Craft CMS vs WordPress: Which is Better CMS?
We are in an era where the website is the digital storefront of a business. A fundamental aspect of building this online presence is the CMS powering it.
CMS plays a crucial role in shaping user experience and driving business growth. However, with an array of options available, business owners are often bewildered between two prominent rivals in this arena: Craft CMS vs. WordPress.
WordPress websites are used by 43.1% of all websites on the internet. On the other hand, Craft CMS has become a popular and trusted option for businesses due to its flexible and user-friendly CMS. Each one offers a unique set of features, benefits and considerations.
So, in this comprehensive guide, we will help you understand the CMS options so that you can choose the ideal platform to elevate your business’s online presence.
Let’s get started by understanding the fundamentals.
What is Craft CMS?
Craft CMS is a modern, user-friendly, and highly customizable CMS launched in 2013 by Pixel & Tonic. Web developers widely use the off-the-shelf CMS to build beautiful custom websites.
Unlike traditional CMS, this is not a website builder. So, developers must utilize HTML, CSS, and JS to create a webpage.
On the other hand, it is highly stable and provides ample features that allow craft CMS developers to work in complex CMS environments easily. It is also widely used by leading web agencies and professionals worldwide.
With Craft Pro, it’s easy for every team member to collaborate and access what they need without interfering. However, Craft CMS Pro is very expensive, but despite the price, it has made a spot for itself in the CMS industry.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system. It has grown from a simple blogging platform into a larger ecosystem to build different websites.
WordPress allows you to build professional portfolios, business websites, eCommerce stores, etc.
A huge factor dominates the industry as users don’t need coding knowledge. WordPress offers a wide range of themes and plugins to improve the website. They can use free or paid themes & plugins to create a custom website according to their needs.
Now that you have a basic understanding of Craft CMS and WordPress let’s delve into the differentiating factors between these two CMS platforms.
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.
WordPress is a widely renowned content management system around the globe. There will be hardly any developer who hasn’t used WordPress once in a lifetime. It has a massive community of developers worldwide on its forum, stackexchange and other renowned platforms. Hence, you can get support from the developers for any issue.
Winner: WordPress
2. Plugins & Integrations
Craft CMS consists of its own plugin market; hence, it’s simple & effective to manage plugins directly. The market is growing simultaneously because new developers want to take advantage of low competition and generate recurring fees. As all the things are regulated in the Craft market, purchasing happens from the Craft ID.
If you have multiple websites, then Craft CMS offers a benefit to manage all the licensing & payments from a single location.
WordPress has a substantial market share, and it has plugins for most of the features & functionalities. Hence, you can get a vast number of plugins for your needs. Also, you can purchase them at an affordable rate. As of now, WordPress has 60,000+ plugins and the count is increasing every year.
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, and version updates.
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. Alternatively, you can hire a website maintenance company at affordable rates who keeps your website always updated and ensures its security.
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 & indexed 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’ or ‘All in One’ 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 hand, 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.
A few years ago, 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 functionality using various types of plugins; hence, you spend a lot of time 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 to $60.
If you want to develop an eCommerce website using WordPress, then choose the WooCommerce plugin. The WooCommerce plugin is free.
So, overall it is an economic option to create a scalable WordPress 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 open source for non-technical persons as well.
Winner: Tie
Craft CMS Vs WordPress: A Quick Comparison
| Factor | Craft CMS | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | Intuitive interface with complete control to developers. | User-friendly interface with rapid content creation. Suitable for different skill levels and non-developers. |
| eCommerce | Craft Commerce | WooCommerce |
| Scalability | Highly Scalable | Scales effectively with robust plugin options |
| Plugin Ecosystem | Around 500+ plugins (free and paid) are available. | Extensive library of around 50,000+ plugins (free and paid). |
| Themes & Development Requirement | Fully customized themes | Pre-build themes |
| Community Support | Active community of developers but smaller than WordPress. | Large and active community with extensive support. |
| Security | Emphasize building high-quality features that guarantee high-security guidelines. | Security measures are there, but its popularity makes it a target for potential vulnerability. |
| Cost | Initial cost is $299. | CMS itself is free. |
Conclusion
We hope this detailed comparison guide Craft CMS vs WordPress has provided you with valuable insights so that you can make an informed decision.
The main difference between the Craft CMS and WordPress lies in their website-building approach. WordPress provides pre-made templates that simplify the process of building user-friendly and visually appealing websites. On the other hand, Craft CMS does not offer predefined templates. So, developers have to develop the entire website from scratch.
However, the choice between Craft vs WordPress depends on several factors such as your website’s complexity, familiarity with CMS systems, and team’s development capabilities.
If you still have any issues choosing a platform, don’t hesitate to contact us. We will provide a free consultation and help you choose the best platform for your business.
WebyKing is a full-service website company where we offer a comprehensive range of services from website development to maintenance tailored to fulfill your unique needs. We have a highly talented team of developers who can help you from planning to the post-launch support stages of the process.