Content management systems come and go, but every few years, one emerges that genuinely changes how teams think about building and managing websites. Craft CMS is having that moment right now.

While WordPress continues to dominate market share and newer headless solutions promise flexibility, Craft CMS is quietly winning over development teams and content creators who’ve grown frustrated with bloated interfaces, security vulnerabilities, and platforms that seem to fight against custom requirements rather than embrace them.

The recent release of Craft 5 has accelerated this trend. Rather than chasing flashy features or following industry buzzwords, Craft 5 focuses on future-proofing your platform and giving your team the tools to work faster, safer, and more efficiently. As someone now deep into migrating both client content and our new build into Craft 5, I’ve seen how quickly these improvements start paying off. This isn’t just technical progress—it’s a better experience for the people using the content management system every day.

If you’re considering making the switch, here’s what’s driving Craft CMS adoption and why development teams are choosing it over more established alternatives.

What Makes Craft CMS Different

Craft CMS takes a fundamentally different approach to content management. Instead of starting with a blog-focused architecture and trying to adapt it for complex websites, Craft was built from the ground up as a flexible content platform.

The core philosophy centers on giving developers complete control over the front-end while providing content creators with intuitive tools that don’t require technical knowledge. This separation means theme limitations don’t constrain your marketing team, and your developers aren’t fighting against opinionated defaults.

Built for Custom Content Types

Most content management systems assume you’re building a blog with posts, pages, and maybe a few custom fields. Craft CMS assumes nothing. Every piece of content starts as a blank canvas that you define through custom fields, entry types, and sections.

This flexibility becomes powerful when you’re building complex websites with multiple content types. Product catalogues, team directories, event listings, case studies, news articles—each gets its structure tailored to how your content creators actually work.

Developer-Friendly Architecture

Craft CMS uses Twig templating, which strikes the right balance between power and simplicity. Developers familiar with other templating engines can get productive quickly, while those new to Twig find it more approachable than raw PHP.

The control panel offers extensive customisation options without requiring custom development. Field layouts, user permissions, and content workflows can be configured through the interface, reducing the amount of custom code needed for most projects.

Performance Advantages Over WordPress

WordPress powers roughly 40% of the web, but that ubiquity comes with performance costs. The plugin ecosystem, while extensive, often creates bloated installations with conflicting code and security vulnerabilities.

Craft CMS takes a more disciplined approach to extensibility. The plugin architecture requires better coding standards, and the smaller ecosystem means fewer low-quality extensions make it into production sites.

Faster Load Times Out of the Box

Craft CMS generates fewer database queries for typical page loads compared to WordPress. The templating system encourages efficient data fetching patterns, and the asset pipeline includes modern optimisation tools without requiring additional plugins.

Built-in image transformations handle responsive images and format conversion automatically. Instead of installing separate plugins for WebP conversion, lazy loading, and responsive images, these optimisations work together as part of the core system.

Better Caching Strategy

Craft’s caching system operates at multiple levels—template caches, database query caches, and full-page caches work together intelligently. When content changes, only the affected cached elements get cleared, maintaining performance while ensuring content stays current.

This granular approach to cache invalidation means your site stays fast even with frequently updated content, without the cache-clearing frustrations common in other systems.

Enhanced Security Model

Security vulnerabilities in popular content management systems make headlines regularly, and WordPress’s market dominance makes it an attractive target. Craft CMS benefits from a smaller attack surface and more security-conscious architecture.

Secure by Default Configuration

Craft CMS ships with security best practices enabled rather than requiring manual hardening. Database table prefixes are randomised, debug information is disabled in production, and user permissions follow least-privilege principles out of the box.

The admin panel uses a separate URL structure that’s harder for automated attacks to discover. Two-factor authentication is built in rather than requiring third-party plugins, and session management includes modern security features like secure cookies and CSRF protection.

Regular Security Updates

Pixel & Tonic, the company behind Craft CMS, maintains a focused product line rather than trying to serve every possible use case. This allows for more consistent security updates and better quality control across releases.

The smaller plugin ecosystem makes it easier to audit third-party code, and the higher barrier to entry for plugin development means fewer security vulnerabilities slip through.

Content Creator Experience

Technical advantages matter, but content management systems live or die based on how well they serve the people creating content daily. Craft CMS shines in this area by focusing on usability without dumbing down functionality.

Intuitive Content Editing

The entry editing interface adapts to your content structure rather than forcing everything into a generic post format. Rich text editors, asset browsers, and custom field types work together seamlessly, creating editing experiences tailored to specific content types.

