If you work in digital content management, you've probably heard of Craft CMS and Contentful. If you're trying to decide between them, you’re not alone. Many digital content managers struggle with the tough decision of which one to use for their projects. At first glance, they may seem similar, but there are some subtle differences that can have a big impact on your success.
That's why, in this blog post, we'll take an in-depth look at the Craft CMS vs Contentful debate and compare these two popular content management systems, with an aim of helping you decide which one is best for you. So strap in and get ready to find out the winner – craft or contentful? Let’s get started.
Find out why we're Craft CMS developers
Spoiler alert. We don't use Contentful – we use Craft CMS.
Quick Explanation of Key Points
Craft CMS is a content management system (CMS) designed for custom websites, while Contentful is a cloud-based headless CMS for creating mobile and web applications. Each platform offers its own unique advantages, so choose one that best fits your needs.
Craft CMS vs Contentful Overview
Craft CMS and Contentful are two of the leading content management systems (CMS) that provide users with the tools and features needed to manage and create engaging web content. Both Craft CMS and Contentful have the ability to define content structure, collaborate with a team, control access for editors, facilitate localization, import and export data, manage media files, and integrate with third-party services.
When comparing Craft CMS vs Contentful, there are several differences as well as benefits and drawbacks related to both platforms. Craft CMS is an open-source CMS platform designed predominantly for developers and delivers an intuitive content modeling interface that allows teams to easily create custom fields, relationships, and structures without risking breaking website implementations. Contentful is a headless CMS with advanced editing abilities that provides an accessible editorial layout to all users with support for both HTML and Markdown syntax. Furthermore, it comes packaged with several features such as templating functionality, collection editing, workflow collaboration tools and deployment options.
Craft CMS is ideal for organizations looking to maintain complete control over their website’s content structure and design but requires ongoing development time due to its open-source nature. On the other hand, Contentful provides more of a “do it yourself” solution out-of-the-box but does come with some restrictions in terms of customization.
Now that you have a better understanding of Craft CMS vs Contentful overviews let's dive deeper into the specific features provided by Craft CMS in the next section.
Craft CMS Features
Craft CMS offers a range of features that make it an appealing option for content management. It is a relatively small, self-hosted application that allows users to create and maintain custom content. Craft’s user interface is visually friendly and straightforward but robust enough for experienced developers to use, making the system suitable for both small business websites and larger website projects.
The main feature of Craft CMS is its capacity for complete customization of content settings, from creating complex fields to establishing relationships between entries. This means users can build a site that fits exactly with their data requirements as well as modify existing fields if necessary. Another plus point is the ability to host multiple domains or languages on one instance of Craft CMS, making it particularly appealing for international businesses or those who need to maintain multiple versions of the same website.
When it comes to digital asset management, Craft offers an efficient way to handle images, documents, pdfs and other files right out of the box, with the flexibility to serve assets directly from your server or link them with a CDN (Content Delivery Network). It also supports SEO best practices with automated tagging, sitemaps and clean URL structures. Additionally, Craft features built-in security measures such as encrypting Passwords before they are stored in the database and blocking failed login attempts after a set number of tries.
Craft also offers multisite capabilities such as intuitive linking between sites and shared users as well as comprehensive support for localization if you need multiple language versions of your website. Lastly, it has powerful templating capabilities which will allow developers to quickly customize content in a matter of minutes-- or even seconds!
As with any choice in technology, there are tradeoffs when using Craft CMS. For example, it does not have the wide range of plugins offered by some competitive solutions due to its smaller size; however, this can be offset by its incredible customization capabilities. Furthermore, learning Craft might take more time than mastering another platform but the effort pays off once you become comfortable using it.
Ultimately, it is important to evaluate each of these features in terms of how they would work within your particular project before settling on a CMS solution. Moving forward we will discuss how easy editing and customizing content is with both solutions.
Easy Editing and Customization
Easy editing and customization are essential features of any content management system, as users demand convenience and control over their content. Craft CMS and Contentful both offer solutions for easy editing and customizing, but the approaches differ between the two platforms.
