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The architecture for digital growth: How multisites and headless support the website strategy

Joris De Groot

Written on 07 Oct 2025

In a digital world where speed, scalability, and personalization are crucial, choosing the right website architecture becomes a strategic decision. For executives and decision-makers looking to align their digital ecosystem with growth and efficiency, multisite and headless architectures offer powerful solutions. But when do you choose which approach? Read here the most important things you need to know about it as a decision-maker.

Multisite architecture: One platform, multiple faces

A multisite architecture enables organizations to manage multiple websites from one central environment. Think of different brands, regions, or target groups, each with its own content and design, but with shared functionalities and management structures.

There are many possible scenarios where a Multisite can be a good choice, but the most important ones are:

Multiple websites with a shared backend and unique frontend.
Multi-market strategies with regional content variations.
Multiple websites with different UIs and data, but the same functionalities.
Websites that share a significant portion of their data with each other.

Strategic advantages:

Efficient management of code and content.
Uniform user experience for administrators.
Faster time-to-market for new initiatives.
Clear governance and role management.
Effective separation or sharing of data across different websites.

But be aware: complexity grows exponentially when combining multiple scenarios. A multisite is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but an answer to specific needs. A thorough analysis of the desired functionality, governance, and roadmap is essential.

Important to know

Choosing a multisite is a solution for a specific challenge. A multisite is NOT an architecture for realizing all possible forms of websites. Therefore, it is not a solution to immediately cover all possible architectural scenarios for multiple websites.

Finally, an overview of frequently used architectures, with some explanation:

Multi-database

Functionalities are shared.
The frontend is shared by default, but can be provided separately per site, where the new frontend theme must conform to the underlying requirements of the CMS.
Each site has its own database, in which users and content are stored.

Single database

Functionalities are shared.
The frontend is shared by default, but can be provided separately per site, where the new frontend theme must conform to the underlying requirements of the CMS.
Everything is managed in a single database. Separation of content per website is handled by software rules.
Content workflows are generally the same for all websites.
Roles and permissions per website are assigned based on software rules.

Website blueprint

A single master install profile (blueprint) is developed once.
New websites are rolled out and managed separately.
The choice to let a website lead its own life or keep it in sync with the master install profile is not software-driven, but a fundamental choice of the website owner.

Headless architecture: Flexibility and scalability

A headless architecture separates the frontend from the backend. It allows the administrator and visitor experiences to be decoupled from one another. The communication between the two occurs via API connections.

Key Characteristics

Frontend technology is not tied to that of the backend.
Backend and frontend layers can scale more easily and separately.
Depending on the architecture, heavy load on the frontend does not impact the backend experience (and vice versa).
The frontend experience can feel better and smoother because it is often built in a client-side framework (Javascript based).
In theory, it is possible to replace the backend while retaining the frontend.
Extra security: depending on the architecture, the backend environment can be completely shielded from the frontend layer.

You choose a headless architecture in specific cases, the most important of which are:

When you want maximum freedom in all user experiences.
If your website's content changes very frequently (e.g., news sites).
When the need for scalability and/or security is extremely high.
If your website exposes many diverse data sources.

Consequences

Choosing a headless website also has consequences. For example, it comes with a higher cost, as you develop both the frontend and backend separately, often in separate teams. This impacts not only the investment cost but also the operational cost.

By decoupling the frontend from the backend, you also lose advantages that a traditional CMS introduces: visualizing a page builder in the backend often requires double development. Handling page previews and content staging also needs to be specifically provisioned in some cases.

For organizations with a strong focus on digital experience, performance, and security, headless can be a game-changer. But here too: the added value must outweigh the complexity and investment.

Most Important Key Takeaways

Headless is more expensive in terms of investment and maintenance.
Content websites with few content changes usually experience more disadvantages than advantages with headless architectures.
Headless offers more opportunities to scale.
Headless requires workarounds or sacrifices compared to core CMS functionality.

Conclusion: website architecture as a strategic choice

The choice for a multisite or headless architecture is driven by strategic needs. It revolves around answering one central question: Which digital challenges do I want to solve, and which architecture best supports my growth strategy?

Would you like to discuss further how these architectures can strengthen your organization?