5. Security and Stability
Security is a huge consideration in the Craft vs WordPress discussion. WordPress's dominance comes with a downside: it's the prime target for hackers. With tens of thousands of plugins and themes (of varying code quality) and so many installations worldwide, vulnerabilities are regularly discovered. In fact, about 90% of WordPress security issues stem from third-party plugins, with only 4% attributed to WordPress core. If a plugin on your site gets compromised (or you forget to update it promptly), your site can be at risk. Also, automated bots constantly scour the web for WordPress sites with known weaknesses. This isn't to say WordPress cannot be secure - it absolutely can – but it requires vigilant maintenance, a careful choice of reputable plugins, and often additional security measures (firewall, malware scanner, etc.). Many businesses opt for managed WordPress hosting to offload some of this burden.
Craft CMS, by contrast, has a much smaller footprint in the wild, which already makes it a less attractive target. More importantly, Craft's core team and community put security first. The platform uses modern security practices (e.g., prepared statements, CSRF protection, robust user permission controls). When bugs or vulnerabilities are reported, Craft's team releases patches quickly - thanks in part to their commercial support model. With Craft, we can update the core and plugins with one-click updates in the control panel, and because there are fewer moving parts, the update process is usually seamless. We advise our clients on a regular update schedule, and Craft's stability means these updates rarely break anything. The result is peace of mind - Craft sites have a strong track record of stability and are rarely subject to the mass exploit attacks that plague the WordPress ecosystem.
From our perspective as an expert web development agency, offering a secure and stable solution is crucial. We provide ongoing Craft CMS support and monitoring for clients, and we've found that Craft's stability significantly reduces emergency "site down" calls. For example, when a major vulnerability in a popular WordPress plugin (say, a contact form or e-commerce plugin) makes headlines, thousands of sites can be affected overnight. Our Craft clients are largely insulated from such events - there is simply far less exposure. This stability was critical for sites like Allens Training, which operates high-traffic training course bookings nationwide. They cannot afford downtime or security breaches. Using Craft CMS, combined with a robust hosting environment, we delivered a platform that has remained rock-solid and secure, even as traffic volumes grow. In short, Craft CMS's security-first approach and lower risk profile allow us and our clients to sleep easier at night.
6. Community and Support
While Craft CMS is a commercial product, it boasts a vibrant community of developers and users who are passionate about it - much like open-source communities. On Craft's forums and Slack channels, one can find expert support and advice often directly from the folks who build Craft or its plugins. The difference in the plugin ecosystem is quality: Craft has hundreds of plugins (covering SEO, e-commerce, maps, etc.), not tens of thousands, but each is generally well-vetted and maintained. It's a case of quality over quantity, which we appreciate. You won't need to wade through five plugins that do the same thing to find one that works; usually, there's one de facto standard plugin for each need, and it's reliable. For instance, for SEO, many Craft developers use the built-in features or a reputable plugin like SEOMate, rather than dozens of half-baked SEO plugins.
Our team has also contributed to this ecosystem - we developed the Neo plugin (for flexible content block management), which became one of the most popular plugins on the Craft Plugin Store. We mention this to illustrate the type of community Craft has: agencies and developers actively improving the platform and sharing solutions. If an issue arises or a new feature is needed, chances are someone in the Craft community is already on it, or the core team is listening. Pixel and Tonic (the creators of Craft) are very active and responsive as well, especially for their enterprise customers.
On the WordPress side, community support is massive but can be hit-or-miss. There are countless tutorials and forums, but also a lot of conflicting information given the multitude of ways to do things in WordPress. Official support for WordPress is community-driven, which is great when you have simple issues, but for more complex problems you might need to hire a specialist. With Craft, because the user base is smaller and more tight-knit, getting support often feels more personal and efficient - you might even get a reply from Craft's founder on the forums, which is unlikely in the WordPress world.
From a client's perspective, adopting a less ubiquitous platform like Craft might seem risky ("Will I find help/resources?"). However, our experience has been that Craft's community and vendor support are more than sufficient. In fact, many marketing teams find it refreshing that they don't have to sort through a glut of low-quality plugins or developers - Craft's ecosystem being a bit more exclusive can mean better support and guidance. And of course, as a Craft-specific agency, we ensure our clients have expert help at hand. Overall, Craft CMS's community is one of its strong assets, continually pushing the CMS forward with improvements and new integrations, which in turn benefits our clients.
Craft CMS Popularity and Industry Trends
You might be wondering, given all these advantages, how popular is Craft CMS and is it a safe bet for the future? The answer is that Craft CMS has been steadily gaining popularity and recognition, especially among high-end web projects. Recent industry statistics show Craft's upward trajectory. In Cloudflare's 2023 report on web technologies, Craft CMS was ranked the 7th most popular CMS among the world's top 5,000 websites - a mind-blowing stat considering Craft's niche stature a few years ago. This indicates that many mission-critical, high-traffic sites have adopted Craft for its reliability and performance. (For context, that puts Craft above many older CMS platforms in use on top sites.)