Live preview functionality lets content creators see changes in context without publishing, and the revision system makes it safe to experiment with different approaches. Multiple authors can collaborate on entries without conflicts, and editorial workflows ensure content goes through proper review processes.

Flexible Content Organisation

Craft’s section and structure system accommodates complex content hierarchies without the URL and organisational constraints found in other systems. Content can exist in multiple contexts simultaneously, and relationships between different content types happen naturally through relational fields.

This flexibility reduces the need for duplicate content and makes it easier to repurpose existing material across different parts of your website.

Craft 5: Future-Proofing Your Platform

The latest major release addresses many pain points that have emerged as Craft CMS adoption has grown. These improvements focus on performance, scalability, and developer experience rather than adding features for marketing purposes.

Modern PHP Foundation

Craft 5 requires PHP 8.2 or higher, enabling performance improvements and modern language features throughout the codebase. This requirement might complicate immediate upgrades, but it ensures your platform can take advantage of ongoing PHP performance improvements.

The updated codebase includes better type declarations, improved error handling, and more efficient database operations. These changes compound over time, making your website more reliable and easier to maintain.

Enhanced Asset Management

Large media libraries have always been a weak point for content management systems. Craft 5 introduces improved asset indexing, better thumbnail generation, and more efficient storage options for sites with extensive image and video collections.

The asset transform system now handles modern image formats more intelligently, automatically serving AVIF or WebP when supported, while falling back gracefully for older browsers.

Improved Multi-Site Management

Organisations managing multiple websites benefit from Craft 5’s enhanced multi-site capabilities. Shared content, centralised user management, and unified asset libraries reduce duplication while maintaining site-specific customisation options.

Migration Considerations

Switching content management systems involves technical challenges and organisational change management. Understanding both aspects helps set realistic expectations for the migration process.

Technical Migration Path

Craft CMS includes import tools for common content management systems, but complex sites typically require custom migration scripts. The investment in proper data migration pays off through cleaner content structures and better ongoing maintainability.

Existing SEO considerations like URL structures and metadata can be preserved through careful planning. Craft’s routing system provides flexibility in maintaining existing URLs while improving the underlying content organisation.

Team Training Requirements

Content creators familiar with WordPress or other systems need time to adjust to Craft’s more structured approach. The learning curve is generally shorter than expected because Craft’s interface design prioritises clarity over feature density.

Development teams benefit from Craft’s extensive documentation and active community. The smaller ecosystem means fewer resources compared to WordPress, but the quality tends to be higher and more focused on real-world use cases.

Cost Analysis: Beyond Licensing

Craft CMS requires paid licensing for commercial projects, which changes the economic calculation compared to open-source alternatives. However, the total cost of ownership often favours Craft when you account for development time, security maintenance, and performance optimisation.

Development Efficiency

Projects built with Craft CMS typically require less custom development to achieve complex content management requirements. The flexible field system and built-in functionality reduce the need for custom plugins, which translates to lower development costs and fewer ongoing maintenance requirements.

The cleaner codebase and better documentation also reduce onboarding time for new developers joining projects, improving long-term maintainability.

Reduced Plugin Dependencies

WordPress sites often accumulate dozens of plugins to achieve functionality that’s built into Craft CMS. Each plugin represents a potential security vulnerability, performance impact, and compatibility concern during updates.

Craft’s more comprehensive core feature set reduces these dependencies, simplifying maintenance while improving reliability.

Making the Switch Work for Your Team

Successful Craft CMS migrations happen when technical capabilities align with organisational needs. The platform works best for teams that value flexibility and are willing to invest in proper setup and training.

Start with a clear understanding of your content management pain points. If your current system fights against your content structure or requires extensive workarounds for basic functionality, Craft CMS likely offers significant improvements.

Consider your team’s technical resources. While Craft CMS is developer-friendly, it assumes more technical sophistication than plug-and-play alternatives. Ensure you have access to developers comfortable with modern PHP development practices.

Plan for the content migration process carefully. Clean up your existing content before migration, and use the transition as an opportunity to improve your information architecture and content workflows.

Ready to Explore Craft CMS?

The growing adoption of Craft CMS reflects a broader shift toward more thoughtful content management approaches. Teams are choosing tools based on long-term maintainability and user experience rather than just feature lists and market share.

If your current content management system feels like it’s holding back your website rather than enabling it, Craft CMS deserves serious consideration. The investment in migration and training typically pays off through improved performance, better security, and more efficient content management workflows.

Start by downloading a local copy of Craft CMS and building a simple prototype with your actual content types. The hands-on experience will give you a better sense of whether Craft’s approach aligns with your team’s needs and working style.