Pros and Cons of Using Single Vs Multiple Stacks

A stack is like a container that holds all your project's content (entries, assets, and so on), and to manage our projects in Contentstack, we make use of a single stack and, at times, multiple stacks.

In this guide, we will discuss the pros and cons of using a single stack versus multiple stacks. This will help us understand in which scenarios we should use a single stack and when to use of numerous stacks for effective content management.

Using a Single Stack

There can be many scenarios where using a single stack can benefit your website content management.

Pros of Using a Single Stack:

• When you have a relatively smaller website (with just one domain), using a single stack for managing the content will suffice. A static site is an excellent example of a single stack usage or, in the case of an experimental website.
• It involves less overhead as opposed to using multiple stacks. Therefore management of a single stack is much simplified.
• Lesser interdependence as there is just one stack.
• Team members can focus more on a specific set of assets/entries to work on their website.
• Requires lesser efforts to maintain credentials due to single stack usage.

Cons of Using a Single Stack

• Maintaining assets and entries can become complicated when you have multiple domains such as blogs, docs, e-commerce, etc.
• It becomes challenging to manage various projects that involve multiple teams in a single stack.

Using Multiple Stacks

Using multiple stacks for your website management can simplify the overall website content management. 

Pros of Using Multiple Stacks

• When you have multiple domains (such as blogs, marketing, integrations, and so on) as part of your website, using multiple stacks to manage and maintain the content of each domain is simplified.
• You can keep content related to each domain in a separate stack. Thus, it is easier to categorize and classify your website content.
• Featured blogs or the doc pages from other stacks can be fetched through an API or SDK calls & can be displayed on the home page by creating a custom field that can sync data between stacks.
• It is easy to allocate assets and entries when your website is distributed over multiple stacks such as blogs, e-commerce pages, products pages, and so on.
• It enables teams to work individually on a web page without tempering data of other stacks. For example, if a team member is working on blogs, the docs stack should not get affected by entries and assets of another stack, creating a workspace for blogs/docs/e-commerce related things only.
• Content management becomes simplified for individual team members when working on a large website with multiple assets and entries.
• Managing multiple projects becomes easier as you can distribute and segregate the project's content in different stacks.
• If you use multiple stacks, one of the stacks (or maybe a couple) can be used as a backup stack which is impossible in case of using a single stack. 

Additional Resource: Learn how you can Sync Data Between Stacks Using Contentstack Webhooks and AWS Lambda.

Cons of Using Multiple Stacks

• Your website content gets distributed across multiple stacks. This introduces interdependency, which requires proper management.
• Unnecessary overheads get involved if you use multiple stacks for a static or a simple website.
• Managing stack credentials can get tricky for smaller/simpler websites if unnecessary stacks are created.