prelo
Definitions

What is a git-based CMS?

A git-based CMS stores content as files — Markdown, JSON, YAML — in your repository, and gives editors a UI that commits on their behalf. Your content gets the same history, branches and reviews as your code.

TinaCMS, Decap and Keystatic are the main players. The appeal is real ownership: content is plain files in the repo, readable forever, versioned by the same tool that versions everything else.

The trade-offs

Editors trigger builds. Every save is a commit, and every commit is a deploy — minutes of latency between “publish” and “live” on bigger sites.
Non-technical clients and git are a rough mix. Merge conflicts, branch state and failed builds eventually surface, and they surface to you.
Relational content gets awkward. References, ordering and queries across thousands of files push against what a filesystem does well.

The middle path

Prelo takes the ownership idea and swaps the storage: content lives in a single SQLite file inside your project folder. It travels with the repo and backs up as one file — but edits are instant database writes, so clients publish in seconds and never meet a merge conflict. Comparison with the visual git option: Prelo vs TinaCMS thinking, in the roundup.

Frequently asked questions

Is git-based the same as flat-file?+

Close cousins. Flat-file CMSs (Grav, Kirby) store content as files and render server-side; git-based ones add the commit workflow and usually pair with static builds.

Can I still keep content in version control with Prelo?+

Yes — the SQLite file lives in the project and can be committed, snapshotted or synced like any other artifact.

Ready to hand over your next site?

Free and open source. One command, and the client gets a login instead of a Loom.

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