Craft CMS vs WordPress: Which One Is Right for You?
Find out which CMS comes out on top in the battle for supremacy!
There is a dizzying array of website-building technologies available in the market and choosing which one is right for you can be a daunting task. We recently shared our in-depth, transparent review of our experience with Craft CMS and outlined why it is our CMS of choice.
But what exactly makes Craft CMS so effective and why do we use it to build our own website and those of our clients? To answer this question, we have decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and discuss how Craft CMS shapes up against the Goliath of the industry - WordPress.
Comparing Craft CMS and WordPress
Craft CMS and WordPress are both quality platforms that can host well-built websites. What we are going to discuss in this blog is what sets them apart. Both systems will have their best use cases, so it’s important that you choose the system that best suits your needs. To help you make this decision, we have selected the eight major CMS features to discuss in terms of their ease of use, effectiveness, security and pricing. By the end of this article, you should have a clear understanding of the key distinctions between the two systems and which platform is right for you!
Content Creation & Management
The main objective of a CMS is to enable its users to effectively create and manage their content. Craft CMS is built with developers in mind, equipping users with full control over the development process by utilising the platform’s comprehensive codebase. It’s not just developers who love Craft, I have yet to meet an experienced content manager who didn’t fall in love with the ease-of-use Craft CMS provides. Its expedient features, such as the matrix, live preview, one-click updating and intelligent page-building tools ensure Craft CMS and its users have an exceptional experience.
WordPress has continually added features and options since its original launch as a blogging platform. Over time though, the patchwork of new features and plugins has result in a cluttered mess for developers with the right tools hidden within the chaos.
🎉 Winner: Craft CMS
Search Engine Optimisation
WordPress makes it easy to structure, manage and publish your content in an SEO-friendly manner. In terms of plugins, you can't get much more user friendly than Yoast SEO. Whether you are an SEO novice or a seasoned marketer, the traffic light system will help you optimise your website. Add to that the fact you can easily optimise metadata, permalinks and for mobile, WordPress is a safe space for spiders.
SEOmatic is a fully turnkey SEO system that will implement all the latest SEO best practices in the latest version, Craft CMS 4. It’s comprehensive, powerful, and flexible and delivers when it comes down to performance. Craft focuses on enabling websites that are easy to navigate for both users and spiders. Craft websites trump WordPress here because it allows you to create a more unique and user-friendly website - one that isn't hampered by unstructured menus, buried pages and excess tags.
🎉 Winner: Craft CMS
Built-in Functionality
WordPress has a built-in functionality suitable for the do-it-yourself masses, with a wide range of themes, templates and plugins designed to instantly get a website up and running. WordPress does have built-in plugins that are easy to set up, whether you're an amateur or pro developer. But due to the availability of thousands of plugins, it becomes time-consuming for developers to choose the best solution for their websites. With Craft CMS, you can ensure that your site is going to work with its intuitive and powerful features.
Content editing built-in functionality can change the playing field of the Craft CMS vs WordPress debate. Craft CMS didn’t originate as a blogging platform, but has quietly established itself as a champion of content management, due to its high-end functionality. Its out-of-the-box features include matrix fields to quickly build flexible pages, categories, tags to keep content organised, and relations to build smart connections between content throughout a website. You are witnessing Crafts blog presentation in all its glory as you read this blog!
🎉 Winner: Craft CMS
Plugins & Integrations
As of 2021, there were over 55,000 plugins available on Wordpress and growing. While this vast swath of plugins does offer users plenty of choice, it can be time consuming finding one that isn’t outdated, broken or simply not worth using. There are a lot of well-maintained and hugely beneficial plugins available to Wordpress developers and users. The key to success is often being able to find the right plugin for the job.
The creators of Craft CMS knew they would not be able to compete with the sheer numbers of plugins readily available on WordPress. To ensure they would not be at a disadvantage they’ve made creating new plugins and integrations very easy for developers. They surmised that most companies selecting Craft CMS as their platform of choice would also be working with an agency or in-house developers. The options are limitless as to what Craft CMS is capable of doing, if you have the time and expertise - you just may not get it as a pre-built plugin.
🎉 Winner: Wordpress
Performance
It is fair to say that both Wordpress and Craft CMS can both produce a fast-loading website for small and large businesses. It is only when we take a closer look at both systems in isolation that we can see some of their differences bubbling beneath the surface.
Craft CMS uses a standard called Model-View-Controller (MVC), made up of the Model, View and Controller. A great way to imagine this in practical terms is a golf caddie as the Controller, the clubs he is carrying are the Model, and the outcome of the shot is the View. When you approach the tee to begin, it wouldn’t make much sense for the caddie to hand you every club in the bag. Like in this analogy, the MVC ensures Craft CMS only delivers the necessary components when they are needed, making websites faster and more elegant.
Wordpress does not use the MVC framework. When sending a new request, you will likely get every club thrown at you along with the bag, a cricket bat and a couple of spare coins from one of the many plugins you needed to install.
🎉 Winner: Craft CMS
Security
WordPress as a platform is secure, but with the addition of third-party themes and plugins, code vulnerabilities can be exploited. The sheer number of outdated plugins that exist in the WordPress repository is shocking. WordPress releases security updates frequently and once a theme or a plugin becomes outdated, it creates a vulnerability for attackers to exploit.
Due to Craft CMS having a limited library of plugins, it is better able to maintain security across its entire ecosystem. Craft CMS essentially nullifies SQL injection attacks through its one-click update feature and uses PDO for database querying, meaning an attacker cannot easily take over Craft CMS databases.
Overall, Craft requires less maintenance than WordPress to remain secure, but requires a proficient level of coding to work with.
🎉 Winner: Craft CMS
Ecommerce
Both Craft CMS and WordPress offer excellent eCommerce solutions. Craft Commerce is an amazingly flexible and powerful platform designed by the Craft team to offer eCommerce solutions to its users. WordPress users who seek a similar solution often opt for a very popular plugin named Woocommerce, that offers exceptional eCommerce solutions to businesses.
The same full-time dedicated team that builds and maintains Craft Commerce, handles Craft CMS allowing them to manage content and eCommerce together in one system. Its high-end combination of flexibility, scalability, built-in features and integration with content management makes Craft CMS and Craft Commerce the easy choice for eCommerce. This means that both solutions fall under the category of content-driven eCommerce.
🎉 Winner: Craft CMS (Craft Commerce)
Pricing
One element that can really make or break your decision between the two platforms is the cost. WordPress has a free plan however it is extremely limited. You can see pricing options below:
Craft CMS approach to their pricing packages is more dependent upon individuals needing a single login. Check out the different pricing models of Craft CMS in the given images:
Each platform also includes costs associated with premium tools and plugins. WordPress can be free to use and has free options for all themes and plugins while Craft CMS does not. On top of this, you still need to pay for web hosting services on top of the CMS cost. It is fair to say that WordPress is the cheaper platform to build with.
🎉 Winner: WordPress
Is Craft CMS the right choice for you?
I am sure you want to know who comes out as the victor in the CMS battle of the ages? A drum roll please...
Craft CMS is the winner! 🎉
We choose Craft as our CMS of choice for projects of all sizes and have relied on it as a foundation for everything from highly customised enterprise level websites to elegantly simple landing pages. Whether it’s a complex data migration or custom API integration, Craft allows us to do it all and the results speak for themselves.
As an Approved Craft Partner we believe that this CMS enables us to achieve the best results for us, and our clients. If you are interested in having a conversation about getting a website built, you can see how we do this for our amazing clients by talking to us.
