I am planning out my first project using a Headless CMS. I have settled on using Strapi for my project. Is it logical to use Strapi while not using SPA framework/library? I want to use express and EJS to build my website and Strapi as the backend. Is this okay to do? I assume you would use this with your node server that will make REST requests to the Strapi API. Am I glossing over anything?
It's definitely logical. Just make sure to create your own API-endpoints within Strapi and secure the data as much as possible. So try to do most logic within Node.js and not within front-end.
As far as I am concerned this is pointless to make a headless CMS like strapi, without using a library/framework. There is so many reason why this is no sense. Above of all, in react you can use reusable components, writing in jsx etc. This is something that vanilla javascript no have. Learn how to make first blog in react and connect it to strapi would you take about 10h if you know basic of javascript, css and html. This my opinion.