Managing Content Across Multiple Environments in Strapi: Part 1

Introduction to Strapi Multi-Environments

As an established business, you are apparently focused on creating an exceptional digital experience with every ounce of personalization added to it. But at the same time, your team faces challenges with managing content, maintaining data integrity, and performing complex testing, eventually leading to failure. Why does this happen? This is because your system relies on a clubbed approach (single environment) where development, staging, and production are executed within one environment, and changes are directly pushed to live–even though they might still contain bugs or glitches.

While this approach is excellent for small-scale projects, it often fails in complex ones.

In the case of complex projects, such environments breach the stability and security of the application and cause more harm than good. On top of this, the development team will have to create additional projects as test environments. But again, they will be ultra-messy, error-prone, and will waste your time.

To counter this, the robust, modern-age content management system, Strapi, released a new feature—multi-environment support as part of the Strapi 5 launch.

Now, implementing this feature and revamping your development and production approach is not an easy task. As an experienced Strapi development company, Successive understands the chaos; hence, our development professionals follow the best practices for smart implementation.

Potential Risks of Content Transfers Between Environments

While working with multiple environments seems feasible, they can also impose various risks and challenges when it comes to transferring content across all environments and maintaining a sync among all. This section will highlight these risks in detail.

1. Data Integrity Issues
Data integrity refers to the accuracy and consistency of data as it is transferred from one environment to another. Lacking proper validation and control measures in place, transferring content from one environment directly to another causes several integrity issues:

• Data Loss: Data loss is inevitable in case of inconsistencies between the source and destination systems when content is being moved. In the absence of available fields or incompatible data types, critical information can be lost during the transfer. This would be particularly difficult for sensitive content like customer data, orders, and inventory information.
  
• Content Corruption: The content can be corrupted when data structures in the two environments do not sync. A perfect example here is - leveraging indifferent data models for multiple environments that result in the corruption of the content when transferred. It will result in link breakage, display failures, or showing wrong data to the end-users.
  
• Inconsistent Content: If the content in one environment is altered while transferring or even if the transfer process is halted, that could lead to variations in environments. For instance, product names or metadata could be altered while transferring, thus causing variations in systems and bad user experience.
  
• Versioning Issues: Copying content where there is no version control in place can result in valuable updates being overwritten or the presence of outdated content within one environment while new ones exist in another. It can result in production-related issues, particularly in dynamic eCommerce environments where the content must be updated and correct.

2. Security and Support Issues
Copying content from one environment to the other can lead to security and support-related issues if there isn't a methodology in action.

Some of these issues are:

• Troubleshooting Difficulty: When data is transferred in an incorrect manner or creates problems in the target environment, support teams will find it difficult to determine the root cause of the problem. Inconsistency in configurations across environments, like server settings, databases, or application logic, can make debugging more difficult.
  
• Inadequate Changes Control: Because content is being migrated manually or under inadequate checks, changes can be introduced with a lack of control. This may make it difficult to identify where problems are originating, particularly if there is an enormous or sophisticated content involved. Different groups of individuals may also be introducing changes, and that could compromise security and make it difficult to govern content.
  
• Transparency Deficiencies: If the transfer process is not transparent, support teams will lack visibility into how the content was transferred, when it was transferred, and what kind of transformations were used. This can result in confusion and delayed troubleshooting for issues that occur post-transfer.

3. Deficiencies in Outdated or Third-party Data Transfer Systems
Even though Data Transfer Systems (DTS) are intended to assist companies in transferring content from one environment to another, an outdated or third-party DTS may impose the following shortcomings:

• Performance Problems: Too much data could slow down the DTS process. This is more apparent with evolving content with complicated data sets or extensive media files. The tools provided by such DTS are not designed to deal with this volume of data efficiently and could produce delays in the availability of content or extended downtime.
  
• Limited Flexibility: These DTS tools have limited flexibility with regard to facilitating customization of the transfer process. For example, they might not offer fine-grained control over what content to transfer or under what circumstances the transfer will take place. This can lead to transfers that involve unwanted content, affecting performance and storage utilization in the target environment.
  
• Inadequate or Defective Tools: Such transfer systems do not have validation checks that guarantee the integrity and accuracy of the data being transferred. This leaves room for mistakes like content corrupted or sent to the wrong fields or data repositories, which can affect the operation of the target environment.

