From Craft CMS to Prismic

We are the Craft CMS to Prismic migration experts

Challenges with Craft CMS

Key pain points

The elephant in the room is PHP. Craft requires a traditional LAMP-style hosting setup with PHP 8.2+ and MySQL or Postgres, which immediately rules out the serverless and edge-first hosting that modern JavaScript frameworks thrive on. You're managing servers, configuring OPcache, tuning database connections, and dealing with all the operational overhead that comes with self-hosted PHP applications. For teams already working in the JavaScript ecosystem, this is a hard sell.

Major version upgrades are genuinely painful. Craft doesn't support skipping major versions, so migrating from Craft 2 to 5 means stepping through every version in between. Each jump brings breaking changes to Twig templates, PHP requirements, and plugin compatibility. We've seen agencies spend weeks on upgrades that should have been straightforward. The Team tier starts at $279 per project and the Pro tier costs $399, plus $99 annual renewals for both. A free Solo tier exists for single-user projects, but costs still add up for agencies, especially when you factor in plugins and the recent trend toward stricter licence enforcement in the control panel.

The community, while passionate, is relatively small compared to WordPress or even newer headless CMS platforms. When you hit an edge case or need help with a niche plugin, you may find yourself digging through GitHub issues rather than finding a ready answer. And while Craft Cloud exists as a managed hosting option, it's still maturing and doesn't yet match the deployment experience you'd get with platforms like Vercel or Netlify.

PHP hosting requirements

You need a traditional server with PHP 8.2+, MySQL or Postgres, and proper configuration. No serverless, no edge deployment, no modern hosting shortcuts.

Painful major version upgrades

You can't skip major versions, so upgrades mean stepping through each release with breaking Twig, PHP, and plugin changes along the way.

Smaller community and ecosystem

The community is dedicated but small. Finding answers to niche problems often means digging through GitHub issues or waiting on forum responses.

Licence costs add up

The Team tier is $279 per project and Pro is $399, both with $99 annual renewals, plus paid plugins on top. A free Solo tier exists for single-user projects, but costs add up quickly for agencies managing multiple client sites.

Learning curve for non-developers

Craft assumes your team includes developers. Content editors coming from WordPress or simpler tools will need time to adjust to the more structured interface.

Twig templating limitations

Twig is clean but limited compared to modern component frameworks. Complex UI logic gets awkward, and you're locked into whatever Twig version Craft supports.

Benefits of Prismic

Key advantages

Prismic is phenomenal for simplistic page-builder-style websites. Its simplistic drag-and-drop page builder, along with the newer code-based version, helps you generate like-for-like components and automates the developers' process.

The built-in media optimisation tool is also great, so you can ensure that even if you're uploading 4mb images, they're going to be scaled down with minimal compression artefacts.

Content scheduling capabilities

Prismic makes it ridiculously easy to plan content ahead with built-in scheduling without any plugins or workarounds. Just pick a time, hit schedule, and your release goes live exactly when you want it.

Intuitive visual editor

The editor feels natural even for non-technical teams, with clean previews and simple fields. It keeps the writing flow distraction-free while still giving developers structure.

Dark-mode UI in a browser window shows a stylized oval graphic with a bounding box and a cursor on a sidebar input field.

Efficient slices feature

Slices let you build repeatable, flexible components that marketers can rearrange without breaking layouts. It’s the closest thing to structured Lego-blocks for content teams.

Dark mode UI wireframe showing a left sidebar with icons and a main content panel with a progress bar and form elements.

Rich media embedding

Embedding images, videos, and rich assets takes seconds. You don't need to hack templates. Just paste, pick, and publish.

Flexible component reuse

Developers create once, marketing teams reuse forever. Slices and custom types make content scalable without adding complexity.

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Seamless publishing experience

Publishing is fast, predictable, and drama-free. If you want to do a small tweak or a full-page release, everything ships smoothly with minimal cognitive load.