- We are open source / MIT
- You can re-use Payload's auth layer in your own apps and with Contentful you can't
- Contentful has rigid RBAC, but Payload features function-based access control down to the field level
- Payload supports field conditional logic, meaning "check a checkbox, see more fields, uncheck it, extra fields disappear". This is huge. And is super hard to build right but it's very important for a good admin experience.
- Payload gives you a local Node API (note: not HTTP / REST / GraphQL.) Contentful does not. With Payload's local API, you can do lots of awesome things within hooks, access control, etc. - and even reuse it in your own endpoints. All of this is impossible with Contentful without going through their HTTP layer
- Payload lets you add your own admin UI views
- Payload has no usage limits
- Payload is code-first, Contentful is "point and click"
Phew. There's a lot more. This all is just top-of-mind word vomit.
Our enterprise offering can either be self-hosted or it can leverage Payload Cloud, once we have it built. Some enterprises opt to manage Payload on their own infrastructure, and just pay us for SLA and premium features like SSO, audit logs, etc. But we do have enterprises in line to use our managed infrastructure as well... so basically, the answer is "both".
Does that help answer your questions?