WordPress is the most popular CMS available today. But numbers don’t always tell the whole story. If you are someone who is keen to use the latest tech, you need to look at some of the newer alternatives like Craft CMS. This is a short but ultimate comparison post on Craft CMS vs WordPress.
There are many features in Craft CMS that aren’t available in WordPress and vice versa. You need to take a closer look at what you are seeking in a CMS before selecting any of these CMS as the better option.
In this article, we will go through the key differences between them and compare them in 11 key parameters. Hope this will help you to choose the one that suits you best.
Brief Overview of Craft CMS and WordPress
Craft is a content management system (CMS) that’s laser-focused on doing one thing really, really well: managing content. It’s a flexible content management system that can be used for web development by designers and developers who like to work with HTML and CSS.
You need to have in-house developers to take charge of the development since there are no themes to get you started with Craft CMS. It is based on Twig, which is a modern template engine for PHP.
WordPress is a highly popular CMS, capturing more than 60% share of the total CMS market. Supported by thousands of developers, it now has more than 58,000 free plugins and many more paid ones to add great functionalities to a site. The plugins along with thousands of themes help anyone without coding knowledge to build a website in a matter of hours using this CMS. WordPress is written with PHP as the scripting language.
How Many People Use Craft CMS and WordPress?
Craft is used by close to 50,000 sites at this point, according to BuiltWith. It is acquiring less than 0.1% of all the sites worldwide, having a 0.2% market share among the CMSs.
In comparison, WordPress is used by more than 7 million websites. They capture a whopping 43% market share of all websites online, having more than 60% market share among the CMSs.
Now, let’s take a close look at the feature-wised comparison between Craft CMS vs WordPress.
Craft CMS vs WordPress – What’s the difference?
Now, as promised, let’s take a look at the differences between these two platforms in 11 key parameters.
Ease of Use
Craft CMS Ease of Use
Craft CMS is built for easily managing content and it does that very well. For your kind information, building a site using Craft CMS is not everyone’s cup of tea, since you have to know coding to do so.
WordPress Ease of Use
WordPress is one of the easiest platforms to build and manage a site. You won’t have to code a single line to prepare a site since WordPress sites are powered by themes that give them their structure.
Moreover, with the help of a beginner-friendly dashboard and Gutenberg Editor (a block-based editor for WordPress), the end-users can easily customize the content without any hassle.
Design & Customization
Craft CMS Themes
If you were expecting Craft CMS to make website building easy for you, well it doesn’t. Craft CMS doesn’t offer themes, rather developers have to create the design of the website with proprietary coding.
WordPress Template
WordPress templates are called themes. And they help you to design a website from scratch, with a single click, thanks to starter templates. Right now, WordPress has over 10,000 themes on its repository.
Plugins and Extensions
Craft CMS Plugins
Craft CMS has a much smaller number of users compared to WordPress and only comes with a few hundred plugins on its store. One sharp difference between the platforms is that, unlike WordPress, Craft doesn’t let the plugin developers manage their licensing out of its platform.
WordPress Plugins
WordPress is loved by developers and users alike. That is visible when you see that there are more than 58,000 plugins available on the WordPress repository. There are also paid plugins you can purchase out of the WordPress plugin repository.
Content Management Functionality
Content Management in Craft CMS
Craft CMS has a similar way of managing content from the user’s side, using matrix-block architecture. Matrix blocks are groupings of fields an editor can use to build and rearrange content It makes editing pages, adding different elements of a page easier with a block-based placement.
Content Management in WordPress
The Gutenberg editor of WordPress is quite similar to Craft CMS’s block-based content management system. Both are efficient and help to manage and edit content very fast.
Security
Craft CMS Security
Both of the CMS are perfectly secure. However, Craft CMS has the capability of adding custom user roles (and permissions) and making the plugins incorporated into the core system.
They manage the licensing from their own Server and manage to up a level than WordPress on the security front.