4. Risk of Using Production Data in Non-Production Environments
Transferring content used in the production environment to a non-production environment can pose a significant risk, making the critical data prone to vulnerabilities. The risks involved in making copies of production-like data for other environments may include:

• Data Privacy Concerns: Transferring sensitive production data (such as customer information, payment details, or proprietary business data) to a non-production environment raises significant privacy concerns. The data may be exposed to unauthorized access as the non-production environment is often not as tightly secured as production.

• Unintended Data Exposure: In some cases, when content is transferred from production to non-production environments, sensitive customer information or internal business data might be accidentally exposed to developers or other stakeholders who shouldn’t have access to it. This could violate data protection laws (such as GDPR and CCPA) and result in compliance issues.

How Strapi’s Multi-Environment Stands Apart?

Now, you will probably come up with an argument that multi-environment support is also available in WordPress, so how does Strapi stand apart? Multi-environments in traditional CMS platforms like WordPress are merely used for building and testing features (development), creating content and testing it (staging), and pushing the content created and tested in the staging environment to live (production).

But that is not the case with Strapi’s multi-environment feature. Backed by Strapi Cloud, this feature lets the developer build, test, and deploy seamlessly with no security concerns attached.

In other words, it allows separate creation of building, testing, and deployment environments so that independent projects can be created and each stage can be managed independently.

This eliminates the chaos of juggling projects or breaking anything in the live environment. The data is isolated for each environment. For instance, what changes and new additions are made in the testing environment stay there, without impacting the development or production environment. So everything remains contained wherever they are until you give the green light to push the content live. It allows for more control and flexibility to manage all environments simultaneously but in an “independent” manner.

So, isn’t this feature more control-oriented and exciting to work with?

Here are some benefits of leveraging multi-environment support in Strapi

1. Transparent Usage Summary
Even though you will have separate environments created for building, testing, and pushing the content live, you can track all the environment-wise usage for API requests, database entries, and asset storage. It provides a transparent tracking experience and maintains the usage–keeping essential projects at the top and less important projects below.

The usage is shared across all environments to keep the billing centralized at the project level. This means even though you can track usage per environment, you don’t have to incur separate charges for each environment.

2. Custom Environment Variables
Every specific project stage will have unique needs for API calls, database, configuration, and edits required. And to manage them, you cannot rely on a single environment variable set. Fortunately, with the Strapi multi-environment feature, you get separate environment variables for each environment–allowing you to seamlessly customize every stage (development, testing, production) with uniquely built variables.

To explain with an example, you have two separate environments (1 for staging and 1 for production). Each of these environments will have specific API requests and to avoid interference of API requests between environments, you can utilize custom API keys as a part of environment variables for each project. This way, you will have more flexibility and control to manage each environment independently without creating disruption.

3. Backups for Managed Security
It is understandable that there will be several changes required back and forth in the live environment. But what if suddenly it gets attacked or an error comes up with all your data becoming vulnerable or getting erased? In that case, the live application will have to face the chaos.

To counter this, Strapi prioritizes live projects more than anything. It means there is a backup option available in the production environment so that one can backup all the required data and changes simultaneously to keep the live projects secure and recoverable. So even if the lower environments come under a threat, the live changes remain backed up and unharmed—keeping the live application up and running with zero cross-contamination.

This way, the team can focus on fixing security issues in the particular development or staging environment, knowing that the production environment is backed up and protected.

Infrastructure & Multi-Environment Setup For Self-Hosted Strapi Applications

Strapi offers both a cloud-managed hosting solution and a self-hosting option. See the hosting comparison guide for more details.

While Strapi Cloud provides simplicity and ease of management, self-hosting gives businesses full control over their infrastructure, security, and costs. For enterprises that prioritize data privacy, compliance, and customization, self-hosting Strapi is often the preferred choice. However, setting up and managing a self-hosted Strapi application requires careful planning, from selecting the right infrastructure to implementing a robust CI/CD pipeline for deployment across multiple environments. Whether you're looking to migrate from Strapi Cloud or build a new self-hosted deployment, the below sections will help you make informed decisions at every step.

