Craft CMS FAQs: What You Need to Know

Choosing a CMS is never just a technical decision. It’s a long-term commitment that affects how teams work, how content evolves, and how confidently a platform can grow with an organisation.

This FAQ is designed to answer the most common - and most important - questions we receive about Craft CMS. Not just what it is, but what it’s like to work with in practice, who it’s best suited to, and where it may not be quite the right choice for you. 

If you’re comparing CMS platforms, planning a rebuild, or trying to understand whether Craft fits your specific needs (we love it, but it isn’t for everyone), this guide is intended as a clear resource to help you get it right.

💡 Click here to read more about our Craft CMS expertise...

What is Craft CMS?

Craft CMS is a flexible, PHP-based content management system designed for bespoke websites and digital platforms. Rather than offering pre-defined page types or rigid templates, Craft allows developers to model content exactly around an organisation’s needs.

In practice, this means Craft excels when content is:

• Structured
• Reusable
• Expected to evolve over time

It’s less about getting a site live quickly and more about building a platform that remains useful and manageable long after launch.

Is Craft CMS open source?

No. Not quite, but close. Craft CMS follows an open-core, source-available model.

The core codebase is publicly accessible and can be inspected or extended, but a commercial licence is required to run Craft CMS in production.

This model combines the openness and flexibility developers value with the stability of a commercially supported product, backed by a dedicated team and a clearly defined roadmap.

Is Craft CMS free? How much does it cost?

Craft CMS is free to use in development, but a commercial licence is required for production websites. 

Costs typically include:

• A one-off licence fee per site
• Optional paid plugins or add-ons
• Development, hosting, and ongoing support

While Craft’s licence fees are relatively modest, it’s important to look beyond the headline cost. 

Total cost of ownership often matters more than software price alone. Compared with platforms that depend heavily on plugins, patches, or structural workarounds, Craft can be more cost-effective over the long term.

Who owns and maintains Craft CMS?

Craft CMS is created and maintained by Pixel & Tonic, an independent software company with a dedicated, long-term focus on the platform. This ownership model shapes how Craft evolves. Development tends to emphasise:

• Stability over rapid feature churn
• Strong backward compatibility
• Considered and incremental improvements

For organisations building platforms intended to last several years, this level of predictability and continuity is often a meaningful advantage.

How easy is it to update Craft CMS?

Updating Craft CMS is generally straightforward and well supported. The platform includes a built-in update system that manages:

• Core CMS updates
• Plugin updates
• Required database migrations

Updates are typically released in small, incremental steps and are clearly documented, which helps minimise the risk of unexpected breaking changes. In well-structured Craft builds, updates become a routine maintenance task rather than a disruptive upgrade cycle.

Is there a Craft CMS community?

Yes, the Craft CMS community is one of Craft’s biggest - although less visible - strengths. 

Craft has an active, knowledgeable community across:

• Official support forums
• Discord channels
• GitHub
• Independent tutorials and learning resources

The community is definitely more professional than hobbyist, so conversations tend to be practical, implementation-led, and rooted in real project work.

For organisations working with agencies or long-term partners, this depth of shared knowledge helps strengthen and future-proof the platform.

How does Craft CMS handle plugins?

Craft CMS supports a mature plugin ecosystem, but it takes a more deliberate approach than platforms like WordPress.

Plugins are typically used to extend specific functionality - such as integrations, form handling, or search — rather than to define core site behaviour.

Key points to understand:

• Craft includes many features natively that require plugins elsewhere
• Plugins are installed and managed directly within the control panel
• Most plugins are professionally maintained, with clear documentation and versioning

Because Craft relies on structured content and developer-defined architecture, plugins tend to enhance a site rather than compensate for platform limitations.

This results in fewer dependencies, simpler update paths, and greater long-term stability, particularly on complex or long-lived platforms.

💡 Don't miss our guide to the best Craft CMS plugins in 2026...

Can I migrate content from another CMS into Craft?

