Short answer up front. If the people who run your site after launch are marketers, I’d build it in WordPress with Divi 5, because they get a page builder they already understand and I still write every module underneath it. If your site is content-heavy, your content model is complex, and you have a developer on retainer, Craft CMS 5 is the better tool, and it is genuinely good. I know because in September 2026 I built the same 13-section homepage in both, and both builds are live below.
I’ve built on WordPress for most of my career, and every year or two a developer I respect tells me I should look at Craft CMS. This month I finally did, and I did it the only way that gives a real answer: I took a finished design and built it twice.
Craft CMS vs WordPress with Divi at a glance
| Craft CMS 5.11 | WordPress with Divi 5.9 | |
|---|---|---|
| Editing content | Structured fields and Matrix blocks in the control panel | Click a section, edit it in the Visual Builder panel |
| Changing layout without a developer | No | Yes |
| Content model | Native: fields, entry types, Matrix, Tables, all versionable in code | Custom post types plus Advanced Custom Fields |
| Plugins in this build | Zero | Zero stock Divi modules; 21 custom modules |
| Forms, commerce, memberships | Craft Commerce (paid), third-party plugins, or your own code | Gravity Forms, WooCommerce, membership plugins |
| Hosting | PHP 8.2 and Composer, deployed from a shell | Any WordPress host |
| Licence | Solo free; Team $279; Pro $399 per install, plus $99 a year for updates | Divi $89 a year or $249 once, unlimited sites |
| Lighthouse in this test, mobile | 97 performance | 100 performance, accessibility, best practices, SEO |
| Who can maintain it later | A smaller pool of Craft developers | The largest developer pool there is |
Both builds are live if you’d rather look than read:
- WordPress with Divi 5: marcusz39.sg-host.com/divi
- Craft CMS 5: marcusz39.sg-host.com/craft
Nothing on either one is real. The copy is filler and the buttons go nowhere. The editing experience and the motion are the point. If you only want the verdict for your own site, the Divi vs Craft CMS page has the short version. The Framer half of the same weekend has its own write-up.
Why build the same site twice?
Because opinions about a CMS are cheap, and a finished build is not. The design is a 13-section marketing homepage for a travel technology company. It has a parallax hero, click-to-open mega menus, a mobile drawer, a pinned section where a running total types itself out as you scroll, a logo rail and a timeline that scrub with the page, count-up metrics, and a spec-sheet section where the SOC 2 and ISO 27001 rows have to show “In progress” until the client can prove otherwise. It also has to pass WCAG 2.2 AA and respect reduced-motion settings.
In other words, it’s a normal, slightly ambitious agency build, which is exactly what I wanted to test. Both versions had to reproduce the same static prototype, and both had to be editable by someone who has never seen the code.
What did I build in Craft CMS 5?
Craft doesn’t ship with a theme or a page builder. You define the content model, write templates in Twig, and the control panel gives your editors forms that match. I liked that immediately.
Instead of clicking the model together in the control panel, I wrote it as a single migration. That one file, 569 lines of PHP, creates the image volume, a “Home” single, a Matrix field with one block type per section, two globals for the site header and footer, and every field in between. Then it pours in the content and the 23 images. Drop the database, run one command, and the finished site comes back. I did that dozens of times while I was working, and I’d do it in a sales call.
Two modelling choices are worth sharing. Anything list-shaped, like metrics, milestones and footer links, became a Table field with typed columns, because it keeps the editing screen compact. Navigation became a Matrix inside a Matrix (menus contain rails, rails contain links) because rails need their own labels and a featured card. The SOC 2 and ISO 27001 rows are a dropdown column, so the client flips “In progress” to “Confirmed” with one select and the chip on the page changes with it.
The templates reproduce the prototype’s markup exactly, so the prototype’s stylesheet and JavaScript ran unmodified. Plugin count: zero. Everything is core Craft.
What did I build in WordPress with Divi 5?
On the WordPress side I went further than a normal theme. Divi 5 lets you register your own modules for the Visual Builder, and I wrote a generator that turns one spec per section into a module: PHP rendering on the server, a matching React bundle for the builder, a settings file, and the section’s CSS with the colour and spacing values rewritten to Divi’s Variable Library. That produced 21 modules: 13 sections and 8 child types (a metric, a menu, a tally row, a spec row and so on).
Every visible string, link, image, toggle and number is a module setting that defaults to the design’s copy. The partners in the logo rail are a custom post type with the logo as the featured image. The timeline milestones are a repeater field inside the timeline module. The announcement bar, header and footer live in the Theme Builder so they show on every page. Videos open in a modal that the module owns.
