BUILD FOR NOW
Build websites with a tech stack designed for today
Leave legacy behind and say hello to now
[Storyblok Developers]
When You Need Speed: HeadlessCMS
When you’re serious about developing fast-loading, scalable websites, a headless CMS like Storyblok with NextJS is the answer.
A headless CMS separates your content layer from the frontend presentation layer. It enables next level user experience on your website, without compromising security or performance.
Thanks to Static Site Generation (SSG), code splitting, lazy loading, and image optimization we not only increase your site’s speed but also give you the flexibility to grow your online presence into the future.
Quicker load times with NextJS and a headless CMS have rocketed our clients into the top 1% of Google Core Web Vitals rankings and have given them an unfair, competitive edge with SEO.
[Why Headless CMS]
Headless CMS
is the Future
The future is unpredictable. You will need a tech stack that is modern, adaptable, and ready for anything.
There are several ways that a headless CMS can future-proof your website:
You can change your presentation layer without changing the backend of the site, so no more cumbersome data migrations.
You can integrate with other technologies and platforms through the API, so delivering content on social, mobile, voice assistants, chatbots and many other channels is simple.
You can grow your site - even exponentially, if needed - without re-architecting the backend, so adding e-commerce or any other feature to your site is seamless.
You can feel safe and secure with NextJS’s native security, so the risk of hacks, cyberattacks, and data breaches won’t keep you up at night
[Who We Are]
Your Vision.
Our Makers.
The Makers’ Den team, headquartered in Berlin, brings passion and commitment to your project that you won’t find with other development companies. While we revel in technology advances and keep our skills sharp at all costs, what we really take pride in is our dedication to building bespoke, quality, bullet-proof websites that make an impact on your business.
Your site will be built with StoryBlok headless CMS fully integrated with NextJS. We’ll use a Static Site Generator (SSG) deployment model and serve your web pages from the Vercel platform featuring global, edge location CDNs.
You’ll get the power of the most comprehensive, high-performance setup, the versatility of a headless CMS, and our expert developers helping you realize your vision every step of the way.
[Risks]
Now's the time for a Headless CMS
It might seem risky to deviate from your existing tech stack - especially if you’ve got multiple sites to consider - but keeping your website stuck in the past can very quickly lead to:
Constraints from your traditional CMS, losing the ability to distribute content across multiple channels easily.
Poor user experience, affecting engagement, site traffic, and brand.
Duplicate content distribution across multiple channels, wasting your team’s valuable time.
Compromises in security, making your site unnecessarily vulnerable to bad actors and hackers.
[Our Clients]
Our Clients.
Visionaries.
We're grateful for the incredible companies we get to work with. We share a passion for quality with our clients and look forward to the opportunity to call you one soon.
[Testimonials]
Makers' Den delivered a best-in-class website that exceeded our sky-high expectations. They were also terrific business partners who quickly understood the role our website played in our go-to-market motion. The team was not afraid to challenge assumptions to deliver the best results. I look forward to a long relationship with them.
Marc Allen
Head of Marketing at CEPRES
[Top ReactJS Agency 2023 in Germany]
5.0 stars
[Website Case Studies]
Projects we are proud of
CEPRES: Faster Website with Storyblok
CEPRES provides industry-leading investment technology and the world's largest private market data network to help investors. They wanted a best-in-class website to power their SEO, performance marketing and lead funnels.
Read Case Study
Pexip: Engage Showcase Site
Pexip Engage is an enterprise scheduling SaaS. Their customers are banks and insurance companies, and they appreciate hands on demos on how to leverage the service. We were happy to help.
Read Case Study
FRI:DAY: Re-architetcting a website for scale
FRI:DAY leads digital car insurance in the German market and we redid their approach to their website based on a Headless CMS and ReactJS.
Read Case Study
[Frequently Asked Questions]
The important thing is to
never stop questioning
What are the top Headless CMSs?