1. Strapi Cloud

Strapi Cloud, the official managed hosting service, simplifies deployment, scaling, and maintenance, enabling developers to focus on building applications without worrying about infrastructure management. It provides automatic updates, built-in scalability, and one-click deployments, ensuring a seamless experience. With direct support from the Strapi team, we get the benefit of expert assistance and continuous optimizations. Additionally, it includes security patches and performance enhancements, making it a hassle-free solution for hosting Strapi applications.

2. Self-Hosting Strapi

Self-hosting Strapi gives you complete control over your infrastructure, allowing you to configure, optimize, and secure the CMS based on your specific needs. It’s a great option for businesses that require flexibility and customization beyond what managed services offer.

However, managing your own Strapi server comes with both benefits and challenges. On the plus side, you have full control over performance tuning, security settings, and resource allocation, which can make self-hosting more cost-effective in the long run—especially for large-scale deployments. There’s also no dependency on a third-party provider, reducing the risk of vendor lock-in.

That said, self-hosting requires a solid understanding of DevOps. You’ll need to handle setup, maintenance, and security updates yourself, which can add complexity depending on your infrastructure provider. The overall cost will also vary based on the cloud or on-premise solution you choose.

Learn more about IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS: The Key Differences.

When Should You Choose Self-Hosting for Strapi?

Enterprises can choose to self-host their Strapi server for several practical reasons, mainly security, compliance, and the need for customization to fit their unique business requirements. This section will give you an outlook of why self-hosting Strapi can be ideal for your business case.

• Data Privacy & Compliance: Industries like finance, healthcare, and government often have strict regulations that require customer data to be stored within specific regions. Self-hosting gives companies full control over their data, allowing them to deploy Strapi on their own servers or private cloud while staying compliant with laws such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA.

• Existing Infrastructure & IT Policies: Many organizations already have on-premise data centers or private cloud environments. Instead of relying on a third-party provider, they might prefer to self-host Strapi to align with their internal security policies, network setup, and IT standards. This approach also helps in managing infrastructure costs more efficiently and avoiding potential vendor lock-in.

• Advanced Security & Customization: Self-hosting enables fine-tuned security configurations, such as custom encryption, private networking, and role-based access controls, tailored to business needs.

CI/CD Pipeline and Multi-environment Setup

We can set up a deployment pipeline that follows a structured Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) process to streamline software delivery, reduce manual effort, and ensure faster, more reliable updates. CI automates code integration, running tests, and security scans to catch issues early, while CD ensures smooth and controlled deployments across different environments.

A multi-environment setup is essential for maintaining stability and security throughout the development lifecycle. The development environment allows for rapid iteration and testing, the pre-production (staging) environment ensures thorough validation before release, and the production environment serves end users with minimal risk. This structured approach helps prevent disruptions, enables quick rollbacks, and ensures high application availability.

Check this deployment architecture for a better understanding:

Now let us understand these deployment phases in detail below:

1. CI Stages

1. Code Checkout: The latest code is checked out from the develop branch.
2. Create Branch Tag: A new branch tag is created for the build.
3. SonarQube Analysis: Code is analyzed using SonarQube to ensure code quality.
4. AWS ECR Login: Authenticate with AWS ECR to push Docker images.
5. Build Creation: Build the application code and create a Docker image.
6. Docker Tagging: Tag the Docker image with the appropriate version.
7. Docker Image Push to ECR: Push the Docker image to AWS ECR.
8. Push Branch Tag: The branch tag is pushed back to the GitHub repository.

2. CD Development Environment Steps

1. Auto Build Trigger: Automatically trigger the build upon code push.
2. Environment Management Through SSM: Manage environment variables using AWS SSM.

3. Deploy Image to ECS: Deploy the Docker image to the ECS cluster in the development environment.

3. CD Pre-Production Environment Steps

1. Manual Build Trigger: Manually trigger the build and deployment process.
2. Environment Management Through SSM: Manage environment variables using AWS SSM.
3. Deploy Image to ECS: Deploy the Docker image to the ECS cluster in the pre-production environment.

4. CD Production Environment Steps

1. Manual Build Trigger: Manually trigger the build and deployment process.
2. Environment Management Through SSM: Manage environment variables using AWS SSM.
3. Deploy Image to ECS: Deploy the Docker image to the ECS cluster in the production environment.

