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Contentful vs Craft CMS

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Our analysts compared Contentful vs Craft CMS based on data from our 400+ point analysis of CMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Overview Pricing Benefits & Features User Ratings Analyst Summary Screenshots
Contentful Software Tool
Craft CMS Software Tool
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Product Basics

Contentful is a cloud-native API-first platform that allows users to create, manage and distribute content to virtually any digital channel, all from a single hub. It stores and distributes a wide range of content that includes text, video, images, music, structured documents and more. Coupled with a headless architecture, native integrations apps and powerful webhooks make it flexible and extensible. Its web app allows creatives to create rich text content with headlines, quotes, lists, visual formatting and media.

Editors can create landing pages, fine-tune product descriptions, tweak forms and publish content all from a unified interface. Robust REST and GraphQL APIs enable content delivery to multiple channels like iOS, Android and Windows mobile apps, and websites. It provides separate workspaces and role-based permissions for data governance.
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Craft CMS is a software to manage content and design websites from a centralized unified interface. Users can create content through attributes like custom fields, image editor, form builder and live preview. It enables digital asset management with files stored in Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files and Google Cloud Storage. Users can customize its dashboard and add and resize widgets which include an RSS feed, quick post, recent entries, updates, Google Analytics and commerce reports.

User management with role-based access permissions is available in the Pro version and above. Templates are powered by Twig, with DRY code and flexible, bring-your-own HTML development. For non-public URLs, the licensed plans are available for free so long as the site is not deployed to a public server. The vendor provides a free version.
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$300 Monthly, Freemium
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$279/Project, Freemium
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Product Assistance

