PayloadCMS development

The deepest specialism on offer here. Over two years of professional work with PayloadCMS, across a wide range of products rather than one template applied repeatedly — which is the difference between knowing the documentation and knowing where the documentation runs out.

Payload is the default answer when a project needs a real editorial backend rather than a headless API with a content shape bolted on afterwards. It is TypeScript all the way down, it runs on infrastructure the client controls, and the admin panel is a React application that can genuinely be extended.

What this looks like

• Content modelling: collections, globals and blocks that match how editors genuinely work, not how the first draft of the sitemap looked.
• Access control: per-field and per-document rules, roles, and draft and publish workflows that survive a real editorial team.
• Custom fields, custom admin components and custom views when the built-ins stop being enough — plus plugins and hooks for the behaviour that belongs in one place.
• Rich text with Lexical: custom nodes, converters, and output that renders the same on the front end as it looked in the editor.
• Localisation, media handling and background jobs — the parts that tend to be discovered late.
• Migrations: moving off WordPress, Contentful, Strapi or a hand-rolled admin area, with the content and the URLs intact.

Why it tends to work out

Payload runs inside the Next.js application rather than next to it. One deployment, one type system, one place where the content shape is defined — and no monthly per-seat bill that grows with the editorial team.

Where it is the wrong choice

Payload is not the answer for a brochure site that will never be edited, and it asks for a database and a Node process that somebody has to run. Expect that said plainly rather than after the invoice.