Craft CMS vs WordPress: Which is Better CMS?
Whenever one thinks of CMS, WordPress comes into their mind. The reason is that WordPress has become the first choice of most developers to build a new website.
WordPress was released more than 15 years ago. As of now, WordPress empowers 43% of websites globally.
After WordPress, various other Content Management Systems got released into the market. Out of which, Craft CMS became very popular. It was released in 2013 and got many developers’ attention in the last few years.
Moreover, the developer community is going crazy for these content management systems and likes to compare Craft CMS vs WordPress.
If you are also planning to choose between these two for your project but aren’t familiar with them, it might be challenging to decide the best one.
Craft CMS vs WordPress: Overview
What is Craft CMS?
Craft is a flexible and user-friendly content management system launched in 2013 by Pixel & Tonic. The off-the-shelf CMS is widely useful for developing websites. Developers can look after the content creation and modification of content with the help of this CMS. Similar to a blank slate, the CMS keeps content upfront.
It is a widely used CMS by several leading web agencies and professionals worldwide.
Craft CMS is not a builder. Hence, developers have to develop HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, the CMS is highly scalable and enables developers to work in complex CMS environments.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system. It is written in PHP and paired with MySQL or Maria Database. WordPress was initially a blogging platform, and now it has evolved into a CMS.
WordPress allows you to build professional portfolios, business websites, eCommerce stores, etc.
It provides a range of themes and plugins to improve the website. Plugins are nothing but software packages used to integrate new functionality into a website. Developers can use free or paid themes & plugins to create a unique website.
Now, you must have got a basic idea of Craft CMS and WordPress. We have developed many websites in Craft CMS and WordPress. Hence, we know all the ins and outs of both platforms. Therefore, we have compared the pros and cons of Craft CMS with WordPress based on some essential factors.
Before we look at these factors, let us look at the main difference between both.
What is the Difference Between Craft CMS and WordPress?
The main difference between the Craft CMS and WordPress is the pre-made templates. WordPress comes with various templates suitable for building user-friendly & attractive websites. On the contrary, Craft CMS doesn’t offer templates. Hence, developers have to code the entire website from scratch.
Craft CMS vs WordPress: A Detail Comparison
1. Community Support
Craft CMS is being trusted by various companies worldwide. It has a small ecosystem, and it utilizes twig, a template search engine for PHP. It possesses a small community of developers, content managers, and craft support team.
The craft community is highly active on Discord (a chat software similar to slack); hence, you can post your issues and get answers quickly as compared to posting on Stack Overflow.
Apart from Discord, to resolve any issue in Craft CMS, you can approach platforms such as Twitter & Stack Exchange. Here, Craft CMS technical and customer support teams are active; hence, you get responses effectively.
Winner: WordPress
2. Plugins & Integrations
If you have multiple websites, then Craft CMS offers a benefit to manage all the licensing & payments from a single location.
The main drawback of WordPress is that not all the plugins are up-to-date. Hence, they can cause security threats and privacy issues on a website. Moreover, the higher the plugins you install, the slower the speed of the site becomes.
Another drawback of WordPress is that plugins are handled at the third-party level, and hence it is challenging to manage.
Winner: WordPress
3. Usability
Craft is mainly referred to as a user-friendly CMS platform. It offers a black slate to you on which you can add or delete things as per the requirement.
In simple words, it offers an easy-to-use interface, which you can modify anytime. By this, you can add essential things only & offer a better experience to the users.
One of the most fantastic benefits of Craft CMS is that it enables you to check the live preview of pages you build. Hence, you can edit/ update or delete content in real-time.
The main limitation of Craft CMS is that it forces you to think in a certain way.
WordPress possesses a vast number of built-in components. Here you can utilize all of these components to develop a website. The best thing about WordPress is that it allows you to create a website without writing single-line code.
Besides themes to build a website, WordPress provides you with a vast number of plugins related to SEO, security, ecommerce, social network, learning management system, etc. Moreover, you can instantly preview and add these plugins to your website.
Winner: WordPress
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4. Security
As WordPress is an open-source platform, you need to remain active with its themes, plugins, version updation.
Further, by integrating various free or paid plugins, you can increase the security of your website.
To keep your WordPress website secure, you need to keep your plugins & themes updated.
Winner: Tie
5. SEO-Friendly
In the Craft CMS, you can utilize the SEOmatic plugin. This plugin is a boon for all the companies who have their website on Craft CMS. It can handle multiple things such as JSON-LD structure microdata, HTML meta tags, Twitter Cards tags, etc.
The most important thing about this plugin is that it forms sitemaps for Google’s crawlers. Due to this, your website gets crawled & index quickly on suitable keywords.
Apart from the SEOmatic plugin, Craft CMS has an efficient loading speed as compared to WordPress because it doesn’t affect any codes.
Moreover, Craft CMS offers an empty box to develop a website. In this box, you can include things as per your needs. Hence, you get a robust website that gets crawled easily by search engines.
