TerminusCMS Overview
TerminusCMS is a content, knowledge, and information management system. It has an array of applications, but to provide a succinct summary, we’ve honed down to give you an overview of what it is, where it fits, the packages available, and how you can try out our demos to evaluate the product.
What is TerminusCMS
TerminusCMS is an open-source headless content and knowledge management system. It stores data as JSON documents and connects them in a knowledge graph. It is bound by a schema which auto-generates document forms for updates and queries. The schema can include content, transactional data, operational data, and media.
It comes with an Admin UI for users to curate content and data directly to the backend. Data curation can also be surfaced along with an array of other features via applications and websites. Front-end developers can build quickly and seamlessly using GraphQL and REST APIs directly with the schema-driven document frames.
The database is immutable and includes user authentication, version control, and change request workflows. Time travel, rollback, pull, push, and diff are all included in the database layer.
Data and content discovery and query are supported by GraphQL and Datalog. GraphQL can also be used as a graph query language to perform advanced graph queries such as path queries.
List of available
documents contained
in the schema. Users
can view, insert, and
edit documents.
Auto-generated from
the schema, the content
curation form includes
rich-text editing,
validation, localization,
& more.
Front-end developers
can build quickly using
JSON and GraphQL
Model your schema
using the UI or use
the JSON view to
work in code.
Build your model by
inserting documents,
subdocuments, and
enums.
Set document properties,
relationships, key strategies,
and data validation.
TerminusCMS auto-
generates the GraphQL
schema, listing it to help
query development.
Test queries with neat
features like pretty-print
and auto fill.
See the results of
your queries here.
Users create a change
request when updating
TerminusCMS, safely
away from live data
with in-built review
processes.
TerminusCMS comes
with a diff viewer so
reviewers can see
what has changed to
make the review
processs more
efficient.
Messages show
the change
history of a
document.
List of available
documents contained
in the schema. Users
can view, insert, and
edit documents.
Auto-generated from
the schema, the content
curation form includes
rich-text editing,
validation, localization,
& more.
Front-end developers
can build quickly using
JSON and GraphQL
Model your schema
using the UI or use
the JSON view to
work in code.
Build your model by
inserting documents,
subdocuments, and
enums.
Set document properties,
relationships, key strategies,
and data validation.
TerminusCMS auto-
generates the GraphQL
schema, listing it to help
query development.
Test queries with neat
features like pretty-print
and auto fill.
See the results of
your queries here.
Users create a change
request when updating
TerminusCMS, safely
away from live data
with in-built review
processes.
TerminusCMS comes
with a diff viewer so
reviewers can see
what has changed to
make the review
processs more
efficient.
Messages show
the change
history of a
document.














What we're trying to solve
Knowledge management, information management, and the disconnected relationships between teams, data, and content are a problem for large organizations and developers who try to solve these problems.
Our aim for TerminusCMS is to provide developers with a system to model and build headless infrastructures for information and knowledge management. TerminusCMS aims to –
- Make it easier and faster for developers – Using standards based technologies such as JSON and RDF.
- Remove data and content silos – With good data modeling, a strong schema, and graph relationships to provide devs with the ability to blueprint builds to alleviate future data requests.
- Provide content & knowledge management for complex environments such as organizations with complex data, many interconnected components, or demanding compliance requirements.
Where TerminusCMS fits
We do not have a definitive list of applications for TerminusCMS, but here are the areas where the product has been used and performs well –
- Many products and many components – Industries that have complex manufacturing, engineering, and/or supply chains have huge amounts of data, both structured and unstructured. This information is often in silos and spread across the globe in an array of applications and databases. TerminusCMS fits in to create an organization-wide knowledge graph to encompass the data, content and relationships to make it discoverable and usable across front-ends and analytics.
- Rigorous documentation and regulatory requirements – Highly regulated industries such as pharmaceutical and financial services have intense documentation and regulatory reporting needs. These processes are time consuming and costly from a domain and developer perspective. TerminusCMS is able to incorporate existing data with user curated content to model and deliver documentation and regulatory compliance needs in a more efficient and cost effective manner.
- Collaborative knowledge bases – Where teams of people with similar goals get together to collaborate and build datasets based around observations, experiments, and expertise, TerminusCMS is well positioned to collaboratively create with the safety of version control and Git-like collaboration features.
TerminusCMS packages
TerminusCMS is an open-source product under the Apache 2.0 license. It is available to install as a Docker compose.
We also offer a hosted service starting for free with our community package. The free version has generous limits to build out MVPs with 3 teams, 10 projects, 100,000 API call/month, and storage for 10,000 documents.
There are two premium packages where the limits increase, professional is €100/month for 30 projects, 10 teams, and 1 million API calls per month. The Scale package gives you a dedicated compute resource with increased limits and is €600 per month.
Start for free with the community package and upgrade whenever you need.
Demos to play with
If you want to know more about TerminusCMS, the best thing to do is sign up and try one of our demo projects. To do this, sign up, select your team and then clone one or more of the demo projects.