In terms of sheer numbers, Craft still powers a small fraction of total websites compared to WordPress. As of 2023, Craft CMS had over 43,000 live websites and about 93,000 installations in total (including past sites). This is roughly 0.2% of all websites, whereas WordPress accounts for over 40% of all websites. WordPress's ubiquity isn't declining anytime soon - in fact, it still grows year over year in absolute numbers. However, Craft's mindshare in the web development community has grown considerably. Many digital agencies and developers have embraced Craft (often moving away from WordPress, as we did) for projects that require more custom solutions. Craft CMS has become known as a "developer's CMS" and is often the top choice when flexibility and long-term maintainability are priorities.
Another trend influencing the Craft vs WordPress decision is the rise of headless CMS and Jamstack architectures. Craft CMS was early to support headless setups - it has a built-in GraphQL API and a robust content modelling system, making it a strong option if you want to use a JavaScript front-end or mobile apps consuming content. WordPress can also be used headless (with the REST API or plugins like WPGraphQL), but it wasn't originally designed for this, so it can be clunkier to adapt. As more projects consider headless or decoupled architectures for performance and flexibility, Craft stands out as a ready-made solution for those scenarios.
We also see enterprise features playing a role. Craft CMS has an official Craft Cloud hosting service now and offers an Enterprise edition with features like single sign-on and compliance, signalling that it's aiming to serve larger organisations with confidence. Meanwhile, WordPress has WordPress VIP for enterprises and a vast array of managed hosts. The key difference is that Craft's ecosystem is more streamlined - a large organisation can work directly with the makers of Craft for support, whereas a WordPress enterprise project often involves piecing together solutions from multiple vendors (hosting from one, security tools from another, etc.).
In summary, Craft CMS is no longer an obscure newcomer - it's a proven platform, backed by a growing community and solid industry adoption. Its popularity may never reach WordPress levels (nor does it need to), but it's firmly established in the space of high-quality, design-driven websites. For agencies like us, the trend is clear: our clients increasingly value the benefits Craft CMS brings, and we're seeing more awareness of Craft among non-developers as well. If you care about a website that stands out and performs exceptionally, Craft CMS's rising popularity is a positive sign that you'll be in good company choosing it.
Our Craft CMS Case Studies
Nothing demonstrates the differences between Craft and WordPress better than real websites. Here are four case studies from our own portfolio where Craft CMS played a key role in delivering results:
Allens Training - Unifying Multiple Sites with Craft CMS
Allens Training is a national first-aid training provider that came to us with a challenge: they had multiple high-traffic websites (for different regions and services) that needed consolidation. We used Craft CMS to merge these fragmented sites into one cohesive platform, streamlining everything from course bookings to information resources. Craft's flexibility allowed us to incorporate a complex course search and booking system and even integrate with their external training booking platform (FindTraining) seamlessly. The result was a unified Craft CMS website that significantly improved user experience - students and training providers can now find everything in one place - and made life easier for Allens Training's team, who manage content through a single intuitive Craft CMS backend. We also executed a careful SEO migration (with Craft, we had full control over URLs and metadata) to ensure Allens maintained their search rankings through the transition. This project shows how Craft CMS can scale to handle large, complex requirements (multiple domains, integrations, heavy traffic) while keeping the site fast and manageable.
Woodleigh School - Innovative Design with Easy Management
When Woodleigh School engaged us for a website redesign, their vision was to create a digital experience as dynamic and creative as the school itself. Using Craft CMS, we delivered a website that is rich with animated illustrations, interactive elements, and a bold design that captures Woodleigh's unique spirit. Importantly, even with this level of visual complexity, the site is not just a "pretty fac" - it's highly functional and easy to manage. Craft's custom fields and sections allowed us to build features like an events calendar, campus-specific pages, and multimedia galleries in a structured way, so the school's marketing team could update content without fuss. We ensured the site was fully responsive and mobile-optimized, which Craft handles gracefully due to its asset transformation capabilities. From a content management standpoint, the Woodleigh team can log into Craft and find each section of the site neatly organised (Admissions, Curriculum, News, etc.), each with tailored entry forms. This means they can publish updates or add new content quickly, without needing technical help. The Woodleigh School website even earned industry recognition for its design excellence - a testament to how Craft CMS empowers ambitious web design. In the end, the project achieved its dual goal: an engaging, cutting-edge web presence that still meets the practical day-to-day needs of a school website (like easy editing and reliable performance). It's a great example of Craft CMS enabling creativity without sacrificing usability.