Craft CMS provides drag-and-drop interfaces that allow users to customize layouts with minimal effort. It also offers great flexibility that allows users to add extra fields to content assets without technical knowledge or upskilling. This makes it very easy for editors to quickly adjust and curate content without taking too much time away from their other responsibilities.
Contentful goes one step further with its built-in Developer Platform. This enables teams to create decentralized workflows that make it possible to customize complex content types within a single interface while still managing access permissions globally. This allows teams to quickly translate, version, target and preview the site in order to test before launching it live.
The decision of which platform to select for easy editing and customization depends on the user's needs. If handling basic content setup needs are all that is required, then Craft CMS is likely more than sufficient. However Should complex customization of content be necessary, Contentful may provide a better solution with its Developer Platform capabilities .
The next section in this article will focus on the features offered by Contentful.
Contentful Features
Contentful is a cloud-based headless CMS that gives users control over the content they create. It functions as a platform where writers, designers, developers, and marketers can collaborate to structure and manage their digital content in one place. Contentful simplifies the process by providing users with simple drag-and-drop tools to create custom content models and forms, while still allowing total flexibility and customization. With Contentful, teams can build and edit entire websites or apps without having to switch between different applications and technologies. Additionally, Contentful offers API access to data, enabling developers to customize sites in any language, on any stack and scale them as needed.
Contentful has many features geared towards making it easy for users to manage their digital content, including role-based permissions to control access privileges, workflow approvals, reusable field groups for faster development, versioning capabilities for ensuring data accuracy, real-time functionality that allows changes to be immediately reflected on live webpages or apps, and structured asset libraries for quickly accessing relevant images. It also utilizes a powerful search engine that allows users to quickly find what they’re looking for among large amounts of data. Finally, although Contentful does not offer a frontend editing environment like Craft CMS does, it does have other options that allow users to pull up a single record or set of similar records in separate views.
Supporters of Contentful point out that its various features make it ideal for applications with complex architectures that require greater flexibility and scalability than traditional CMS systems can provide. On the other hand, some argue that it is limited when compared to more sophisticated CMS platforms such as Craft CMS.
In the next section we will compare the two platforms in terms of flexibility and scalability to determine which platform ultimately provides the most efficient feature set for content management.
Flexibility and Scalability
Flexibility and scalability are two key components to consider when comparing Craft CMS and Contentful. Different organizations will have different needs, so it's important to understand the advantages and trade-offs of either system.
Craft CMS is open source, offering maximum flexibility for developers wanting to customize and develop their own themes. Moreover, Craft makes scaling easier, as websites can be optimized and hosted on any web infrastructures. The downside, however, is that an experienced development team is necessary to implement the customizations.
On the other hand, Contentful offers a powerful content management system (CMS) with lots of potential for customization and scaling, but due to its closed source nature, developers have less ability to create their own plugins or tailor the platform. Contentful also boasts a wide range of ready-to-use integrations which can help quickly set up sites and access data from APIs.
To conclude, each platform offers different strengths in terms of flexibility and scalability depending on user needs. Now that we have discussed these capabilities in depth, let's move on to looking at some of the comparisons and differences between Craft CMS and Contentful.
Comparisons and Differences
When comparing Craft CMS vs Contentful, there are some key differences and similarities that should be considered. In terms of similarities, they both offer APIs which allow content to be shared across multiple channels, platforms and sites quickly and easily. Additionally, as cloud-based solutions, they can be used globally with no server requirements or technical maintenance.
In contrast, there are also some distinct differences between Craft CMS and Contentful. The first major difference is that Craft CMS is a fully integrated content management system (CMS), while Contentful is a modern headless CMS. This means that the writing experience differs quite drastically between the two solutions: with Craft CMS it's much easier to access all tools from one unified environment within the same interface, whereas Contentful requires users to create webhooks and other development integrations to access all content editing tools.
