3 Lessons From Switching to Jamstack

When it comes to using headless CMS and Jamstack, it’s easy to get caught up in all the nifty features: flexibility, scalability, better performance, and enhanced security all come to mind. Those who have made the switch to Jamstack sites and web apps have praised the drop in cost.  Developers have finally been freed from the constraint of working with a prepackaged monolith and now use their preferred, customized tools to create a superior digital experience.  

Jamstack, for those unfamiliar with the term, stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. While migrating to Jamstack resolves many of the frustrations faced by those accustomed to manage a rigid all-in-one system, the Jamstack architecture requires experienced professionals who understand it well and can maintain it at the lowest cost possible.  

Tracking APIs when Migrating to Jamstack  

When we transitioned one of our clients to a headless CMS, we noticed they were generating 65 million APIs per day. To put this into context, it is not uncommon for a standard plan to include approximately 10 million calls a month. Reducing the number of calls became essential, and Konabos and Kontent from Kentico, the headless CMS vendor, collaborated to find solutions to reduce the number of calls. Working with APIs requires a certain level of understanding and analysis to ensure a smooth and cost-friendly transition to Jamstack.  

Going headless and using Jamstack is lauded for being the preferred choice for businesses looking to lower costs; after all, the whole concept of a decoupled system is to rely on APIs to reduce expenses related to the backend maintenance. Depending on the chosen API limit plan, prices can quickly rise if the number of calls being made is not tracked in real-time.  

While this solution works, hiring experienced professionals to evaluate the project from the start can drastically reduce the risk of running into serious issues once the project is live. Whether it’s determining the architecture setup, or coding, deployment, and load-balancing analysis, an experienced developer can help businesses choose the best solutions and avoid hitting threshold limits. While Jamstack is still the more economically advantageous option, surpassing API limits can cause an unnecessary – and unanticipated – rise in costs.  

APIs: Cache or Calls? 

One question that comes up often when we talk about API calls is whether caching keeps costs down. While caching is sometimes the better option, such as when making repetitive calls where nothing changes, it also incurs CDN costs for the bandwidth it uses to push the data through. SaaS vendors factor both the number of calls along with the amount of bandwidth into their pricing plans. Knowledgeable partners familiar with Jamstack should have the ability to find a balance between offsetting costs, when to cache, when to make API calls, and how to choose the right plan accordingly. Making too many unnecessary calls or having insufficient bandwidth can quickly raise costs – it’s important to know the difference.  

Choosing Reliable Partners 

When companies hire technology partners, they rely on them to build stable web architectures that correspond to their business needs. Developing a solid partnership with a technology partner and a solutions provider is crucial towards making everything run smoothly.  It’s even more crucial when issues arise that require immediate attention.  

The dedicated team at Kontent by Kentico was proactive in notifying us about the APIs that were repeatedly being called and causing us to hit limits. This allowed us to pinpoint the problematic code, run tests and ultimately resolve the issue within a week.   

Despite stiff competition, finding a genuine vendor that is responsive, proactive and values customer success is a rarity in this line of work. By collaborating tirelessly alongside our team, Kontent by Kentico showed us that customers will always be treated fairly and that concern for customer needs is one of its core values.   

APIs provide one of the great benefits of headless CMS and Jamstack.  They are the “A” in Jamstack, after all.  Not only do they bring great features and flexibility, but they also often boast lower costs in contrast to the all-in-one systems. Running high API costs is easily avoidable when working with experienced partners and customer-centric vendors. Jamstack is still the fastest and cheaper option for web development; however, it’s important to know how to plan ahead and fix solutions quickly, fairly, and efficiently.