can pay as little as possible.

Here’s a perfect example of how strictly we follow this rule: We needed the best tool to publish this blog. My initial instinct was to build it from scratch, but Lukas, my co-founder (and tech ninja), insisted on using a CMS for content optimization. Fair enough. We thought of Wordpress or Drupal, both free, stable options. But Lukas pushed for a headless CMS—because he’s smart like that. After researching, I landed on Payload, a beautiful, simple tool we could configure to cost us nothing (self-hosted with a free MongoDB license). Lukas was sold.

I dove into coding our headless CMS with Payload’s documentation and YouTube tutorials. After experimenting with the free version of their headless CMS setup (and losing two weeks), we found it to be a slow and unreliable tool for our needs, which led us to rethink our approach to cost-effective blog development.

Here’s why: The setup was Payload + MongoDB + Render (for deployment), and every service was on its free version. Ultimately, the Payload codebase was unstable (thanks to mismatched tutorial recommendations), and Render made the deployment painfully slow (our fault for using the free version).

But hey, all because we’re dead set on not paying for it. And guess what? We’re sticking to that.

Our final solution? Repurposing the blog codebase Lukas had built for Payhouse. Should've thought of that sooner, right?

Still, the biggest win was finding a free, stable solution we could fully manage ourselves. That’s our M.O. for TARS, ad nauseam. Not because we’re cheapskates, but because we want to bring you a ridiculously affordable product.

In short, here’s what we learned from trying a headless CMS:

• Free doesn’t always mean reliable.
• Performance issues can arise from mismatched setups.
• Headless CMS solutions may not always be necessary for simple blogs.

Remember: affordable doesn’t mean mediocre. Throughout our development process, we keep asking ourselves: Is this truly necessary? Can we avoid paying so that eventually our users pay as little as possible? That’s what drives us at TARS. We focus on using affordable tools that offer value without compromising on quality.

Tars it up!