From KeystoneJS to Craft CMS

We are the KeystoneJS to Craft CMS migration experts

Challenges with KeystoneJS

Key pain points

The biggest challenge with KeystoneJS is that it hands you all the responsibility that a managed CMS would normally handle. Deployment is entirely on you, and the documentation around production hosting, Docker configuration, and scaling is thin. We've seen teams struggle to go from a smooth local development experience to a reliable production setup, especially if they don't have dedicated DevOps support. The admin UI Docker image alone can balloon to over a gigabyte, which is a headache for containerised deployments.

The community around Keystone is significantly smaller than competitors like Strapi or Payload. That means fewer tutorials, fewer plugins, and slower answers when you hit an edge case. The ecosystem of ready-made integrations is almost non-existent, so you'll be building most things from scratch. For an agency working on client projects with deadlines, that time cost adds up quickly.

Content editors also tend to have a harder time with Keystone compared to more polished alternatives. The admin UI is functional but feels utilitarian, and non-technical users often need more onboarding than you'd expect. There's no visual editing, no preview infrastructure, and no real content workflow features like drafts, publishing schedules, or approval chains without building them yourself. If your client's content team needs a CMS they can pick up and run with, Keystone usually isn't the answer.

Deployment complexity

Self-hosting is the only option, and the docs don't hold your hand. Getting Keystone into production requires real infrastructure knowledge, and the large Docker image sizes make it worse.

Small community and ecosystem

Compared to Strapi or even Payload, the community is much smaller. Fewer plugins, fewer tutorials, and slower support when things go wrong.

No built-in content workflows

There are no turnkey drafts, scheduled publishing, or approval chains. Keystone provides field primitives that can be assembled into publishing workflows, but you need to wire them up yourself.

Admin UI feels dated

The admin panel is functional but lacks the polish and UX of modern CMS interfaces. Non-technical editors often find it confusing and need more training.

No visual editing or live preview

There's no way for editors to see content in context before publishing. You'd need to build your own preview infrastructure, which is a significant engineering effort.

Scaling requires significant effort

Running Keystone under high traffic means managing session stores, reverse proxies, and server resources yourself. It doesn't scale as smoothly as cloud-native CMS alternatives.

Benefits of Craft CMS

Key advantages

Craft CMS is one of those platforms we genuinely respect from a developer standpoint. The content modelling is best-in-class for a traditional CMS. You define sections, entry types, and fields with real precision, and the authoring experience maps cleanly to the underlying data structure. If your content team needs a CMS that actually reflects how the site is built, Craft delivers that better than most. The Twig templating layer is clean and predictable, and the admin UI is fast and intuitive once editors get past the initial learning curve.

Where Craft really shines is in the middle ground between simple marketing sites and full-blown enterprise builds. It's flexible enough to handle complex content architectures without the bloat of something like WordPress, and the built-in GraphQL API means you can use it headless if you want to pair it with a modern frontend. The plugin ecosystem is smaller but noticeably higher quality than what you'd find in WordPress, and the Composer-based workflow means your whole project can live in version control properly.

We've seen agencies build genuinely impressive work on Craft, especially for content-heavy sites where editorial workflows matter. If your team includes developers and you want a CMS that rewards careful architecture, Craft is a solid choice. It's not trying to be everything to everyone, and that focus shows.

That said, we'd typically recommend a headless CMS like Sanity for most of the projects we take on. Craft is at its best when you're comfortable with PHP and want a tightly integrated traditional or hybrid setup. If you're building on Next.js or a modern JavaScript stack, you'll find more natural fits elsewhere.

Exceptional content modelling

Craft's field and section system gives you precise control over your content structure. You can model complex relationships between content types without fighting the CMS.

Clean authoring experience

The admin panel is fast, well-organized, and maps directly to how content is structured. Editors can work efficiently once they understand the layout.

Built-in GraphQL API

Craft ships with a native GraphQL API, so you can use it headless without plugins or workarounds. It's deeply integrated and well-documented.

Composer-based modern workflow

Everything is managed through Composer, so your project, plugins, and dependencies all live in version control. Deployments through CI/CD pipelines work smoothly.

Higher quality plugin ecosystem

The plugin store is smaller than WordPress but the quality bar is noticeably higher. Plugins are better maintained and less likely to break your site on update.

Granular user permissions

Built-in role and permission management is detailed and flexible. You can lock down exactly what each editor can see and do without needing third-party plugins.