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24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Streamlined Content Management: Contentful simplifies the process of creating, managing, and distributing content across multiple platforms, enabling teams to publish content faster and more efficiently than traditional CMS platforms.
  • Enhanced Collaboration: With its cloud-based architecture, Contentful allows team members to collaborate in real-time, regardless of their location. This ensures that content updates and approvals can happen swiftly, keeping projects on track.
  • Flexible Integration: Contentful offers robust APIs that enable seamless integration with various tools and systems, such as analytics, marketing, and e-commerce platforms. This flexibility allows businesses to tailor their tech stack to their specific needs.
  • Scalability: Designed to handle the demands of both small projects and large-scale operations, Contentful can scale alongside your business. This means you won't have to migrate to another platform as your content needs grow.
  • Improved Content Delivery: Contentful utilizes a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure that your content is delivered quickly and reliably to users around the world, enhancing the user experience and engagement.
  • Content Model Flexibility: Unlike traditional CMS platforms that often force content into predefined templates, Contentful allows users to define their own content models. This flexibility supports a more structured and efficient approach to content management, catering to diverse content types and structures.
  • Enhanced Security: Contentful prioritizes security with features like two-factor authentication, role-based access control, and regular security audits. This helps protect your content and user data from unauthorized access and potential breaches.
  • Cost Efficiency: By streamlining content operations and reducing the need for custom development, Contentful can help businesses save on operational and development costs. Its cloud-based nature also eliminates the need for expensive server maintenance.
  • Future-Proof Technology: Contentful is built on modern technology standards and is continuously updated, ensuring that your content management system remains cutting-edge. This helps safeguard your investment and keeps you ahead of digital trends.
  • Global Reach: With its CDN and multilingual content management capabilities, Contentful enables businesses to easily reach and engage global audiences, breaking down geographical and language barriers.
  • Personalized User Experiences: Contentful supports dynamic content personalization, allowing businesses to tailor content based on user behavior and preferences. This leads to more engaging and relevant user experiences, boosting conversion rates and customer loyalty.
  • Comprehensive Analytics: Integration with analytics tools allows Contentful users to track content performance and user engagement in real-time. This data-driven approach enables continuous optimization of content strategies for better results.
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  • Intuitive Content Management: Craft CMS offers a user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of creating, managing, and updating website content, making it accessible for users of all skill levels.
  • Flexible Templating: With its Twig-based templating system, Craft CMS allows for the creation of complex, dynamic websites that can be tailored to meet specific design and functionality requirements.
  • Highly Customizable: Developers can extend the functionality of Craft CMS through plugins and modules, enabling the creation of bespoke solutions that cater to unique business needs.
  • Robust Security: Craft CMS is built with security in mind, offering features like proactive updates, secure password hashing, and built-in protection against common vulnerabilities, ensuring your website remains safe from threats.
  • SEO Friendly: Craft CMS facilitates SEO efforts with features like automatic generation of SEO-friendly URLs, easy metadata management, and the ability to create sitemaps, helping improve your site's visibility in search engine results.
  • Multi-Site Capabilities: Manage multiple websites from a single Craft CMS installation, allowing for streamlined operations and consistent branding across all your digital properties.
  • Live Preview: The Live Preview feature enables content creators to see how their content will look in real-time before it goes live, ensuring accuracy and alignment with design standards.
  • First-Class Localization: Craft CMS supports multi-language and regional differences out-of-the-box, making it an ideal choice for businesses targeting a global audience.
  • Performance Optimization: Designed with performance in mind, Craft CMS ensures fast loading times and a smooth user experience, even for content-rich sites.
  • Community Support: Benefit from a vibrant and supportive community of developers and users who contribute to the platform's extensive plugin ecosystem and offer help and advice through forums and social media.
  • Content Versioning: Craft CMS automatically saves versions of your content as you make changes, allowing you to easily revert to previous versions if needed.
  • Comprehensive Asset Management: Efficiently manage digital assets like images and videos with powerful tools for uploading, organizing, and editing, directly within the CMS.
  • Granular User Permissions: Control access to different parts of your site with detailed user permissions, ensuring team members can only see and edit what they need to.
  • Scalability: Whether you're running a small blog or a large e-commerce site, Craft CMS scales with your business, accommodating growth without sacrificing performance.
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  • API: JSON payloads provide complete programmatic control over CMS features such as assets, translations and more. Delivers API payloads in the sub-100 ms range utilizing caching strategies and external CDNs. 
  • Toolbox: Customizable UX allows editors to easily create content of all forms, such as rich text, locations, JSON snippets and more. Choose and add fields to customizable content types. Publish in multiple languages and time zones to ensure viewers across the world can view content at the same time. Safeguard content with roles and permissions tools. 
  • Recordkeep: The ISO 27001-compliant cloud platform creates a safe space for all data and information to be held while being monitored 24/7, ensuring 99.99% uptime. 
  • Security: Keep information secure with SAML 2.0, 2FA and SCIM integration allowing for SSO (Single Sign-on). The vendor's security program is monitored by the Information Systems Management System (ISMS) which is continuously up-to-date with the ISO 27001:2013 international standards. 
  • Editing: Includes built-in real-time markdown editing. An embedded media library prevents broken public links. 
  • Customize: Prototype easily with SDKs available in multiple languages. Integrate with any API service by utilizing natively joined apps and third-party software. Personalize how content is created, managed and consumed through open source field editors, the Forma 360 design system and UI extensions. 
  • Mobile Apps: Update content across platforms with flexible APIs and interfaces. Developers can manage multiple digital interfaces using a single content backend. Selective sync, image auto-compression and support for offline persistence delivers a seamless mobile device experience. 
  • Open Source Libraries: Forma 360 design software and field editors allow editors to create an interface that implements custom behaviors, without having to recreate components. 
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  • Field Customization: Manage all custom field types and organize them. Assign bespoke fields to sections, users, tags and more.  
  • Multi-site: Run multiple sites from within a single software installation. Manage content across different regions and use other websites under the same parent company. Configure site-specific settings and employ site groups to keep them organized and define the order they should appear in on the control panel. 
  • Hassle-Free Localization: Target multiple territories and translate different languages by creating new sites to represent the content. 
  • Sharing Page Reviews: Share unpublished pages privately with team members using a link, keeping a tab on the work progress. 
  • Optimized Asset Management: Access built-in desktop-class asset management. Move files and folders quickly between local and cloud-based sources. Create a new transform that sets the parameters to output images at a specific size. 
  • Single-Click Update: Keep the software and plugins up-to-date with bug fixes, security enhancements and the latest features with a single click. 
  • Control Over Publishing: Full control over when to publish changes, along with the option of ‘Post Date’. 
  • Image Enhancement: Use the software’s Image Editor for resizing, rotating, flipping and cropping images. Set focus points, ensuring that every image renders seamlessly on all devices. 
  • Matrix: Split the content into different blocks and use them multiple times in any order. Enjoy the flexibility in creating any number of blocks containing as many fields as required. Change the layout of fields within the Matrix field to save space and give a better experience. 
  • Real-Time Preview: Update changes in the content and preview them even before publishing. Get a better idea of the design and appearance of the content in advance. 
  • Syntax Alert: Catch typos within the template with a helpful error message, along with a snippet of the code highlighting the offending line. 
  • Twig: Compile powerful template engines into optimized PHP files. Access various solutions offered by the language to keep templates DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). 
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Product Ranking

#29

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CMS Software

#57

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CMS Software

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 283 reviews
Great User Sentiment 34 reviews
87%
of users recommend this product

Contentful has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 283 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

83%
of users recommend this product

Craft CMS has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 83% when considering 34 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

