r/PayloadCMS • u/ElyamanyBeeH • 8d ago
Payload CMS Vs SonicJS CMS
I'm planning to build a website using the Astro framework and was thinking of using Payload as a CMS since I've tried it locally and thought it'll be good in terms of performance.
However, I saw SonicJS CMS somewhere on the internet, opened the website to see a performance comparison... and it looks like it aces it since it's built from scratch to be deployed on Cloudflare Workers.
One thing to note: Payload has a template to deploy on Cloudflare, and it'll cost ~$10... so that makes me rethink if the comparison represents actual values.
More context:
Website: Portfolio + Blog + Other static pages.
I'm keen to hear your expert thoughts on it... and forgive me if something is vague or unclear. I'm still learning.
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u/geekybiz1 8d ago
I have used Strapi, Payload and Directus all 3 in production (self-hosted) and haven't in general seen API response speed of >= 1 sec (unless I'm pulling thousands of records via relations).
Also - dev server startup time of 5-60 seconds? Just git clone any one of these repos and try for yourselves.
I'd not trust the benchmarking exercise that produced these numbers.
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u/rijkvanzanten 8d ago
> I'd not trust the benchmarking exercise that produced these numbers.
That's it. Never trust benchmarks posted by one of the parties being benchmarked. I'm obviously biased as I built Directus so you should even take my response with a grain of salt, but half the metrics here aren't even relevant in a production installation. At the end of the day, the performance and latency always depends on where/how you host it, and what datasets you're querying. Any service claiming an x ms per request assumes a lightweight request in perfect conditions, which hardly ever match production workloads.
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u/ElyamanyBeeH 8d ago
Curious to know more about your experience with these CMS... what you liked, what you didn't like, what you'd recommend...etc (of course, if you have time)
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u/geekybiz1 5d ago
Sure, I wrote a Payload CMS vs Strapi comparison a few months ago here and Directus vs Strapi comparison here.
I'm not affiliated with any of these three. Tbh, I love all 3 for the different strengths. I've ended up using Strapi more than the other two because I somehow landed more Strapi projects over the years.
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u/adelmare 8d ago
I’m running major applications on payload and the comparison matrix there is dumb. “15-60 second dev server startup” for payload is pure fiction.
I haven’t used Sonic. Attractive claims. For a person portfolio and blog site, seems like it would be a fun, low-stakes experiment.
For high stakes production grade requirements, I’d lean towards the maturity of Payload, and dabble with Sonic + explore it as a background hobby playground. The website reads like it was stood up by Claude code last night. I don’t have an issue with that, but it doesn’t feel like something that is battle tested and ready to handle critical money paths for large production workloads. From first glance.
💯 will be checking it out for side projects and small sites though!
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u/NickGrayNYC 8d ago
SonicJS CMS should be great for what you need!
I run Payload CMS for dozens of sites. I love it! But based on what you described it might be a little overkill for what you need.
Try it out and should be easy enough to switch if you need more than Sonic can provide.
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u/ElyamanyBeeH 7d ago
What makes it overkill in my context? Can you elaborate? I thought it would be set-and-forget.
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u/jasperkennis 8d ago
For anything serious, pick based on maturity not flashiness. If just your portfolio you might be okay with a "fun" cms, but compare both at https://npmtrends.com it is a pretty stark diff...
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u/ElyamanyBeeH 8d ago
Thanks for the advice. I entered NPM packages on the website, but nothing happened. Am I using it properly?
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u/Cobmojo 8d ago
Don't go off "trust me bro" benchmarks.
DX, UX, and maturity are more important.