How a Poor Headless CMS RFP Can Leave Your Project DOA

Choosing the right headless CMS unlocks speed, scalability, and security. But many times, projects never get off the ground. That’s because the RFP (Request for Proposal) that initiated the process was misaligned.

It happens more often than you think, as evidenced by the following stats (all figures USD):

• 20% of RFPs go unfinished, costing organizations $725,000 in lost revenue.
• 18% of public sector IT projects exceed their budget by an average of 25%.
• 1 in 6 public sector IT projects exceed their budget by 200% AND their schedule by 70%.

A poorly crafted RFP slows progress, increases costs, and can leave your project dead on arrival.

Look at it this way: an RFP is like the first line of code in your headless CMS project. Nail that, and everything else fits in seamlessly.

But if that first line is wrong, every line that follows inherits the flaw.

Why RFPs Become Roadblocks

A headless CMS RFP is designed to give vendors like Agility CMS the blueprint for solving your content challenges. If it’s full of gaps, it soon creates more problems than it solves:

Add it all up, and you’re flying with blinders on into a very expensive decision that could become very costly, very quickly.

Four Ways Bad RFPs Kill CMS Projects

1. You Chose the Wrong Vendor: On paper, sure, the CMS checks all the boxes. But it doesn’t fit within your workflows. It doesn’t work with your tech stack. And it can’t adapt to your long-term vision. Now what?
2. Endless Delays: As mentioned earlier, a weak RFP is trying to meet undefined requirements. It cannot. As a result, teams must revisit decisions or pivot on the fly, causing deadlines to slip. Now what?
3. Runaway Costs: Whatever you planned to spend isn’t enough with surprise add-ons, integrations, and scope creep to pay for. Now what?
4. Low Adoption: A poor RFP will result in a headless CMS that handcuffs marketers and developers, so they don’t bother using it. Now what?

Five Red Flags for Internal RFP Reviewers to Watch Out For

Once an RFP lands on your desk or in your inbox, here’s what you should look for before providing your stamp of approval:

1. No Content Governance Requirements: If your RFP doesn’t define user roles, permissions, or workflows, you risk choosing a headless CMS that won’t meet your content or approval standards.
2. Nothing About Content Migration: Omitting details about how legacy content will be audited, structured, and ultimately migrated to your new headless CMS is a big – and costly – red flag.
3. Unclear Performance and Availability Needs: An RFP without details on SLAs for uptime, backup, or recovery leaves you exposed to future reliability and scaling issues.
4. Missing TCO Calculations: An RFP that looks at license costs only without considering implementation, integrations, training, and long-term scaling is incomplete and ineffective.
5. No Roadmap: Leaving out current and future integration requirements risks selecting a headless CMS that won’t fit into your digital stack.

These are the blind spots that internal reviewers should flag early. Because once the RFP goes out, that’s it. The entire trajectory of the project has been established.

Why This All Matters

A poorly written RFP is frustrating in so many ways. It hemorrhages resources from the beginning. It erodes confidence and sets the stage for much larger cost and timeline disasters later. When the risk is that large, the quality of your RFP goes beyond ensuring there are no spelling mistakes or grammar issues.

It must be clear, strategic, and future-focused. Or else the headless CMS you select will be the exact opposite.

The difference between those two outcomes isn’t luck or choosing poorly. It starts with the quality of your RFP.