A Gatsby CMS like no other

Meet the headless Gatsby CMS that integrates with your app using a straightforward API. Smooth, simple, and tasty content integration — that’s Butter.

Posted on November 21, 2023

Powerful CMS for Gatsby. Zero headache.

Drop our API-based CMS into your Gatsby app in minutes. 

ButterCMS provides a component-based CMS and content API for Gatsby and Gatsby.js apps. Use ButterCMS to enable dynamic content in your apps for page content, blogs, and anything else. Most customers get our Gatsby CMS set up in one hour or less. 

That leaves plenty of time for you and your marketing team to do what you do best: create killer apps with killer content. 

Play video

See how Butter’s API enables you to compose flexible page layouts and easily reorder components, without a developer.

Intuitive admin interface

So easy to use. So easy to customize. You’re going to love the content you build better with ButterCMS.

Handy integration with Gatsby.js

Our Gatsby CMS has a simple content API and drop-in Gatsby SDK that makes the magic happen in minutes, not hours.

A truly zero-maintenance solution

With ButterCMS, you’ll never worry about security upgrades, hosting, or performance again.

G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award G2 crowd review award

“Best CMS on the market”

headshot of Hampton Catl

After shopping the market, it was clear that ButterCMS was the perfect choice. It allows our developers to build powerful components and makes it easy for our marketing team to drive a better customer experience. Hampton Catlin Creator of Sass and Haml

Deploy our Gatsby starter in 30 seconds

Or follow the below commands to clone a copy of the repo from github, install dependencies, set your free Butter token, and run your local server.

$ git clone https://github.com/ButterCMS/gatsbyjs-starter-buttercms.git
$ cd gatsbyjs-starter-buttercms
$ npm install
$ echo 'BUTTER_CMS_API_KEY=your_free_api_token_here' >> .env
$ npm run develop

Built to make content marketing easy

ButterCMS is the best headless CMS for Gatsby for a simple reason: Gatsby developers can build solutions that marketing people love. Our API allows your content gurus to quickly spin up high-converting, dynamic landing pages, SEO pages, product marketing pages, and more, all using simple drag-and-drop functionality.

  • SEO landing pages
  • Customer case studies
  • Company news & updates
  • Events + webinar pages
  • Education center
  • Location pages
  • And more...

The simplest Gatsby CMS you'll find

Our simple setup saves you time and money. Take us for a spin to see for yourself!

headshot of LUKE GARDNER

It's the epitome of plug-and-play simplicity for content creators. It does exactly what I need it to. LUKE GARDNER, CONTENT SPECIALIST, PRINTAVO

Fast integration with any Gatsby app

Our mission was to make it easy to integrate Butter with your existing Gatsby app in minutes. It’s so simple! To demonstrate, here’s a mini tutorial to give you a feel for the process of adding marketing pages to your Gatsby or Gatsby.js app.

Of course, you can also use our Collections to do advanced content modeling. For a full integration guide, check out our Official Guide for the ButterCMS Gatsby API client.

Play video

See how easily you can integrate the ButterCMS Pages API with your Gatsby.js app.

Seamless Gatsby components

Empower your marketing team with dynamic landing pages that align perfectly with your Gatsby components. 

Components are the essential building blocks of any Gatsby app, and ButterCMS handles them with ease. 

Our drag and drop interface makes it simple to structure your content to match existing Gatsby components and to create new reusable components whenever you need them.

One Gatsby CMS with everything you need

There’s a reason so many developers are choosing a headless Gatsby CMS. It’s easy to set up, offers flexible, customizable content modeling, and gives you access to our full Gatsby API.

  • Custom page types
  • Custom content modeling
  • CDN for assets
  • Webhooks
  • Testing environment
  • Customer case studies
  • Location pages

ButterCMS saves you development time

Most customers get our Gatsby CMS up and running in less than an hour. Try it yourself!

headshot of DILLON BURNS

Simple as can be, with powerful features and great customer support. DILLON BURNS, FRONT END DEVELOPER, KEYME

How to integrate ButterCMS into your Gatsby application

Just follow the simple steps below to complete the integration and begin creating pages with Butter. Be sure to check out our full guide to creating pages using the ButterCMS Gatsby API.

With your homepage defined, the ButterCMS Pages API will return it in JSON format like this:

{
"data": {
    "slug": "homepage",
    "fields": {
      "seo_title": "Anvils and Dynamite | Acme Co",
      "headline": "Acme Co provides supplies to your favorite cartoon heroes.",
      "hero_image": "https://cdn.buttercms.com/c8oSTGcwQDC5I58km5WV",
      "call_to_action": "Buy Now",
      "customer_logos": [
        {
          "logo_image": "https://cdn.buttercms.com/c8oSTGcwQDC5I58km5WV"
        },
        {
          "logo_image": "https://cdn.buttercms.com/c8oSTGcwQDC5I58km5WV"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Now lets create the home page src/pages/index.js:

import React from 'react'
import { graphql, Link } from 'gatsby'
import Layout from '../components/layout'
import SEO from '../components/seo'

const IndexPage = ({ data }) => {
  const home = data.home.edges[0].node

  return (
    <Layout>
      <SEO
        title={home.seo_title}
      />
      <div>
        <h1>{home.headline}</h1>
        <img src={home.hero_image} >
        <button>{home.call_to_action}</button>
      </div>

      <h1>Our Customers</h1>
      <div>
        {home.customer_logos.map(({ logo_image }) => (
          <img
            key={logo_image}
            src={logo_image}
          />
        ))}
      </div>
    </Layout>
  )
}

//GraphQl query to fetch homepage data
export const query = graphql`
  {
    home: allButterPage(filter: { slug: { eq: "homepage" } }) {
      edges {
        node {
          slug
          headline
          seo_title
          customer_logos {
            logo_image
          }
          hero_image
          call_to_action
        }
      }
    }
  }
`

export default IndexPage

Now run gatsby develop in your terminal and open localhost:8000/home to see the home page populated with the content you created on butter.

Configure the source plugin

Here you'll specify the config that will be needed to pull down data from butter. Make sure to add your api_token from your dashboard, in this guide we will add CMS capability to Gatsby for blogging, marketing pages, and more. Below is an example gatsby-config.js file that you'll want to configure for your app. We dive into more detail on the config file in the official guide.

// Example gatsby-config.js file
module.exports = {
      resolve: `gatsby-source-buttercms`,
      options: {
        authToken: ``,
        // Use the optional contentFields array for ButterCMS Collections. Any
        // Collections you want the app to have access to should have their
        // slugs explicitly included in the keys array, as seen below.         
contentFields: { keys: [`faq_items`, `faq_headline`], // Optional. Set to 1 to enable test mode for viewing draft content. test: 0, }, // Optional. Array of page slugs. pages: [`homepage`], // Optional. Array of page types.
        // Use the optional pageTypes array for ButterCMS PageTypes. Any 
        // Page Types you want the app to have access to should have their
      // slugs explicitly included in the pageTypes array, as seen below.
pageTypes: [`customer_case_study`],
        // Specify locales you want the app to have access to, if you have 
        // locales enabled in your account.
locales: [`en`, `fr`] }, }, }

That's it! If you browse to your homepage you'll see your homepage populated with the content you created in Butter.

Get Started for Free

Try Butter free for 14 days

See for yourself what makes Butter the best Gatsby CMS out there. Click the button below to sign up for your free 14-day trial.