So a client editing this site clicks a section, changes a headline in the panel, and saves. Same as any Divi site they’ve used before. Underneath, none of it is a stock Divi module.
What does Craft CMS do better than WordPress?
Structured content is native. On WordPress, a proper content model means custom post types plus Advanced Custom Fields plus the discipline to keep them in sync across environments. In Craft that’s just what the product is. Fields, entry types, Matrix blocks and Tables are core, and they can be defined in code and versioned. It made me realise how much of my WordPress process exists to compensate for WordPress.
No plugins, and no pressure to add any. The original prospect for this design had one hard requirement: no plugins, because a plugin update had taken their WordPress site down. Craft met that requirement without me trying. The whole build is core CMS, one migration, and templates.
The control panel is quick and uncluttered. No admin notices, no upsells, no plugin menus. An editor sees the sections of the home page as a stack of blocks and can reorder, duplicate, disable or remove them without a developer.
Lightweight by default. There’s nothing to strip out. On WordPress I spent real time removing things (more on that below).
What made me nervous about Craft?
There’s no page builder, and there isn’t going to be one. A Matrix of section blocks is the closest thing, and it’s a good editing experience for content. But it isn’t layout. If a client wants to move a column, change a background or add a section type that doesn’t exist yet, that’s a developer task every time. For a marketing team that’s used to Divi or Elementor, that’s the conversation you’ll have in month two.
Major versions are a project. Craft’s supported-versions page shows a new major version every two to four years (Craft 3 in 2018, Craft 4 in 2022, Craft 5 in 2024), and the policy is at least two years of active support plus one more year of security fixes, although Craft 5’s published window runs to the end of 2030. The upgrade path is: get to the last minor of the old version, update Composer constraints and plugins, run the upgrade, fix what broke. Craft publishes a Rector rule set that automates most of the code changes, which is a good sign. But agencies sell Craft upgrades as a service line, and that tells you they aren’t free. On WordPress a major release is usually an afternoon.
Licensing is per install, and it’s not free once a client needs users. Craft Solo is free with one account. As of Craft’s March 2024 pricing update, a Pro licence is $399 per installation plus $99 per year to keep receiving updates. The Team edition sits between them at $279 per installation plus the same $99 a year, with up to five user accounts. Craft Commerce is another $1,199 plus $299 a year on top. None of that is unreasonable for a business site, but it needs to be in the proposal.
The hosting story is narrower. Craft 5 needs PHP 8.2 and Composer. I deployed it to the same SiteGround account as the WordPress build and it worked fine, but it took a shell session, a pinned Composer platform, and a small deploy script. It won’t install from a hosting control panel.
Ecosystem size. There are good Craft plugins and good Craft developers. There are far fewer of both than there are for WordPress, and that matters when a client wants to be able to hire someone else after you.
What does WordPress with Divi do better than Craft?
The client already knows how to use it. This is the one that decided it for me. I can hand over a Divi site and skip the training session. Drag a section, edit the text, save. When a marketing lead asks “can I change this myself?”, the answer is yes for layout as well as content.
Divi 5 custom modules give a developer the whole stack. This is the part I hadn’t appreciated before this weekend. I wasn’t choosing between “page builder” and “custom code”. Each of my 21 modules is custom code that presents itself inside the page builder. I control the markup, the CSS, the fields and the defaults, and the client gets the drag-and-drop layer on top. Craft has no equivalent to that combination.
Post types, repeaters, forms and commerce are all there. Partners as a post type. Milestones as a repeater. Gravity Forms for submissions that a sales team can actually track. WooCommerce if a store ever shows up. On Craft those are a first-party paid plugin (Commerce), a third-party plugin, or your own code.
Performance can be excellent. The live Divi build scores 100 for performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO in Lighthouse, on mobile and desktop. The Craft build on the same host scored 97 for performance the same day. To be fair to Craft, that gap is my doing rather than the platform’s. I subset and self-hosted the fonts on the WordPress side and haven’t done it on Craft yet. The point is that the WordPress result is achievable, not that Craft is slow.
One licence, unlimited sites. Divi is $89 a year or $249 once, for as many sites as you build. That difference compounds across an agency’s client list.
What does WordPress cost you in return?
I’d be doing you a disservice if I stopped there, because a good chunk of my weekend went into fighting WordPress and Divi.
- Divi loads scripts you may not need. jQuery, jquery-migrate, waypoints, fitvids and a few more, around 60 KB, even on a page with no stock modules. I wrote a hook that scans the page and drops them when nothing needs them.
- Divi ships a viewport tag that blocks pinch-zoom (
user-scalable=0), which fails WCAG. I override it in the child theme. - Divi requests every weight of your Google Fonts. My build was loading the same variable font file three times before I self-hosted a subset. That change alone took the font payload from 187 KB to 64 KB.