Talking about WordPress, it is considered an SEO-friendly platform. It comes with a variety of useful and well-reviewed plugins. Out of all plugins, developers all over the world are using the Yoast SEO plugin.
This plugin comes in two versions: Free & Premium. In the free version, you have various limitations and have to perform many tasks manually.
On the other side, if you purchase the premium version, you get a wide variety of features. This includes sitemap, keywords, redirects, permalinks, page title, descriptions, etc.
Winner: Tie
6. Content Management
Craft CMS is widely popular in terms of content management. You can manage your whole website using the matrix-block architecture. Moreover, it consists of a series of components known as design units.
Every design unit carries out different functions. This includes functions like full-screen video, photos, rich-text, navigation, contact forms, etc.
Apart from this, if you are checking heatmaps and want to make any changes to your Craft website, then it’s quick and simple to modify it without exploiting the code.
One major drawback of the Craft CMS is that it follows the content-first approach where all the things are designed and then coded. Hence, it would be best if you did thorough planning.
Talking about WordPress provides a vast number of templates that you can use to build a website. This saves a lot of your time & cost.
Before a few years, WordPress introduced a Gutenberg editor. This editor comes with a block system that offers developers a better CMS experience as compared to the previous versions.
Due to this, now developers don’t have to rely on a single HTML file per template and instead use blocks that provide unique interface options. Here, content is presented in the form of blocks, and later blocks’ positions can be changed as per the needs.
The main drawback of WordPress is the slow experience on the admin side of the website. Due to this, you may find it challenging to handle a big website with many pages.
Another drawback of WordPress is that you can integrate a functionality using various types of plugins; hence, you spend a lot of time in purchasing different plugins and choosing the best one.
Winner: WordPress
7. Built-in Features & Functionalities
Initially, WordPress was created and launched as a blogging platform. Moreover, its features & functionalities were created to attract bloggers. After a few years, the developers started using WordPress to develop small as well as big websites.
WordPress marketplace offers a massive variety of plugins, themes, and other resources to build a website.
Hence, you can quickly set up your website by choosing the best themes, plugins and other resources useful for your website. From this, it is clear that WordPress is suitable if you are looking for a DIY approach.
Winner: WordPress
8. Development Cost
The development cost of Craft CMS is more than compared to WordPress. It has a $299 one-time licensing fee along with a recurring annual fee of $59/ year.
If you’re planning to build an eCommerce website, Craft CMS offers its product known as Craft Commerce.
Craft CMS Commerce comes in two versions: Lite & Pro. Here, the cost of the lite version is $199 per project, while the cost of the pro version is $999 per project. Besides this, the lite version has a recurring charge of $39/year, and the pro version has a recurring charge of $199/ year.
Craft CMS also possesses its plugin market; hence, if you want to integrate any of the plugins, you have to pay for that. The most important benefit of these craft plugins is that they don’t get eliminated easily.
Craft CMS’s drawback is that there are limited options of hosting, and it is expensive because of low competition.
WordPress is the best option if you want to launch a website at a low cost. If you want to develop a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) version of a website, WordPress is the most suitable option.
Here, if you want a lot of customization in an MVP website or build a website from scratch, then the price of building a website increases.
A vast number of hosting companies provide WordPress with a quick install option. Here, it is suggested to go for a hosting provider that offers hosting plus timely updates for WordPress.
Apart from this, WordPress offers a vast number of third-party plugins for free to customize your website. If you are not able to find a free plugin, then there are various places on the web where you can purchase a plugin at $55-60.
If you want to develop an eCommerce website using WordPress, then choose the WooCommerce plugin. The WooCommerce plugin is free.
So, overall WordPress is an economic option to create a scalable and secure website.
Winner: WordPress
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9. Flexibility
Craft keeps customization upfront. It doesn’t make any presumptions regarding the content of the website. Rather, developers can make custom fields for each component of the website.
The CMS is highly flexible and offers three sections. These include Singles, Channels, and Structures. Let’s go through them in brief:
Singles: For pages consists of an innovative structure that hasn’t been utilized on the site.
Channels: Any type of structured content that is suitable for a page or can be utilized on the website, such as news or blog posts.
Structures: Any content that needs to be represented in a hierarchical manner, such as recipes, products, etc.
Developers can utilize a specific section as per their requirements.
WordPress offers a wide range of themes & templates to create a website for your business. Moreover, you don’t need to be a developer to create a WordPress website. You can configure the plugins and tweak the website according to your requirements.
Moreover, the platform provides a wide range of third-party integrations to enhance the functionality. Hence, you can modify the website according to your business needs. Its very easy and flexible opensource for non-technical persons as well.
Winner: Tie
Conclusion
Here we ended our detailed Craft Vs WordPress Comparison. Now, you must have understood all the crucial aspects that differentiate these platforms. You should evaluate both platforms and choose the most reliable one as per your needs.
If you still have any issues choosing a platform, don’t hesitate to contact our experts. They will provide a free consultation and help you choose the best platform for your business.
Webyking is a leading website development company. We have a highly talented team of developers who can help you from planning to post-launch support stages of website development process.