Align Ability - Fast-Tracking a Startup's Online Presence
Align Ability is a disability support services provider that was rebranding (formerly under a different name) and needed a fresh start with the website. As a startup, they required a site that could grow with them and clearly communicate their mission and services from day one. We chose Craft CMS to build Align Ability's new website because it allowed us to rapidly develop a custom-branded site that stands out in their sector. The site features a bespoke design aligned with their new brand identity - colours, typography, and imagery that convey their friendly yet professional approach. Craft CMS made it straightforward to implement this custom design and ensure that every piece of content - from service descriptions to client testimonials - had a designated place in the CMS. We created a flexible homepage in Craft where the Align Ability team can highlight key messages or announcements by toggling various content blocks (without any coding needed on their part). Since launch, as their services expanded, they've been able to add new pages and sections easily, thanks to the scalable structure we put in place. For example, when they introduced new community programs, the CMS already had the structure to accommodate those - they just create a new entry under "Programs" and the site updates accordingly. This case shows how Craft CMS is ideal for growing businesses: it's robust enough to handle new requirements down the line, and non-technical founders can manage their content confidently. Align Ability's site is also optimised for SEO and speed (crucial for a new business trying to rank locally), benefiting from Craft's clean code and our ability to fine-tune everything. In short, Craft CMS helped give Align Ability a strong, professional online foundation that sets them apart from templated, cookie-cutter sites.
Heart-Led Planning - Informative, Accessible, and Impactful
Heart-Led Planning is a research project led by the University of Sydney, focused on the planning experiences of people with disabilities in regional areas. This project needed a public-facing website to share research findings and drive action for change. We used Craft CMS to develop an information-rich site that was not only visually engaging but also highly accessible and user-friendly to meet the needs of a diverse audience. Craft's flexibility allowed us to implement accessibility features and structured content hierarchy as a priority. We built custom sections in Craft for different content types: research summaries, participant stories, downloadable resources, and calls to action for policy change. Each of these sections had unique fields (for example, the stories section had fields for interviewee quotes, which we could style prominently on the front end). Craft CMS made it easy to enforce consistency in how content is presented, which is crucial for a research-driven site - every page follows best practices for web accessibility and readability (headings, alt text, transcripts for videos, etc.).
The University of Sydney team was new to Craft, but they quickly embraced it. We provided a training session and found that the researchers could easily create new content entries, tag them by topic, and publish updates themselves. One reason is Craft's straightforward authoring interface - free of distractions or blog-centric jargon, it felt custom-made for their project (because it was!). This empowerment was important: the project team needed control to keep the site updated as new findings emerged. The outcome has been extremely positive. The Heart-Led Planning site effectively communicates a wealth of information in an approachable way, and it stands as a hub for a community of interest. The project leads commented that the website delivered the research to the public in a better way than they imagined, proving that with Craft CMS, important content isn't lost in a poor presentation. Instead, Craft helped us craft a meaningful narrative online, backed by a solid CMS that will serve the initiative for years (and can be handed off to any other agency or internal team, given Craft's accessible nature).
These case studies highlight how Craft CMS excels in various scenarios. In each case, Craft provided the tools to solve complex requirements that likely would have been challenging or required compromises with a more rigid CMS like WordPress.
WordPress or Craft CMS - Which Should You Choose?
Both Craft CMS and WordPress are powerful in their own ways, and the "WordPress vs Craft" choice ultimately depends on your goals, resources, and priorities. WordPress remains the go-to for quickly getting a site up and running, especially if you need a simple blog or a standard business site and want to do it yourself. Its vast array of plugins and themes means you can add functionality without coding, which is appealing to many small businesses and bloggers. If your budget is very tight or you require something like a basic e-commerce store in a pinch, WordPress might fit the bill due to its plug-and-play nature.
However, if you view your website as a long-term investment - a platform that needs to grow, adapt, and truly represent your brand - Craft CMS offers significant advantages. Craft shines when you need a custom solution: a unique design, a tailored user experience, complex content relationships, or high assurance of security and performance. It's the choice for those who don't want to be constrained by the typical templates and limitations. In 2025, with Craft CMS's popularity on the rise and a proven track record on high-profile sites, choosing Craft is not a leap of faith but a strategic decision for quality. The platform has matured (with Craft 4 and the forthcoming Craft 5 bringing even more refinements) and it has a robust ecosystem of professionals behind it.
At Spicy Web, we've bet on Craft CMS and it continues to reward us - and more importantly, our clients - with websites that stand out and perform. We've transitioned clients from WordPress to Craft and watched their frustration with clunky editing or constant patching turn into relief as they experience the ease and stability of Craft. On the other hand, we also ensure Craft is the right fit: if a project's needs are truly basic and the budget doesn't allow for custom development, we'd be honest about WordPress (or even simpler site builders) being an option. But for businesses aiming high - those who want a website that can be a competitive advantage rather than just a checkbox - Craft CMS has proven itself to be worth it, time and again.
Craft CMS vs WordPress in 2025 boils down to a classic quality vs quantity scenario. WordPress is ubiquitous and convenient but can be a victim of its own generalist approach. Craft CMS may serve a smaller slice of the web, but it serves it exceptionally well, with a focus on excellence in content management, design freedom, and security. For our team and the clients we partner with, the choice is clear: Craft CMS enables us to create modern websites that fulfil their purpose without the usual compromises. If you're aiming for a website that is uniquely yours, scalable, and aligned with your strategic goals, Craft CMS is likely the better choice. And if you're ever unsure, feel free to reach out - as Craft CMS specialists, we're always happy to discuss which CMS will best meet your needs.
