The Craft Menagerie

If you have a content-driven website (and let’s be honest, most websites are), then you need a content management system.

You’ve likely swam through the murky waters of CMS research – is WordPress the best system, what about Drupal, are there better options?

With over a decade of experience engineering and adapting content management systems, Zaengle’s expert team of web developers has chosen to work with just two platforms: Craft CMS and Statamic.

As a Craft Verified Partner for over 5 years, we’ll explain how Craft CMS can save you money, keep your site secure, and provide the best website experience for you and your users.

Unlike WordPress or other blog-centric platforms, Craft CMS is designed to produce rich content experiences that are scalable, and incredibly easy to manage. Trusted by companies like Netflix, Ikea, PBS, TedX, and the Associated Press, along with thousands of businesses and nonprofits, Craft CMS is scalable, secure, and feature-rich.

Benefits of Craft CMS:

• Highly flexible
• Based on open-source technology
• Stable and secure
• Features flexible content structures that can be enforced (without breaking things)
• Includes best-in-class content authoring experiences and editorial workflows
• Features live content and page previews
• Deployed across thousands of websites and features an established partner network
• Built for teams

Your website deserves a content management system that’s engineered FOR your website, instead of one that you just “have to make work.” 

Our clients consistently tell us how easy Craft CMS is to use, and the added peace of mind from knowing their site is secure is invaluable. 

Additionally, Craft CMS gives your team the ability to create a design experience specific to your needs without making any assumptions about your content — something that Wordpress and other platforms simply cannot do.

Why Craft CMS is the Right Choice:

• If you enjoy seeing changes on your site before everyone else does, Craft’s live preview is an amazing feature for content management and authors.
• If you're tired of breaking things because you don’t know HTML, Craft offers a bulletproof UI that allows you to design rich content without writing any code.
• If you’re sick of WordPress and its many security vulnerabilities (especially with plugins), Craft is highly secure and super easy to update.
• If you want the ability to manage your content and digital assets seamlessly, Craft features desktop-class asset management that gets out of the way so your content can shine.
• If you have multiple websites to manage, or you need to deploy a design system across sub-brands or ancillary pages, Craft offers multi-tenant functionality that allows you to run multiple sites from a single Craft install.

If you don’t support open-source technology.

Craft CMS is built on open-source technology, so if your organization utilizes a proprietary tech stack, Craft CMS is not a good fit for you. If your organization can support open-source platforms, we believe Craft CMS is the best content management system in the market today.

If you want enterprise level software.

Craft CMS is not enterprise software like Salesforce. Craft CMS is powerful and feature-rich, but if your organization requires enterprise level support you may need to turn elsewhere.

If you want a one click, plug-and-play system.

Craft CMS is incredibly easy to set up, but it does require some development expertise. And while Craft CMS features a thriving plugin community, almost all of them require a bit of coding to fully utilize. Deploying Craft CMS for your organization is best done using a certified Craft CMS partner like Zaengle.

If you want a free platform.

Unlike free platforms like Wordpress or Wix, Craft CMS is a paid framework. That being said, Craft CMS is far from being cost-prohibitive. Sure, it’s more expensive than other platforms, but in our experience “free” is often the most expensive of all. Not to mention, there is value in choosing a profitable product that consistently reinvests to improve the platform, harden security, and release new features.

Hosting: $20+/mo depending on traffic

Starting License: $299 one-time fee

Plugins (commonly used):

• SEOMatic: $99
• Navigation: $19
• Retour: $59
• LinkIt: $39
• Imager $99
• Freeform: $159

Zaengle has been an official Craft CMS partner since the beginning and is our CMS of choice for content-driven websites. In fact, we’ve found a use case for Craft CMS in almost all of our work, from small marketing sites to custom software.