Craft vs. WordPress: Which is the Better CMS?
There has been some noise regarding the Craft CMS as of late — while Craft is a fine CMS for lightweight builds, if you’re a national organization in need of a content-rich website with reliable support, WordPress is ideally suited for your content management.
Crafting an Origin Story
Craft is the brainchild of the company Pixel & Tonic – founded in 2010 — they released Craft 1.0 in 2013, and since then there have been a steady stream of updates and improvements. The primary objective of this CMS was to vastly improve the experience of authoring content, with a focus on Element Types, Matrix Fields, Live Preview, and an almost endless plugin architecture. In the past half decade, Craft has also garnished some awards: Best CMS for SMB, Best CMS for Developers, and Best WordPress Alternative.
Craft Pros
- More freedom for Dev/Design
- Very secure
- Next-level custom functionality
Craft Cons
- Pages have to be built from scratch
- It’s costly
- Smaller support community
Craft Hosting Providers
- Media Template
- Arcustech
- Hyperlane
- Fortrabbit
Craft Websites
Humble Beginnings
The impetus of WordPress was due to the discontinuation of an existing blogging software — b2/cafelog — back in 2003. But out of those ashes, a CMS phoenix rose. Two users of the suddenly extinct b2/cafelog, Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg, were inspired to build a new platform, one that would ultimately become WordPress (read the full history here).
Much like Steve Jobs tooling around in his Palo Alto garage in the 1970’s, little did Mike or Matt know how game-changing their idea would become in the digital world. The genius of WordPress was giving ease-of-use for less technically-minded users — a flexible, open-source platform with a sprawling international community of developers on hand to contribute plugin modules, themes and widgets. Also, it’s free.
WordPress Pros
- Easy to use for anyone
- Low cost
- Extensive support community
WordPress Cons
- Not the most secure
- Certain templates will lead to slower load times
Popular WordPress Plugins
- Yoast SEO
- WooCommerce
- Elementor Page Builder
- Google XML Sitemaps
WordPress hosting is similar to web hosting, except that the servers meet all the minimum hardware/software requirements, allowing the platform to integrate seamlessly. As there’s such a high demand for WordPress, nearly every reputable company offers WP hosting.
WordPress Hosting Providers
- Pantheon
- Contegix
- WordPress VIP
- WP Engine
- Flywheel
WordPress Websites
If WordPress is maximalist; Craft is minimalist. In art terms, WordPress is a hunk of marble you chip away at to make Michelangelo’s David; Craft is a blank canvas that can be home to Picasso’s Guernica.
Managing your Future
Craft is still a fledgling platform; not yet a proven entity. WDG has found that with our clients — major associations, B2B’s, and nonprofits — WordPress is still the preferred CMS choice, and we are WP proficient.
With that said, a CMS comprised of stardust would still be worthless without a world-caliber in-house Development Team — which we are lucky to have here at WDG.
If your organization has any CMS queries at all, don’t hesitate to contact us here.
