The biggest topic for this year's Umbraco Codegarden18 at the end of May is expected to be Headless Umbraco. We have just upgraded our internal baseline to Headless / .NET Core and will describe the main points for why you should consider Headless architecture for your next Umbraco project.
New Technology, a faster solution and easier upgrade
A Headless CMS project means. that the classic dependency between the CMS platform and the presentation layer have been removed. This means in practice that front-end is physically separate from the back-end, and you can therefore develop the presentation layer independently of the CMS platform version. It provides a number of built-in benefits in terms of utilizing new technologies. A CMS platform will always be behind in relation to technology compared to the framework because; first a framework (eg. MVC or .NET Core) is released and only then can all the products based on the technology be adapted.
That means by basing a project on Headless, it is possible to create .NET core projects with Angular2 which otherwise would not be possible with a classic CMS setup. With the expectancy of the Umbraco 8 release in the near future, it will be much easier to upgrade as well since only the CMS part will be needing an upgrade, not the web presentation layer.
A scalable solution
For the performance part, it allows for easy add-on of front-end servers, which can handle much larger solutions with load balancing - and even if the front-end should hit peak load, it will not affect the webmaster's work in the back-end, since It can be placed on a separate server instance.
It will also be possible to make a completely different front-end in any other programming language, since there is no direct link between the CMS and the implemented solution.
Disadvantages of Umbraco headless
There will always be arguments for and against a new technology trend. One can say the argument against Headless is the extra complexity that must necessarily be added to have a separate structure. Therefore, it will take work and effort to make the first solution Headless - but once the baseline is made as Headless, there will not be much overhead.
We have chosen to make all new projects like Headless as it both provides a more modern solution, developer satisfaction as they can use the latest technologies, and finally because it becomes a more secure and fast solution with greater flexibility.