- Divi’s wrappers fight your CSS. Every module selector in my build is prefixed with the page container so it outranks Divi’s own rules. There’s a log in the project of every rule that had to live outside a module and why.
- Plugins are dependencies. My rule is under ten per site, and I build modals, sliders, testimonials, team members and job listings straight into the theme rather than installing something for each one. That rule exists because of sites like the one the Craft prospect described.
None of that is a reason not to use WordPress. All of it is a reason to have a developer who knows where the bodies are buried.
Craft CMS vs WordPress: what does each cost in 2026?
| Craft CMS 5 | WordPress + Divi 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| CMS licence | Solo free; Team $279 per install + $99/yr (5 users); Pro $399 per install + $99/yr | Free |
| Builder / theme | None (Twig templates) | Divi $89/yr or $249 lifetime, unlimited sites |
| Commerce | Craft Commerce $1,199 + $299/yr | WooCommerce free (paid extensions vary) |
| Forms | Third-party plugin or custom | Gravity Forms (paid) or others |
| Hosting | PHP 8.2+, Composer; a shell session to deploy | Any WordPress host |
| Major upgrades | Every 2 to 4 years; a scoped project | Roughly annual; usually routine |
Prices checked September 2026 against each vendor’s own pricing pages and announcements. They change; confirm before quoting.
Craft CMS or WordPress: which should you pick?
Pick Craft if your site is content-heavy, your content model is complex, you have a developer on retainer, and the people editing the site want good forms rather than a canvas. Publications, universities, product documentation, multi-site groups with strict governance. Craft is genuinely good at that, and “no plugins” is a real security argument.
Pick WordPress with Divi if the people who own the site after launch are marketers, not developers. If layout changes need to happen without a ticket. If you’ll need forms, a store, or a membership area at some point. If you want the widest possible pool of people who can work on it later. That’s most small and mid-sized businesses I talk to, and it’s the same answer I give in page builder or custom theme.
Pick either if your only concern is performance or accessibility. Both got there. What decided those scores was the build, not the CMS.
Where I landed
I went into this expecting to come out a little embarrassed about how long I’d stuck with WordPress. Instead I came out with a clearer reason to stay: WordPress with Divi 5 is the only one of the two where I can give a client a page builder they already understand and still write every module myself. Craft made me a better WordPress developer in one weekend, mostly by showing me what a content model looks like when nobody has to apologise for it. It’s on my shortlist for the right project. It just isn’t the default.
If you’re weighing the two for a site of your own, I’m happy to walk through both demos with you and tell you which one I’d build for your team. Book a free 30-minute call or reach out through the contact page. If you already know it’s Divi, the Divi developer page has prices.
Craft CMS vs WordPress FAQ
Is Craft CMS good for a small business website?
It can be, if the business has a developer on call. Craft gives editors clean forms for content, but every layout change is a developer task, and the Team or Pro licence plus a Composer-based host add cost that a typical small business site doesn’t need. For most small businesses I’d build on WordPress with Divi and spend the difference on content.
Can a non-developer edit a Craft CMS site?
Yes, for content. In the Craft build, an editor changes any headline, image, metric or status chip from a form in the control panel, and can reorder or disable whole sections. What they cannot do is change the layout of a section or add a kind of section that doesn’t exist yet. That needs a developer and a template change.
Does Craft CMS need plugins?
No. The Craft build in this article runs on core Craft with zero plugins, including the content model, the image handling and the navigation. Forms, SEO tooling and commerce are where plugins or custom code come in, and Craft Commerce is a paid first-party plugin at $1,199 plus $299 a year.
How hard is a Craft CMS major upgrade?
It is a scoped project rather than a click. Craft releases a new major version every two to four years, and the path is to reach the last minor of your current version, update Composer constraints and plugins, run the upgrade and fix what broke. Craft’s Rector rules automate most of the code changes. Budget developer time for it, the same way agencies do.
Is Craft CMS worth it over WordPress for an agency?
For an agency whose clients are publishers, universities or documentation-heavy products, often yes, because the content model is native and there is nothing to strip out. For an agency whose clients are small and mid-sized businesses with marketing teams, WordPress with Divi wins on handover, on the size of the hiring pool, and on licence cost: Divi is $89 a year or $249 once for unlimited sites, against $279 to $399 per Craft install plus $99 a year each.
Since writing this I built the same design six more times, in Divi, GeneratePress, Elementor, Astra, Kadence and the WordPress block editor, and measured every one of them. Read the six-way WordPress theme comparison.