Craft CMS vs. Statamic: Choosing the Right CMS for Your Project

Selecting the right content management system (CMS) is important for developers aiming to build websites for clients. Among the numerous options available, Craft CMS and Statamic CMS have emerged as prominent choices. This article highlights their differences, covering pricing, core technology, setup, content management, development, e-commerce capabilities, performance, and community support.

Pricing & Cost

• Craft CMS: Craft CMS provides a free "Solo" version suitable for single-user projects. For multi-user capabilities, the "Pro" version is priced at $399 per project, with an additional $99 per year for updates. There is also now a "Team" version for $279 allowing up to 5 user accounts. Notably though, Craft doesn't include features like forms, static caching, or navigation management out of the box. To incorporate these functionalities, developers need to install additional third-party plugins such as Formie (for forms), Blitz (for static caching), and Navigation. These add-ons can increase the overall cost of a Craft CMS project.

• Statamic CMS: The pricing includes a free version for personal use and a "Pro" version priced at $275 per site and $65 per year for updates, which includes features like user roles and revisions. Statamic offers more out of the box, with forms, static caching and navigation management built into the core system, reducing the need for additional addons. Statamic is cheaper and comes with more functionality out of the box making it a deal compared to Craft.

Core Technology & Architecture

• Database vs. Static Files: Craft CMS relies on a traditional relational database (MySQL or PostgreSQL) to store content, making it well-suited for large sites with extensive content and complex relationships. In contrast, Statamic operates primarily on flat files. This approach can lead to faster read operations but may require additional modifications to support large-scale applications.

• Frameworks: Craft CMS is built on the Yii framework, which in my experience with Craft is reliable but maybe not as developer friendly. Statamic, on the other hand, is built on Laravel, a framework thats highly extendable and has lots of developer-friendly features like nice CLI tools.

Setup & Installation

• Statamic CMS: One of Statamic's advantages is its simplicity in setup, mainly because it doesn't require a database. Content is stored in flat files, allowing developers to get a site up and running quickly. Statamic also has Starter Kits that are essentially white-labeled themes for a head-start on projects.

• Craft CMS: Craft requires a database, which can add little complexity to the initial configuration and time spent fetching new databases during development. However, this database dependency supports more intricate content structures and relationships if your site requires it.

Both CMS's utilize Composer for installation and plugins/add-ons.

Content Management & Editing Experience

• Statamic CMS: We love Statamic for its intuitive and flexible content management interface. Dark mode looks fantastic. The control panel is designed with a focus on user experience, making content creation and editing straightforward.

• Craft CMS: Craft offers a robust and flexible content editing experience. However, some recent updates have introduced UI and UX changes that may require users to adapt. Despite this, both platforms offer superior experiences compared to traditional systems like WordPress.

Good Hosting Options

Why rebuild the wheel with a custom server when you can use one of these great services to deploy and host your site.

• Forge & Digital Ocean: We think using Forge combined with a Digital Ocean VPS server will satisfy most of client projects. Forge actually supports multiple service providers but we are most familiar with Digital Ocean so that's what we recommend! Forge and Digital Ocean will work for both Craft and Statamic Sites.

• Craft Cloud: Craft Cloud is specific to Craft CMS, but that's part of the benefit too! They have created a service specifically designed for Craft CMS that they say auto scales to any load and comes with deployment pipelines, a dedicated offsite image transformer, and promises security and support. This is our solution for large websites that require auto-scaling.

• Laravel Cloud: Laravel Cloud is soon to come and we can expect similar benefits that are specific to Laravel applications. They mention auto-scaling, DDoS protection, push to deploy, and and scalable Postgres databases servers also which are pay per usage. We're excited to see what Laravel Cloud can do when it comes out soon. (Launching February 2025)

Development & Customization

• Plugins and Add-ons: Craft CMS boasts a large and market of well maintained plugins, allowing developers to extend functionality without building from scratch, and reduce development time/costs. Statamic also offers a range of add-ons to extend the base functionality, but the add-on marketplace seems less production-ready and more open-source than Craft's.

• Templating Languages: Craft uses Twig as its templating engine which is great compared to Wordpress, but Statamic employs Antlers, which we find to have a cleaner syntax and more powerful features compared to Twig. We love Antlers, so Statamic wins in this department.

• Git Automation: Statamic has a special feature that utilizes its flat-file structure to push any content changes back up to a Github repo. This Github integration makes it easy to pull down changes into your local environment and effectively allows your sites content to be version controlled along with the code. This saves us time and money when developing small to medium sites.

E-commerce Capabilities

• Craft CMS: Craft offers a first-party solution called Craft Commerce. It's expensive, at $1199 per project and $299 yearly updates, it comes at a premium price. Though it provides a comprehensive suite of features for e-commerce businesses, offers reliability, and is highly customizable. We find it particularly useful for businesses that require custom e-commerce functionality.

• Statamic CMS: Statamic lacks an official first-party e-commerce solution but offers an add-on called Simple Commerce. This add-on caters to basic e-commerce needs but may not be as feature-rich as Craft Commerce. We find this useful for smaller businesses wishing to incorporate e-commerce functionality into their existing Statamic site.

• Shopify: Alternatively, Integrating Shopify is always an option for both CMSs. If your business relies on e-commerce sales and has a standard ordering workflow. We believe, often times, a Shopify site is actually the best choice. Shopify already has tried and true solutions for complex things like, shipping calculations, server management, sales reporting, and also has a plugin "App Store" to extend functionality.

Performance & Scalability

• Statamic CMS: Operating on flat files, Statamic delivers fast performance out of the box. This architecture is great for small to medium-sized sites, with quick load times and a no database approach. Although with some simple configuration changes, Statamic can store content in a database too. Along with out of the box static caching, Statamic has the flexibility to scale up for larger sites too.

• Craft CMS: With its reliance on a traditional relational database, Craft is designed to handle larger sites with a lot of content and complex relationships right out of the box. Nice! While this setup may introduce a bit of setup complexity and the occasional time spent fetching new databases, it can scale all the way to an enterprise-level application.

Both CMS's can be configured to support a load balanced environments, support Redis, and made to support enterprise sized sites.

Community & Support

• Statamic CMS: Statamic's community is active and feels like an open-source loving environment, even though Statamic itself is a commercial product. We have received community support when creating custom add-ons. However, inversely perhaps this leads to more bugs which we have encountered at times. Don't worry though Statamic's team is quick to respond on any Github Issues or their Discord server.

• Craft CMS: Craft's community feels less open source but their Github response time is still fast on issues in our experience. Craft has a Discord server , a Stack Exchange, and Github where developers can seek assistance.

Conclusion

Both Craft CMS and Statamic CMS are powerful platforms, and we have used both with success. But recently, we think Statamic is the real winner here! Because of how it flexibly scales, it's Antlers templating language, it's UI/UX, and the Github integration.