WordPress Security
WordPress provides regular updates and security patches to keep the platform as safe as possible. However, third-party plugins often have security vulnerabilities and loopholes that are a huge concern for WordPress users and administrators.
But yes, there are platforms like Sucuri or Wordfence to help you out with the WordPress security stuff.
Performance
Craft CMS Performance
Performance is another parameter that Craft CMS excels at. Craft CMS uses a standard called Model-View-Controller (MVC). It only loads the necessary components when they are needed on the site, which makes your website faster.
WordPress Performance
WordPress does not use the MVC framework. When a new request is sent, WordPress usually loads every piece of data. Third-party plugins don’t help either. You can make WordPress faster by using performance plugins.
However, overall the speed will lag behind that of Craft CMS.
Craft CMS vs WordPress: Alternatives
Craft CMS Alternatives
- WordPress
- Contentful
- Drupal
- Joomla
- Umbraco
WordPress Alternatives
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Drupal (read our WordPress VS Drupal comparison)
- Joomla
- Shopify
Other Major Differences Between Craft CMS vs WordPress
| Parameter | Craft CMS | WordPress |
| SEO | Craft CMS has a good SEO plugin in SEOMatic. However, overall Craft lags behind in SEO performance. | WordPress SEO plugins are the best in the industry and help you to optimize your content more efficiently. |
| eCommerce | Craft has a native eCommerce feature called Craft Commerce. However, it is not as versatile as WooCommerce. | WooCommerce is a WordPress eCommerce plugin. This powerful plugin makes the eCommerce experience easier using WordPress. There are more options for you. |
| Help & Support | StackExchange is a helpful community for Craft CMS and so is its discord. However, the members available for help are certainly way fewer. | WordPress has huge resources and helpful communities that you can use to solve any problem, quickly and efficiently. |
| Maintenance | Maintaining a Craft CMS-built website is easy, but you have to pay ($59) to get the yearly update needed for proper maintenance of your website. | With lots of powerful security & maintenance plugins, you can maintain your site with ease. No charge involved! |
| Price | The pro version starts from $299 per project, with a $59 yearly charge. | Free forever. Need to spend for only domain name & hosting plan that starts from $30-$40 per year. |
Craft CMS vs WordPress: Ratings on Different Parameters (out of 5)
| Parameter | Craft CMS | WordPress |
| Content Management | 3.5 | 5 |
| SEO | 4 | 5 |
| eCommerce | 4 | 4.5 |
| Page Speed | 4.5 | 4 |
| Help & Support | 4 | 4.5 |
| Total | 20 | 23 |
Craft CMS vs WordPress – What’s Your Choice in 2022?
You’re almost done talking about Craft CMS vs WordPress. Time to make a conclusion.
WordPress is the most popular CMS with a huge online community and numerous expert developers. It provides users with a vast range of custom plugins, themes, and widgets.
Craft CMS is relatively small compared to WordPress but it’s growing fast. The official WordPress documentation offers a lot of help. WordPress still has an edge over Craft CMS when it comes to flexibility and options. It is more simple and easy to use than Craft CMS; hence people prefer it over Craft.
Which one is your favorite and why? Please let us know in the comment section below.
FAQs answered on Craft CMS vs WordPress
Craft CMS has an innovative approach to managing website content. It is better regarding page speed and security but still, WordPress is much better than Craft. Craft CMS was selected as the best alternative to WordPress as CMS in the 2017 People’s Choice Awards.
WordPress is beginner-friendly, easy to manage, offers huge customization opportunities, and has a strong community. On the other hand, Craft CMS is better only in terms of page speed & security.
If you want to build your website with a CMS that is faster and more secure, Craft CMS should be your first choice. Content Management is much easier with Craft CMS regarding others.
WordPress is cheaper than Craft CMS. Craft CMS Premium version starts from $299 per project, with a $59 yearly charge. You can start with WordPress at $30-$40 (for domain and hosting) per year.
No. Both have different environments and can’t be used at once. Craft CMS was introduced as an alternative to WordPress focusing on creative development.