5. Rollback Procedures Application

1. Identify the Issue: Analyze the logs and identify the cause of the failure.
2. Select Previous Image: Choose the previous stable Docker image from ECR.
3. Manual Trigger: Manually trigger the deployment process using the selected Docker image.
4. Verification: Verify the application functionality post-rollback to ensure stability.

Essential Services for Deploying Production-grade Infrastructure

Building a scalable and secure Strapi deployment requires a well-architected infrastructure that includes networking, security, application management, data storage, and monitoring. While cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure offer managed services to simplify these aspects, organizations can also achieve similar results using self-hosted or hybrid solutions.

1. Network and Security Layer:

1. Domain & Traffic Management: A reliable DNS service (e.g., Route 53, Cloud DNS, or Azure DNS) ensures that frontend (Next.js) and backend (Strapi CMS) requests are routed correctly. It also enables features like load balancing and failover mechanisms for high availability.
2. DDoS Protection & Web Security: Security services such as Web Application Firewalls (WAF) and DDoS mitigation tools (e.g., AWS Shield, Cloudflare, or Azure WAF) help protect against malicious attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS). These tools filter out harmful traffic before it reaches the application, ensuring security without degrading performance.
3. Content Delivery Network (CDN) for Faster Performance: A CDN (e.g., CloudFront, Cloudflare, or Akamai) helps cache and deliver static assets globally, reducing latency and improving site performance. This ensures that Strapi’s images, scripts, and other media files load quickly, even under heavy traffic.

2. Application Layer:

1. Load Balancing for High Availability: A load balancer (e.g., Elastic Load Balancer, NGINX, or HAProxy) distributes incoming traffic across multiple Strapi instances to prevent overloading and downtime. This improves resilience, scales efficiently, and ensures a seamless user experience.
2. Container Orchestration for Strapi: Container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, or managed services such as AWS ECS or Google Cloud Run enable seamless deployment and scaling of Strapi CMS. Running Strapi in containers simplifies infrastructure management and ensures consistent performance across environments.
   

3. Data Layer:

1. Managed Database for Strapi's Content Storage: Strapi requires a robust database backend, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. Managed database solutions (e.g., Amazon RDS, Cloud SQL, or Azure Database for PostgreSQL) offer automatic scaling, backups, and failover, reducing the operational burden and this also allows the CMS to scale efficiently as data grows.
2. Caching for Faster API Responses: Caching solutions like Redis, Memcached, or AWS ElastiCache enhance performance by reducing the load on the database. Frequently accessed queries and content can be stored in memory, allowing faster API responses and improved user experience.
3. Object Storage for Media Files: A scalable object storage solution (e.g., Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or MinIO) is essential for handling Strapi’s media uploads. These services ensure reliable, secure, and cost-effective storage while supporting CDN integration for optimized delivery.

4. Monitoring and CI/CD Layer:

Infrastructure Monitoring & Logging: Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, AWS CloudWatch, or Datadog provide real-time monitoring, logging, and alerting. They help track server health, API performance, and security events, enabling proactive troubleshooting.

By designing an infrastructure with these key components, one can ensure a stable, high-performance Strapi deployment. Whether using a cloud provider or a self-hosted setup, the goal is to balance scalability, security, and operational efficiency.

Infrastructure Design

Conclusion

Delivering exceptional content experiences is one thing, but the chaos and development friction that the team faces is something significant that businesses must address to keep a sync between backend and client-facing operations. The ideal solution to this is utilizing a multi-environment approach backed by a robust CMS such as Strapi. It challenges the mere multi-environment setup of other CMS and brings forward a control-driven, modernized multi-environment feature as a part of its Strapi 5 update.

Additionally, the infrastructure and Strapi multi-environment setup for self-hosted Strapi applications is deemed the ideal solution for businesses with specific security, compliance, or customization requirements. By leveraging AWS services like ECR, ECS, and CI/CD pipelines, enterprises can deploy and manage Strapi efficiently while maintaining complete control over their data and infrastructure. This approach ensures high availability, performance optimization, and seamless integration with existing enterprise systems, making it a strategic choice for long-term scalability and cost efficiency.

Now, to incorporate this feature and create a consistent infrastructure for your business, connect with a professional Strapi development company such as Successive Digital. Their expert team comprises Strapi professionals with extensive experience in creating over-the-edge content experiences backed by modern technology.