Storyblok vs Acquia: A Technical Comparison

Why choose Storyblok?

Headless CMS adoption is accelerating as organizations look for more flexibility in delivering content across websites, apps, and other emerging channels. But not all headless platforms are created equal. Some are headless by design, while others adapt existing CMS architectures to support headless delivery.

Storyblok is the go-to choice for teams who want:

• Fully headless delivery
• Composable architecture with freedom to pick tools and integrations
• Maximum frontend and hosting flexibility
• Developer-friendly APIs, SDKs, and starter kits for modern JS and PHP frameworks

While Acquia has its strengths, Storyblok provides a more streamlined, modern path to headless content, giving teams control, speed, and flexibility that hybrid CMS approaches can’t match.

In this article, we’ll compare Storyblok and Acquia from a headless perspective, focusing on platform features, hosting, APIs, integrations, and developer experience. This is not a Drupal vs. Storyblok comparison; instead, we’re looking at how these two platforms approach headless delivery.

Storyblok Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) offerings

• Built in Visual Editor with drag-and-drop layout editing and real-time preview.
• Modular Content Blocks (“blocks”) that mirror frontend components and support deep nesting.
• Folder-based routing, with slug and URL management per entry or locale.
• Folder Based localization: Organize localized content within dedicated folders
• Built in approval workflows, no need to install a separate app.
• Collaboration: Concept Room, and Ideation Room
• Dedicated Framework SDKs: Dedicated SDKs for various major frameworks and general Javascript and PHP SDKs

Getting started: setup and first impressions

Before committing to a product, creating a proof of concept is an important step of any project. This is the step that allows your team to become familiar with the intended product and test if it fits your use case.

Storyblok offers a generous free tier and a rich tooling ecosystem that can be accessed after creating a free account. Whether using the create CLI command, blueprints, or a tech guide for your favorite framework, teams can get started almost instantly. At the 2025 RenderATL tech conference, a developer used the Storyblok CLI to go from sign-up to a fully functional local development environment in just 49 seconds. This allows for a quicker evaluation and time to initial build.

Acquia doesn’t offer a free tier, so you can't create a proof of concept without initial investment. This can delay the evaluation and development process.

Implementation: convenience vs. flexibility

After the proof of concept, comes the full implementation of your application. If you were to leverage all of the services and products that Acquia provides, you would undoubtedly have seamless orchestration of your entire digital product. You would have an optimized Drupal instance installed, a deployed application, your code repositories, cloud-based IDEs pre-loaded with dependencies, and comprehensive CI/CD pipelines all managed within the Acquia ecosystem.

As long as the developers setting up this implementation have a deep understanding of Drupal, this may provide a fairly fast setup process. However, this convenience comes at a significant cost: profound vendor lock-in. The deep coupling inherent in such a setup means that if your organization ever decides to move beyond Acquia/Drupal, every facet of your application, from frontend deployment to content delivery, requires a daunting re-evaluation and often a complete re-architecture. The perceived efficiencies quickly evaporate, replaced by the rigidity reminiscent of a monolithic CMS, making fundamental shifts incredibly difficult and expensive.

Compare this with the flexibility offered by a headless SaaS CMS like Storyblok, which supports a truly composable approach. Here, you are empowered to assemble your digital stack using best-of-breed services: a hosting provider tailored for your frontend, a personalization engine that meets your specific needs, and your preferred code repository. This architectural freedom means that switching out your CMS, or any other individual integration, becomes a far more manageable and less disruptive process. It's about building a future-proof application, piece by piece, rather than being bound to a single, all-encompassing platform.

Delivery models: SaaS vs. headless PaaS

Storyblok is a SaaS headless CMS. There’s no infrastructure to manage; content is delivered via APIs; and you have complete freedom to choose your frontend stack and hosting environment. This makes it ideal for organizations that want to adopt modern, composable architectures without vendor lock-in.

Acquia, in contrast, is a PaaS built on Drupal. It provides managed infrastructure, enterprise tooling, and supports both headless and hybrid modes. In headless mode, Drupal acts solely as a content repository. In hybrid mode, Drupal can still render pages or components alongside decoupled frontends.

The key difference: Storyblok is headless-native, designed from the ground up for API-first workflows, while Acquia adapts Drupal for headless, layering capabilities on a traditional CMS foundation.

Hosting

With Storyblok, you’re in control. Deploy your frontend wherever it makes sense: Netlify, Vercel, AWS, or any other hosting provider. This flexibility lets teams adopt the latest frontend technologies, frameworks, and deployment strategies.

Although one of the main selling points of Acquia Cloud is having an integrated, centralized experience, you can technically host your frontend outside its platform. However, using the built-in hosting allows tighter integration with preview workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and enterprise support. Hosting your frontend elsewhere would not make much sense in this context and would just add another layer of cost and complexity.

Acquia Cloud provides frontend hosting options, including:

• Basic: static frontends.
• Advanced: SSR/ISR with JavaScript frameworks.
• Node.js hosting for custom setups.

Headless vs. hybrid modes

Storyblok is fully headless. Every piece of content is API-driven, and the visual editor works seamlessly on top of a headless workflow. There’s no fallback to traditional rendering, meaning the content delivery layer is always consistent and flexible.

A key difference between Storyblok and Acquia is its hybrid mode.

