Is Craft CMS a good alternative to WordPress?

Why do you need to find a CMS that’s suited to your website?

If you’re trying to make a decision on what CMS (Content Management System) you should be using for your website, there are many considerations that have to be made. You need to ensure that the CMS you select is suitable in terms of usability and scalability, as well as being secure. Customisability is also important, so that you can match your content to your brand’s functionality and look.

It’s likely that you know about WordPress, considering that it’s the most widely used CMS out there, but there’s a chance you haven’t heard about Craft yet. Craft is a flexible CMS, well suited to complex, custom sites. This article outlines a selection of key benefits of using Craft and WordPress, in order to aid you with deciding if Craft is a suitable alternative to WordPress for your needs.

What are some of the benefits of Craft?

Service that you can rely on

Pixel and Tonic, the team behind Craft, are known for their attentiveness to the community of Craft developers. Despite being a relatively small team, their approach to developer support means that anyone approaching a Craft website project feels supported. For organisations, this is particularly valuable when a requirement for complex functionality arises, as organisations can rest assured that their Craft developer has access to reliable expert support.

Manage your content centrally

Craft CMS can be deployed as a “headless” CMS. This is where the backend system that manages content runs independently of the frontend. This option can be beneficial for organisations that want to centrally manage their content that goes out on a number of platforms. Additionally, if an issue is detected, a developer can make changes on the backend without any impact on what the users see on the frontend.

Developer friendly

JavaScript frameworks such as React or Vue work seamlessly with Craft. This allows developers to build rich interactive user interfaces that are hydrated with data from the CMS. For organisations, this means that your website can be fast and engaging, whilst being easy to change in response to changes in user behaviour. Craft also natively supports GraphQL, which creates countless other possibilities for developers.

Craft’s codebase is performance-optimised in PHP and database queries. This can be especially beneficial for organisations that want to run paid ads to their site, as loading speed is a big factor in the success of a paid ad campaign.

What are some of the benefits of WordPress?

Utilise WordPress’ block-style editor

WordPress is known for its Gutenberg block-style editor, which is easy to use and familiar to many users. It allows you to place your content into blocks that you can arrange as you see fit.

These blocks have specific roles, from displaying text or images, to adding buttons that shape the user’s journey. Complex layouts can be made without the need for complex coding, making WordPress more user-friendly, especially for team members with less technical experience.

Explore a vast plugin library

There is extensive choice when it comes to themes and plugins, allowing for many different functionalities to be incorporated with minimal coding. The availability of plugins allows your website to be easily scaled in any direction, with a range of features to choose from.

One thing you can do with plugins is to improve the multisite and multilingual flexibility of your website. Additionally, you can utilise SEO plugins such as Yoast in order to take your website’s SEO to the next level, or implement eCommerce with plugins like WooCommerce.

Benefit from a community of developers

The large global community of WordPress developers and users means that it is well-supported, from forums to guides to widespread documentation. This means that answers to your WordPress questions are always available. Additionally, WordPress’ open-source nature means that this vast community of developers can contribute to the CMS, improving it for everyone.

What does this mean for deciding if Craft is a good alternative to WordPress?

Is either one better suited to certain types of websites?

While Craft and WordPress are both well suited to act as the content management system for a variety of website types, there are considerations that should be made when deciding which one suits your needs better. Some sites might benefit more from WordPress’ block-style editor, and others may need to take advantage of Craft’s independently running front and back-end systems. There are some situations where WordPress will be your best option, and others where Craft is a more suitable alternative.

WordPress is the industry leader, but sites built with Craft include those of children’s food giant Ella’s Kitchen and Central Park Conservancy. In fact, there are as many as 93,000 Craft customers, and this number is expected to grow.

Does This is Fever use Craft as well as WordPress?

The short answer to this question is yes, we do! At This is Fever, our expert team has worked extensively with WordPress, from our work on Tuckwells’ Out & About eCommerce site, to the redevelopment of Cycle Colchester’s website. However, we also have experience offering Craft website services. This is evident in our work with Prime Appointments, a recruitment agency in Witham with a Craft website.

When we took over hosting of their site, we rebuilt their job search. From the very beginning of the project, our development team knew they were approaching the project in the best possible way by using Craft CMS and the end result is a speedy job listing area with filtering and search functionality.

Hopefully, this guide has given you an insight into a few of the benefits of Craft and WordPress. If that’s the case, why not chat with us to find out more? We would be happy to discuss the benefits of both platforms in greater detail, and help you to decide which one better suits your business, so feel free to get in touch.