An honest comparison: Craft CMS vs WordPress in 2022
Craft CMS doesn't get the attention it deserves. Here's how it stacks up against WordPress for different types of projects.
WordPress dominates the CMS market so completely that you probably don't even consider alternatives. But WordPress isn't the best tool for every project, and Craft CMS is one of the alternatives that genuinely deserves a look.
I've built sites on both, and I want to give an honest comparison, not a "WordPress is dead, use Craft" hot take, but a practical assessment of where each one shines.
Content modelling
This is where Craft pulls ahead significantly. In Craft, you define your content structure with precision. Every field, every relationship, every matrix block is purpose-built for your content. If you're building a site for a university with programmes, departments, staff profiles, events, and news, all interconnected, Craft's content modelling handles this elegantly.
WordPress uses a more generic approach. Posts and pages are the core content types, and everything else is custom post types with custom fields. It works, and plugins like Advanced Custom Fields make it work well, but it's always building on top of a blogging foundation. The content modelling in WordPress feels bolted on. In Craft, it's the foundation.
The editing experience
Craft's control panel is clean, fast, and intuitive. Content editors see exactly the fields they need, in the order that makes sense, with live previews that actually work. There's no sidebar full of meta boxes, no confusing distinction between posts and pages and custom post types, everything is a section with entries.
WordPress's editing experience has improved dramatically with Gutenberg, but it's still more cluttered. The block editor is powerful but can be overwhelming, especially for non-technical editors. And because WordPress tries to be everything, blog, CMS, application platform, the admin interface carries the weight of that ambiguity.
Ecosystem and community
WordPress wins here, comprehensively. 40,000+ plugins, thousands of themes, a massive developer community, endless documentation, and a support ecosystem that means you'll always find someone who can help. Need a specific integration? There's probably a WordPress plugin for it. Need to hire a developer? There are tens of thousands of them.
Craft's ecosystem is much smaller. There are excellent plugins (Craft calls them plugins too, confusingly), but nowhere near the breadth of WordPress. Finding Craft developers is harder and generally more expensive. Community support exists but is proportionally smaller.
Performance
Craft is faster out of the box. It doesn't have the overhead of WordPress's plugin system, hook architecture, and legacy compatibility layer. A well-built Craft site with proper caching is genuinely quick.
But a well-optimised WordPress site can match it. The difference is that WordPress requires more effort to optimise, you're working against the platform's tendency to accumulate bloat, whereas Craft starts lean and stays lean.
Cost
WordPress is free. Craft has a licensing fee, the Solo licence is free for one user, but the Pro licence (which you'll need for any real project with multiple content editors) is £239 per project. That's a one-time fee, not annual, plus £47/year for updates after the first year.
For a £10,000+ project, Craft's licence fee is negligible. For a £2,000 brochure site, it's a proportionally larger cost. WordPress's free licence makes it the obvious choice for budget-conscious projects.
When to choose Craft
Choose Craft when your content is complex and structured, when the editing experience matters, when performance is critical, and when the budget supports it. Content-heavy sites with multiple content types, relationships, and a team of editors are Craft's sweet spot.
When to choose WordPress
Choose WordPress when budget is tight, when you need a large plugin ecosystem, when the client needs to hire developers easily, or when the content model is straightforward. Blogs, simple marketing sites, and projects where the client wants maximum independence are WordPress territory.
The honest summary
I recommend WordPress more often because it fits more situations and more budgets. But when a project has complex content needs and a reasonable budget, I'll recommend Craft and explain why. The right tool depends on the project.
If you're weighing up CMS options for a new project, I'm happy to talk through the trade-offs. Get in touch at [email protected].
Chris Ryan
Managing Director
17+ years in full-stack web development, most of it leading teams agency-side across e-commerce, CMS platforms, and bespoke applications. Specialises in infrastructure, system integration, and data privacy, with hands-on experience as a Data Protection Officer. Founded Innatus Digital in 2020 to offer the kind of honest, technically-led partnership that he felt was missing from the agency world.