Another significant factor when comparing these two solutions is scalability. Craft CMS provides scalability for larger websites by default; however, for small to mid-level businesses, this feature can become costly due to the additional resources required for bigger websites. On the other hand, Contentful allows businesses to scale without any additional coding changing or extra costs.
Finally, in terms of pricing, Craft CMS charges customers on a per-user basis; whereas Contentful works on an entry-based pricing structure. Therefore, depending on your use case, either solution may be more cost-effective than the other.
To summarise these comparisons and differences between Craft CMS vs Contentful, when selecting an ideal CMS solution it’s important to consider both the writing experience and scalability needs of your project along with the budget you have available. With this in mind, we can now move onto discussing each platform's user interface & dashboard features in greater detail.
User Interface & Dashboard
When making a decision between two content management systems, the User Interface & Dashboard is an important factor to consider. Both Craft CMS and Contentful offer intuitive user interfaces and easy-to-use dashboards that make managing your web content simple. With Craft CMS, users can access their personalized control panel that has a slick design, which highlights the most common tasks with colorful icons on the interface. Administrators can also customize their dashboard widgets to make it easier to manage activities. Contentful's main dashboard consists of three panels; Resources, Content Model, and Settings, so users can quickly and easily find what they need when managing their content. Additionally, users can access individual content items in a detailed view mode where they can edit properties without having to leave the page they're on.
The differences between Craft CMS and Contentful’s User Interface & Dashboard are slight and are largely down to personal preference. Ultimately both solutions make tasks easier for web administrators and allow for customizations for different levels of experience users may have with managing web contents.
In our next section we'll compare the Pros & Cons of Craft CMS vs Contentful to help you make an informed decision about which one is right for your website or project.
Craft CMS vs Contentful: Pros & Cons
Both Craft CMS and Contentful have unique features that make them stand out from one another, as well as pros and cons to consider when deciding which one is the right fit for a content management system.
One of the main factors of consideration between Craft CMS and Contentful is scalability. Contentful provides a robust and flexible structure for large-scale sites that can be adapted to specific requirements, while Craft CMS provides flexibility through customizing the data schema. Contentful also requires less configuration up front. This can make it more efficient for teams working on large projects with tight deadlines, though not as powerful when compared to the level of customization CraftCMS offers.
In terms of user interface, Craft CMS is considered simpler and more intuitive to use than Contentful's learning curve. This makes it ideal for non-technical users who want to quickly begin creating content, but may require extra technical support when setting up structure or solving any issues that arise with custom code in the back end. Meanwhile, Contentful is designed for larger projects requiring specialized documentation and an organized repository of assets, making it easier to manage tasks and search for relevant content across various levels such as sites, entries or fields.
Another factor to consider is cost: Contentful charges per month for using their content management system, whereas Craft CMS does not charge users outside of optional paid add-ons.
Finally, both platforms offer the capability to connect with other systems by building APIs or utilizing webhooks; however Contentful allows integration with third-party apps like Slack while Craft CMS requires custom development in order to trigger events between applications.
To sum up, Contentful offers convenient scalability with a slightly steeper learning curve at higher costs; whereas Craft CMS offers robust customization capabilities at no additional cost but with a considerably shorter learning curve.
Leading into the next section “Final Verdict on Craft CMS vs Contentful”, this article provides an in depth comparison between each platform’s basic features - such as scalability, user experience, cost efficiency – as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each platform so that readers can make an informed decision about which one best suits their needs.
- According to a 2019 survey conducted by Sitewards, 46% of developers prefer Craft CMS over other CMSs.
- Contentful’s pricing model is based on a pay-per-entry basis, while Craft CMS follows a fixed monthly fee per domain basis.
- In 2020, Statista reported that 31% of websites relied on content delivery networks such as Contentful versus 11% of sites using other technologies.
Final Verdict on Craft CMS vs Contentful
When choosing between a content management system (CMS) and headless CMS, such as Craft CMS and Contentful, the decision will ultimately depend on your project’s specific needs. From price points to design flexibility to complex schema structures, each platform offers benefits and drawbacks.
