From Craft CMS to WordPress

We are the Craft CMS to WordPress 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 WordPress

Key advantages

We're trying our hardest to think of good reasons to move to WordPress, but outside of "I like PHP errors" or trying to build a website for under £500, I honestly can't think of a good reason. If you're trying to do things on the cheap, we would highly recommend using a template from Framer or Webflow. They're better solutions in almost every way.

But if you're hell-bent on building a WordPress website, we can't stop you. For that reason, we'd highly recommend SiteGround for hosting to keep it cheap and optimize the hell out of it with their performance plugin. Avoid installing tons of plugins if you can; keep it lean and simple.

Plugins for everything

You want a form? A store? A booking system? A horoscope generator for cats? WordPress has a plugin for it. Half the internet runs on “someone already built that.”

Strong community support

If something breaks, someone online has already fixed it, documented it, blogged about it, and made a YouTube tutorial with dramatic background music.

Easy to use

You can be a writer, founder, or intern, you can easily build a website using WordPress. It doesn’t demand a CS degree. Click, type, publish. Done.

Vast theme selection

You might need a corporate website, minimal, or even a neon-purple-cyber-punk ecommerce store; just pick a theme and ship. Some even look good straight out of the box.

Ideal for beginners

One of the easiest ways to get a site live without knowing the difference between HTML and “the thing that makes the text bold.”

Flexible configuration options

Layers of configuration, widgets, design settings, and custom plugins will only let you shape WordPress into something that actually fits your use case.