There's a lot of Headless CMS options out there, but our top 10 list would be
Storyblok
This is our current #1 choice. It has the best editor of all Headless CMSs in our opinion and has thus excellent usability for content managers. It supports live previews and content preview integrated into the editor itself. It's a SaaS with fair pricing, and without the headaches of self-hosting. The developer experience is stellar and their APIs allow us to extend its capabilities with ease. It scales well from the needs of small marketing website to large enterprise requirements with workflows, access controls and SSO.Contentful
Contentful might be the biggest headless content management system out there. It's a SaaS but with rather steep pricing. Their feature set is second to none, but it's really only an option if you're a large enterprise, which is the audience they're geared for. One of its disadvantages is the lack of a visual editor, which with its price tag would be something one would expect.Prismic
Prismic was one of the first who launched an editor with focus on the content manager and ease of use. We've developed multiple Prismic sites, and still love it dearly. Unfortunately it hasn't been keeping pace with the competition, and currently it doesn't offer any advantages over e.g. Storyblok.Strapi
Strapi is open-source and offers a self-hosted variant, which if you need that, makes it a compelling choice. Since it is open-source you can extend it in any crazy way you want, but we'd be advising against this in most cases unless you're doing something extraordinary. On paper it ticks all checkmarks, but it's usability is still lacking and it's not been a favorite of content managers in our experience. Its rich text support has been lacking, and unfortunately it's known for its buggy behaviour.DatoCMS
DatoCMS is great headless CMS. Functionality, pricing, and its content management api One of it's main disadvantages is lack of as-you-type live preview and content preview integrated in editor, which makes the experience less compelling for content managers.Sanity
Sanity is highly customizable. It's is one of the CMS choices we're keeping an eye on. It has a new Visual Editor makes it very interesting but it's clearly not mature at the time of this writing (2023), and we'll evaluate again when they're more stable and have better examples of integrating this into websites. A solid choice for a CMS regardless.Kontent.ai
Kontent.ai offers good API support and intuitive UIs. It's pricing is more geared towards enterprise, and isn't a choice for smaller marketing websites. It's more of a competitor to Contentful. I.e. a headless CMS platform geared only towards bigger enterprises and the sort of problem they face.ComsicJS
CosmicJS touts itself as a CMS for developers by developers, it's should be compelling to us. Unfortunately a CMS also needs to be for the content managers and usability has to be a priority. Which is why we don't pay attention to this CMS after trying it out.ContentStack
Another very enterprise CMS SaaS, with pricing starting at about $1k/month without a free tier, it's not an option which scales from smaller beginnings. With this price tag it should also come with better rich text support as well as visual editing.AgilityCMS
Yet another enterprise CMS SaaS, this one with pricing starting at about $1.2k/month. It is very full featured, especially with the sort of enterprise requirements needed by global conglomerates, but its UI does feel dated and doesn't really compare to the polish offered by competitors.
Why do you develop websites with Storyblok as the Headless CMS?
Beyond the accumulated experience of developing dozens of websites with Storyblok, we've done so because it scales really well.
Among all Headless CMS we've looked into, it has the best usability, thanks to its Visual Editor which offers live previews as-you-type. It integrates your production website into their editor, so you can click on elements to edit them.
It is a SaaS so you will not be stuck with the maintenance and security perils of self-hosting. It offers a very competitive price for small companies, but also offers the needed features for large enterprises (at a higher price tag).
It has a great developer experience and a full featured API which allows us to extend its capabilities for specialized use cases and automate tedious tasks.
What are "Core Web Vitals"?
Core Web Vitals are metrics used by Google to measure the performance of every page in its search index. It uses this as one of the ranking factors to determine its position on the Search Engine Result Page. If your page is targeting competitive search terms, you will need to ensure that your page performance scores 90+ for Google to want to recommend it to its users. Google wants a fast internet for its search service to stay relevant, and everyone who wants to rank first page will need to ensure that their site performs great for all its visitors. For more info read our article on Core Web Vitals.
I want to keep my idea confidential. Will you sign an NDA with me?
Yes, we sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) always when a client wants it. We can do it at the very beginning before we discuss your project's details, or at another stage of the process - it's up to you.
Do I own the intellectual property rights of my application?
Yes, you are the owner of Intellectual Property rights at all times.
Where is your development team located?
We are fully remote. So while we were founded and are still based in Berlin, most developers will be remote from a central European location.
What is the pricing model?
You work with us on a Time & Materials basis. The total cost depends on the actual time the team spends on the development. You are in charge of the project’s scope and set priorities for the development team.
Time & Materials allows flexibility for you to set the direction of development depending on the users’ feedback, market situation, or opportunities that arise during the development.
For more about how we create estimates read how to estimate software projects.
What would my development team look like?
We adjust the team depending on your needs. Our speciality is low overhead teams, where every member is contributing concretely towards customer facing features. That means everyone is either doing development or design.
Roles like Project Manager, Business Analyst and QA are responsibilities which are shouldered by our business oriented developers or designers.
You may take the role of a Product Owner, making decisions on priority and scope.
Can you work as an amendment to our in-house team?
Yes. We can adapt to your tools and processes. I.e. fully integrate into your existing team.
How does the company ensure code quality and maintainability?
We follow best practices, perform code reviews, implement automated testing and continuous integration to ensure code quality and maintainability. All projects are not equal though and the level of automated QA will be determined on your need for quick feedback from the market.
Can you hand the code over to another team?
Yes. We create easily understandable and maintainable code using well known frameworks which don’t require niche knowledge.
The runtime environments we can set up in your ownership from the get-go.
What is the experience level of my team?
Every team has a partner involved in the project. Our developers have a proven track record of outsized throughput. Our culture is one of delivering features every day. That's why we prefer senior developers, but not seniors that are from slow moving enterprise environments.
How am I kept up-to-date of development?
We have fixed length iterations (usually 1 week), at the end of which you will be demoed the current progress. You will have access to team members through Slack, email and video calls and our regular meetings. In addition to this you will have access to our project management tools (Jira or Asana), which we update daily.
Why hire us?
We love what we do and only employ people with a similar mindset. You ship faster by working with a small team where each developer is a focused on your business goals. With us you get direct access to everyone. This keeps overhead low and output high.
You are in control. We offer full transparency of progress and potential problems. We keep you informed and present options, but you make the decisions.
We value our client relationships and their product visions. Meet with us to see if we share the same conviction. We might be a good fit.