Contentful is an ideal solution for organizations looking to quickly create dynamic content without worrying about the front-end capabilities or complicated code. It’s especially beneficial for companies with limited development resources or those who prefer using API-driven tools. Contentful also gives users the ability to manage content from anywhere around the world.
On the other hand, Craft CMS is well suited for web developers and designers who are comfortable designing custom themes and working with code. The interface has more features which allow developers to build unique sites that go beyond content management, like detailed taxonomy support and custom fields; it's appealing for small businesses and agencies who need control over their projects. Craft CMS also makes it easy to set up multiple environments for development, staging and production, so you can always ensure new features are tested before being made live.
Both platforms give users access to robust APIs for development purposes, allowing apps to be built with back-end frameworks such as Rails or NodeJS. Ultimately, whichever option you select will depend on your budget, development skillset, automation preferences and marketing goals. Either way, it’s clear that both Craft CMS and Contentful are useful solutions when creating websites or blogs that aim to provide great user experiences.
Must-Know Points to Remember
When deciding between Craft CMS and Contentful, the best choice ultimately depends on the specific needs of your project. Contentful is beneficial for companies with limited development resources or those who prefer API-driven tools, while Craft CMS is better for developers and designers who are comfortable coding custom themes and designs. Both platforms have robust APIs, allowing apps to be built with back-end frameworks like Rails and NodeJS. When selecting either option, consider budget, development skillset, automation preferences and marketing goals.
Responses to Common Questions with Explanations
How do the user interfaces of Craft CMS and Contentful compare?
The user interfaces of Craft CMS and Contentful vary widely. Craft CMS has a comprehensive, intuitive admin panel that allows for admins to create custom fields in order to add content to their website. Contentful, on the other hand, offers a more minimalistic approach, providing only essential content-editing functions such as status and collections. From a usability standpoint, both solutions have unique components that make them easy to use, but depending on the complexity of your website, one may be better suited than the other. For instance, if you require a high level of customization, Craft CMS's interface is likely the right choice; whereas if you need an easier way to organize content, Contentful may be preferable. Ultimately, it will come down to your individual needs.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of using Craft CMS versus Contentful?
The benefits of using Craft CMS versus Contentful really depend on the specific needs of the website or application.
For one, Craft CMS is a great choice for developers who need a powerful and versatile backend. With its ability to customize every aspect, Craft allows for complex page types and intricate relationships between elements. Along with its robust delivery flexibility, this makes it ideal for developers who need full control over their content.
On the other hand, Contentful is seen as the easier option of the two solutions. Its user-friendly interface and simple drag-and-drop tools make it ideal for non-developers who want to manage content quickly and easily. The built-in APIs that come with Contentful also mean that content can be easily transferred to other systems and devices via external integrations.
In terms of drawbacks, both solutions come with their own list of pros and cons. For example, while Craft CMS provides developers with greater control over their content, this can also lead to an increase in development time and cost since more customizations are required. Similarly, managing content with Contentful's drag-and-drop builder can be time consuming, especially when dealing with larger projects. Additionally, because Contentful is API driven, poor API performance can affect the speed at which data is delivered to other platforms or devices.
Overall, understanding the benefits and drawbacks of both Craft CMS and Contentful is essential when making an informed decision about which solution best meets your development needs.
What features make Craft CMS and Contentful stand out?
Craft CMS and Contentful stand out for their features that enable content creators and developers to build websites precisely for their needs. Craft CMS is well-regarded for its intuitive design, allowing designers to easily customize page layouts, add content fields, and structure the website through a visual interface. Contentful also makes creating custom structures easy, with an intuitive user interface that simplifies adding content while giving users the flexibility to truly customize their sites. Additionally, both platforms allow multiple people to collaborate on projects simultaneously by providing granular permission settings so that content creators can focus on their work without tech teams needing to worry about permission issues. Finally, both Craft CMS and Contentful have robust APIs that make integrating external data sources into the website a breeze.
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Matt has been designing for the web since 1999. He loves mountain biking, watching Formula 1 and making music.