Yes. Migrating content into Craft CMS is common and well supported. A typical migration process includes:

• Mapping existing content structures
• Cleaning up or rationalising legacy data
• Importing content using custom scripts or dedicated migration tools

Because Craft is built around structured fields rather than free-form content, migrations often result in cleaner, more maintainable content models than those used in the systems being replaced.

For a better idea about migrations to Craft CMS, check out our article about migrating from WordPress to Craft CMS...

How is Craft CMS different from WordPress?

WordPress and Craft CMS are very similar in a great many ways. And at a high level, the difference between the two is philosophical:

WordPress is content-first and template-led. It works best when content fits predefined page types.

Craft CMS is model-first. Content structure is designed deliberately, before templates are built.

This makes Craft particularly strong for:

• Complex content relationships
• Multi-channel publishing
• Editorial governance at scale

We explore this in more depth in our Craft CMS vs WordPress comparison, which looks beyond features to long-term usability and ownership.

How is Craft CMS different from Drupal?

Craft and Drupal are often compared because both are powerful and flexible, but they serve vastly different organisational profiles.

Drupal tends to suit very large, highly regulated ecosystems with significant internal development capacity.

Craft CMS is typically leaner, with a faster development experience and a gentler learning curve for editors.

Our Craft CMS vs Drupal article breaks down these differences in detail, particularly around complexity, cost of ownership, and team size.

Is Craft CMS headless?

Yes (well, it can be), but it doesn’t force you to choose. Craft can be used as:

• A traditional CMS
• A headless CMS
• Or a hybrid of both

This flexibility allows organisations to adopt headless approaches where they add value, without committing the entire platform to that model from day one.

Are there pre-built themes or templates for Craft CMS?

Craft CMS doesn’t rely on pre-built themes in the same way platforms like WordPress do.

While starter projects and boilerplates exist, Craft is fundamentally designed for bespoke development rather than off-the-shelf theming. It’s a deliberate choice. 

The trade-off is straightforward:

• Less instant visual setup
• Significantly greater control, consistency, and long-term flexibility

For organisations that need a distinctive digital presence rather than a templated site, this approach is often a strength rather than a limitation.

Does Craft CMS have a visual page builder?

Craft CMS does not include a drag-and-drop page builder by default. Instead, it is built around:

• Structured content fields and entries
• Developer-defined layout components
• Controlled editorial patterns

This approach avoids the free-form layout editing common in page-builder tools. While it can feel more constrained to users coming from systems like Elementor or Gutenberg, it helps maintain design consistency and reduces long-term technical and content debt.

Is Craft CMS easy for editors to use?

Craft CMS is widely regarded as intuitive for content editors once the site has been properly structured.

Its control panel is clean and purpose-built, with editors working through clearly defined fields rather than unrestricted content blocks. This reduces ambiguity and helps minimise editorial errors. Key editorial features include:

• Live Preview
• Drafts and content versioning
• A clear separation between content and presentation

As a result, teams often report greater confidence when managing content, particularly on larger or more complex websites where clarity and consistency matter.

Is Craft CMS good for marketing teams?

Yes, but as with everything, it all depends. Craft CMS tends to work best for marketing teams who value:

• Consistency across channels
• Structured campaigns and landing pages
• Confidence that content won’t “break” layouts

It can feel more constrained than drag-and-drop page builders at first, but that constraint is usually intentional and beneficial over time. It’s not always a good thing to be able to create anything.

Is Craft CMS suitable for complex websites?

Yes. Craft CMS is well-suited to complex website builds, not just smaller or simpler projects.

It’s commonly used for:

• Multi-site platforms
• Multilingual websites
• Content-heavy, long-lived digital platforms

Like Drupal, Craft is designed to handle structured content and complex relationships. The key difference is in how that complexity is managed. Where Drupal often exposes much of its configuration and logic directly to editors and administrators, Craft typically keeps complexity at the model and development layer.