4.3 (15)
n/a
4.3 (98)
n/a
4.42 (52)
5.0 (1)
4.5 (42)
4.1 (33)
4.4 (71)
n/a
3.9 (5)
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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Structured Content: Contentful's structured content approach separates content from its presentation, offering flexibility and reusability across various platforms and channels. This means content can be easily adapted for different devices and applications without the need to recreate it from scratch.
API-first Approach: Contentful's API-first design allows for seamless integration with other tools and services, enabling developers to build custom workflows and automate content delivery. This can streamline content management processes and improve efficiency.
Collaboration Features: Contentful provides features that facilitate collaboration among team members, such as roles and permissions, version history, and content scheduling. These features can help teams work together more effectively and ensure content consistency.
Scalability and Performance: Contentful is designed to handle large volumes of content and traffic, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. Its cloud-based infrastructure ensures high availability and performance, even during peak usage periods.
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Intuitive Interface: Craft CMS is often praised for its user-friendly interface, making it easy for content editors and administrators to manage and publish content efficiently. The interface is clean, well-organized, and intuitive, allowing users to find what they need quickly and easily.
Flexibility and Customization: Craft CMS provides a high degree of flexibility and customization, allowing developers to create bespoke content models and tailor the system to meet specific project requirements. This flexibility empowers users to build unique and complex websites without being constrained by rigid structures.
Performance and Scalability: Craft CMS is known for its excellent performance and scalability, ensuring that websites built on the platform can handle high traffic volumes and complex content structures without compromising speed or reliability. This is crucial for businesses and organizations that require a robust and scalable online presence.
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Content Modeling Challenges: Contentful's content modeling can be complex and time-consuming, especially for users accustomed to traditional CMS platforms. The learning curve can be steep, requiring users to invest significant effort in understanding and implementing content types and relationships effectively.
Preview Limitations: The platform's preview functionality may not always accurately reflect the final published content, leading to potential discrepancies and requiring additional verification steps before publishing.
Search Function Shortcomings: Contentful's search capabilities have been reported as less than optimal, making it challenging for users to efficiently locate specific content within their projects, especially as the content library grows.
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Steeper Learning Curve: Craft CMS's flexibility and power come at the cost of a steeper learning curve compared to simpler platforms like Squarespace or Wix. Users accustomed to more intuitive interfaces may find Craft's initial setup and content management less straightforward.
Plugin Dependence: While Craft CMS offers core features, extending functionality often requires plugins. This can lead to challenges in maintaining compatibility between plugins and the core system, especially during updates. Additionally, some essential plugins may require a purchase, adding to the overall cost.
Pricing Structure: Craft CMS's pricing structure, which involves a per-project license fee and potential plugin costs, can be a deterrent for budget-conscious users or smaller projects. The initial investment might seem higher compared to open-source alternatives or platforms with freemium models.
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Feeling a little content-less? Contentful might just be the CMS remedy you need Contentful has garnered a reputation for its user-friendly interface, making it a breeze for folks without a tech background to navigate the platform. The extensive range of templates empowers users to craft visually appealing and engaging content, while seamless integration with popular marketing tools streamlines content management across various platforms. However, some users have expressed concerns about the pricing structure, which may pose a challenge for smaller businesses or those with tighter budgets. Additionally, the absence of certain features could be a dealbreaker for businesses with specific requirements. What truly sets Contentful apart is its headless architecture, providing unparalleled flexibility and customization compared to traditional CMS platforms. This means businesses can tailor the platform to their exact needs, integrating it with any front-end technology or framework. This adaptability makes Contentful an excellent choice for businesses with diverse content requirements or those seeking to deliver content across multiple channels, such as websites, mobile apps, and smart devices. In a nutshell, Contentful is best suited for businesses that prioritize flexibility, scalability, and a user-friendly experience. It's particularly well-suited for organizations with complex content needs or those looking to deliver content across multiple platforms. However, businesses with budget constraints or requiring specific features may need to explore alternative options. Keep in mind that the software landscape is constantly evolving, so it's always a good idea to check for the latest updates and user reviews before making a decision.

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Looking to "craft" the perfect website? Craft CMS might just be the tool you need. Craft CMS has garnered a reputation for its user-friendly interface and flexibility. Users appreciate the intuitive control panel, which simplifies content creation and management. The ability to customize the dashboard to individual preferences further enhances the user experience. Craft CMS's flexible content modeling system allows users to design their content structure, making it suitable for various website types, from simple blogs to complex e-commerce platforms. Its headless architecture provides developers with the freedom to deliver content to any platform, offering greater versatility compared to traditional CMS platforms. However, some users find Craft CMS's capabilities less extensive than those of platforms like WordPress, which offer a wider range of built-in features and plugins. Additionally, Craft CMS's flexibility can lead to a steeper learning curve for beginners. Despite these drawbacks, Craft CMS's strengths lie in its ability to empower users to create unique and tailored digital experiences. Its focus on customizability and user experience makes it an ideal choice for businesses and individuals seeking a CMS that can adapt to their specific needs and grow with them over time.

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