A Rails CMS like no other

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

Posted on November 27, 2023

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 Rails

Our Rails CMS has a simple content API and drop-in Rails 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.

Powerful CMS for Rails. Zero headache.

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

ButterCMS provides a component-based CMS and content API for Rails and Rails apps. Use ButterCMS to enable dynamic content in your apps for page content, blogs, and anything else. Most customers get our Rails 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.

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“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 Rails 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 on localhost:3000/.

# requires ruby 3.1.0
$ git clone https://github.com/ButterCMS/rails-starter-buttercms.git
$ cd rails-starter-buttercms
$ bundle install
$ echo 'RAILS_BUTTER_CMS_API_KEY=' >> .env
$ bundle exec rails s

Built to make content marketing easy

ButterCMS is the best headless cms for Rails for a simple reason: Rails 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 Rails 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 Rails app

Our mission was to make it easy to integrate Butter with your existing Rails 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 Rails 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 Rails API client.

Play video

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

Seamless Rails components

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

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

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

One Rails CMS with everything you need

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

First you would set up a new Customer Case Study page type in Butter and create a page. With your page defined, the ButterCMS API will return it in JSON format like this:

{
    "data": {
        "slug": "acme-co",
        "fields": {
            "facebook_open_graph_title": "Acme Co loves ButterCMS",
            "seo_title": "Acme Co Customer Case Study",
            "headline": "Acme Co saved 200% on Anvil costs with ButterCMS",
            "testimonial": "<p>We've been able to make anvils faster than ever before! - <em>Chief Anvil Maker</em></p>\r\n<p><img src=\"https://cdn.buttercms.com/NiA3IIP3Ssurz5eNJ15a\" alt=\"\" caption=\"false\" width=\"249\" height=\"249\" /></p>",
            "customer_logo": "https://cdn.buttercms.com/c8oSTGcwQDC5I58km5WV",
        }
    }
}

To create these pages in our app, we create a dynamic route that fetches content for the page by using a URL parameter. This is how the controllers/customers_controller.rb file might look:

class CustomersController < ApplicationController
  def show
    slug = params[:slug]

    @case_study = ButterCMS::Page.get('customer_case_study', slug).data.fields
  end
end

Display the results in views/customers/show.html.erb:

<html>
  <head>
    <title><%= @case_study.seo_title %></title>
    <meta property="og:title" content="<%= @case_study.facebook_open_graph_title %>" /> 
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1><%= @case_study.headline %></h1>
    <img width="100%" src="<%= @case_study.customer_logo %>">
    <p><%= @case_study.testimonial %></p>
  </body>
</html></template>

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 Rails CMS out there. Click the button below to sign up for your free 14-day trial.