Because content structures are defined deliberately from the outset, complexity in Craft tends to remain controlled rather than accumulating organically over time; a distinction that often appeals to teams looking for long-term clarity without sacrificing flexibility.

How customisable is Craft CMS?

One of the major selling points of Craft CMS is how flexible it is. It’s customisable by design. In fact, this is one of the major reasons why we work solely on Craft CMS for website builds.

Craft doesn’t impose front-end frameworks, templating conventions, or editorial models. Developers have full control over:

• Content structure
• Templates
• Integrations
• Performance strategies

This makes it ideal for organisations that want a CMS shaped around their needs, rather than shaping their needs around a CMS.

How does Craft CMS handle performance and scalability?

Craft CMS itself is lightweight. As a result, it can perform as well as any other CMS. That said, like all other content management systems, performance will be primarily influenced by:

• Hosting
• Caching strategy
• Front-end implementation

When built, hosted, and maintained well, Craft websites scale comfortably for high-traffic and content-rich platforms.

How do backups work in Craft CMS?

Craft CMS does not enforce a single backup approach, allowing teams to align backups with their hosting setup and operational requirements.

Common strategies include:

• Server-level automated backups
• Database snapshots
• Hosting-platform–managed backup systems

Because Craft stores content in a structured database and keeps it separate from templates and presentation logic, recovery processes are typically predictable, provided backups are configured and tested correctly.

Can Craft CMS support serverless or modern hosting setups?

Yes, depending on how it’s implemented. Craft CMS can be deployed within modern infrastructure models, including:

• Containerised environments
• Read-only or largely immutable file systems
• Headless or API-first architectures using Craft’s GraphQL and element APIs

As with most CMS platforms, these approaches introduce additional architectural complexity. They’re best adopted in response to clear technical or operational requirements, rather than purely to follow infrastructure trends.

Is Craft CMS secure?

Yes. Craft has a strong security track record and a clear, responsible disclosure process.

Updates are regular, well-documented, and generally non-disruptive, which encourages teams to keep sites current rather than deferring maintenance. That said, as with any software, if it isn’t kept up to date, security vulnerabilities can creep in.

Can Craft CMS integrate with other systems?

Yes. Craft CMS is designed to integrate cleanly with external systems, including:

• CRMs
• Digital asset management (DAM) platforms
• Marketing automation tools
• Search, analytics, and data platforms

Craft supports integrations through native APIs, webhooks, and GraphQL, which allows data to be exchanged in a structured and predictable way. 

Compared with ecosystems that rely heavily on third-party plugins, this API-led approach often results in clearer data flows and fewer hidden dependencies.

Is Craft CMS right for you?

Craft CMS is best suited to organisations that view their website as a long-term digital platform rather than a short-term marketing asset. It’s a strong choice if:

Your website plays a strategic role

For example, supporting lead generation, content publishing, product information, or multiple audiences — not just acting as a brochure.

Your content needs structure and reuse

Craft excels when content appears in multiple contexts, needs to be queried, or must stay consistent across pages, channels, or sites.

You expect your platform to evolve

If your site will grow in scope, add new content types, expand internationally, or integrate with other systems, Craft’s flexibility helps prevent rebuilds later.

You value control and predictability over convenience

Craft prioritises clarity, maintainability, and long-term stability over quick visual setup.
 

You may want to consider alternatives if:

You need a site to be live immediately

Template-driven platforms or hosted builders can be better suited for rapid launches with minimal setup.

Budget is the primary constraint

While Craft’s licence cost is modest, bespoke development and ongoing support mean it’s rarely the lowest-cost option upfront.

Your content model is simple and unlikely to change

If your site consists of a small number of static pages with limited structure, Craft’s flexibility may be unnecessary.

In short, Craft CMS tends to reward organisations thinking in terms of years rather than months. When content, structure, and longevity matter, it performs exceptionally well. When speed and absolute simplicity are the dominant priorities, other platforms may be a better fit.