• Hybrid mode: Drupal is used to render content and exposes it via APIs.
• Headless mode: Drupal serves as a content API; the decoupled frontend is responsible for all rendering.

For teams ready to embrace a fully headless approach, Storyblok provides a more streamlined, friction-free path.

APIs, SDKs, and starter kits

Storyblok provides REST and GraphQL APIs, official SDKs for major frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte, Astro, Symfony), and blueprints for modern frameworks like Next.js, Astro, and Nuxt. Developers can quickly bootstrap projects and adopt best practices without worrying about underlying CMS constraints.

Acquia exposes JSON:API and GraphQL through Drupal modules and offers platform specific APIs for personalization and Customer Data Platform (CDP) integration. Its Headless Starter Kit and Next.js Starter Kit help set up decoupled frontends.

Both platforms offer modern APIs, but Storyblok’s API-first design makes headless development faster, cleaner, and more consistent. Acquia’s approach is effective but carries the overhead of adapting a traditional CMS.

Ecosystem and integrations

Storyblok has a growing app directory with integrations for e-commerce (Shopify, BigCommerce, Shopware), personalization, DAMs, analytics, and more. Storyblok’s philosophy is composability: connect the best tools for your use case.

Acquia leans into its enterprise ecosystem. It offers a tightly integrated stack with Acquia DAM, CDP, Lift (personalization), Campaign Studio, Drupal Commerce, and more. It also benefits from the broader Drupal module ecosystem.

Developer experience (DX)

• Storyblok: Visual Editor with real-time preview, modern framework blueprints and SDKs, and full frontend freedom.
• Acquia: Drupal-centric starter kits, CI/CD pipelines, and enterprise hosting. The hybrid mode offers editor-friendly workflows but assumes familiarity with Drupal.

Storyblok offers a modern, frontend-agnostic DX, while Acquia provides a Drupal-centered DX with enterprise guardrails.

Beyond headless: Site Studio and Community Starter Kit

While most of this comparison has focused on headless delivery, it’s worth mentioning two additional pieces of the Acquia ecosystem that shape the developer and editor experience:

• Acquia Site Studio: a low-code tool that helps marketers assemble pages and layouts. It works in headless and hybrid setups, but its value is mostly for teams that rely on Drupal for rendering.
• Acquia Community Starter Kit: a packaged Drupal instance that takes advantage of core and community modules.

Both are strong enterprise accelerators, but they highlight how Acquia is still tied to Drupal workflows.

Additional features

Storyblok includes several unique features designed to enhance the entire content lifecycle:

AI features

Storyblok integrates AI directly into the authoring experience, offering AI-powered translation, SEO optimization, and content generation.

Ideation Room

The Ideation Room in Storyblok introduces the idea of “sandboxes” for content editors. Editors can draft and collaborate on ideas in isolation directly within Storyblok. No need for third party text editors like Google docs or Word. This makes it so that all content is in a centralized location, and remains versioned with consistent formatting. Once ready, editors can move content from the Ideation Room into a live entry and publish it without copy-paste headaches or formatting issues.

Concept Room

The Concept Room in Storyblok helps bridge the gap between developers and content teams by offering a collaborative space to visually map out a site’s structure before implementation begins. With its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, teams can align on layout, hierarchy, and reusable components without needing to dive into code. Editors and marketers can leave comments directly on nodes and sections to streamline feedback and approvals, eliminating back-and-forth across tools. It’s also a powerful way to scope new feature requests: content teams can visually explain what’s needed, where it fits, and how it connects to existing structures. This clarity helps developers quickly understand requirements and accelerates implementation by visually organizing components, the Concept Room makes it easier to spot patterns, identify opportunities for reuse, and define a more modular and maintainable content structure from the start.

Side-by-side comparison

	Storyblok	Acquia
Native Headless CMS	✅	❌  Adapts Drupal for headless
SaaS	✅ Fully managed, no infrastructure overhead.	❌ Managed hosting and tooling around Drupal. Infrastructure is abstracted but still heavier.
Free Tier	✅	❌
Bring your own hosting	✅	✅ Yes (for headless applications only), but Acquia hosting is encouraged
Collaborative editing - field level comments	✅	❌
Fast onboarding for developers	✅	❓Steep Drupal learning curve
Low code/no code page builder	❌	✅ Site Studio
Vendor lock-in	❌	✅
Non-headless implementation options	❌	✅
Joyful CMS	😁	🤔

Conclusion

Both platforms support headless content delivery, but approach it differently:

• Storyblok: Headless-native, API-first, and designed for composable architectures. Ideal for teams who want freedom, flexibility, and speed. Setup is faster since development teams can use the frameworks and tools they already know, without being locked into a rigid ecosystem.
• Acquia: Headless-adapted, Drupal-dependent, and enterprise-focused. Suited for organizations already embedded in the Drupal ecosystem who may want hybrid options and built-in enterprise tooling. However, because Acquia Cloud is an all-in-one platform, teams face more overhead learning the ins and outs of its specific environment.

For modern content-driven teams looking to innovate quickly, Storyblok provides a more agile, flexible, and developer-friendly platform, without the constraints of a traditional CMS. Storyblok prioritizes composability and choice, whereas Acquia tries to provide an all-in-one solution for Drupal applications.

Further Resources

Migrating from Drupal to Storyblok?
Related articles: Migrate from Drupal to Storyblok