WordPress vs. Statamic: A Comprehensive Comparison (2025)

Is Statamic the best WordPress alternative in 2025?

WordPress has been the dominant Content Management System (CMS) for over a decade. But its main corporate sponsor recently withdrew 98% of their contribution hours. So you might be wondering: Is WordPress still the right CMS for me? Or is it time to switch?

But you might be hesitant to switch to a new tool. Don’t you hate it when you commit to a new tool and, after weeks of work, you realize it can’t do something you absolutely need? Let’s avoid that with a comprehensive comparison of WordPress vs. Statamic, looking at 115 features across 19 categories.

The Big Picture

WordPress began as a blogging tool. And it’s really good at blogging. If you want more than that, you’ll probably need to dip into its ecosystem. But that ecosystem of plugins and themes can enable your website to do virtually anything you can imagine.

As a static site generator, Statamic is headless by default. (It does have the option to integrate with a database if needed.) It can do much more out of the box than WordPress can. But it has a more limited ecosystem, so if it can’t do it out of the box, there is more of a risk that it can’t do it at all.

WordPress itself is free. Statamic does have a free version, but most users will want to use the pro version. That’s $275 per site in year 1, and $65 per site per year thereafter. But in return, you get direct support from the development team and the peace of mind in knowing that you’re not relying on volunteers or corporate benevolence for ongoing development.

I’m starting this series with Statamic because its users really, really love it. They’re clearly doing something right. It’s not for everyone, but it might be for you.

But for you to know if it’s for you, you need to know if it can meet your website’s core needs. That’s the question we’re answering here.

Content Management

Scheduling Posts and Pages

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Statamic: Yes, in core.

Scheduling Edits to a Post or Page

WordPress: No. But the PublishPress Revisions plugin adds this functionality for $69/year. I’ve used this plugin before and it gets the job done well, but its user interface has a steeper-than-average learning curve.

Statamic: Yes, through Revisions.

Scheduling Edits to Part of a Post or Page

WordPress: Not in core. Block Visibility enables this in Gutenberg, and Bricks Builder does enable you to set a condition to display content if a certain date is reached.

Statamic: No.

View history of revisions and restore a past version of a post/page

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes, in Pro version ($275/site year 1, $65/site following years).

Custom content models (custom post types)

WordPress: Not in core. Plugins like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) or Metabox add this functionality. ACF has a $49/year pro version, but the free version will satisfy many use cases.

Statamic: Yes, in core.

User roles and permissions so that different users can do different things

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes.

Editorial workflow approval process, so there can be a user type who can create content and submit it for another user to approve and publish

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes, through Revisions feature avaialable in Pro version ($275 year 1, $65 following years).

Media management

Organize media library into folders

WordPress: Not in core. HappyFiles ($59/one-time) adds this feature.

Statamic: Yes, in core.

Organize media library with tagging

WordPress: Not in core. Media Library Assistant (free) adds this feature.

Statamic: Yes, in core.

Automatic image optimization on upload, converting to webp or avif and compressing

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel ($99.90/year) offers this feature.

Statamic: Not in core. Spatie’s Statamic Responsive Images (free) offers this feature.

Batch optimize old images, converting to webp or avif and compressing

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel ($99.90/year) offers this feature.

Statamic: Not in core. Spatie’s Statamic Responsive Images (free) offers this feature.

Automatically replace one image with another in every instance where it’s used across a website

WordPress: Not in core. Enable Media Replace, a free plugin from ShortPixel, offers this feature.

Statamic: Yes (in core).

Adaptive Images (automatically delivering correct image sizes for different screen sizes for better performance)

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel’s Adaptive Images plugin offers this feature.

Statamic: Not in core. Spatie’s Statamic Responsive Images (free) offers this feature.

Forms

Built-in default form builder

WordPress: Not in core. Two good options are Gravity Forms ($59/year for basic features, $259/year for all features) or WSForm ($59/year for basic features, $249/year for all features). There are a few free plugin options, but they’re limited enough that this is probably the #1 most likely feature that even small WordPress sites will need a premium plugin.

Statmic: Yes, in core (Pro version).

Conditional Logic (form fields that appear depending on something that happened in a previous form field)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Statamic: Yes, in core; limited conditional logic available through core’s Field Conditions. Also available through the Flexible Forms extension ($39/year).

Integrations to automatically send entries to third-party email providers like Mailchimp and Constant Contact

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Statamic: Not in core. There is a free Mailchimp addon, but less good news for Constant Contact users. The only Constant Contact integration I can find, from jmalko on GitHub, appears to be abandoned and hasn’t been updated for three years.

Integrations to automatically send entries to customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Salesforce or Hubspot

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Statamic: Kinda. There aren’t direct integrations in core, but there are webhooks. These require more technical proficiency but can often get the job done.

Payment forms integrated with PayPal

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Statamic: Not available.

Payment forms integrated with Stripe

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Statamic: Not in core. Available through Stripe Form Field ($35/site).

Multi-page forms

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Statamic: Yes, in core.

Multi-step, multi-user complex workflow forms

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms plus Gravity Flow (an additional $299/year). WSForm can’t do this one.

Statamic: Not available.

Design

Drag and drop page builder

WordPress: Yes, kinda. WordPress has a page builder in core, commonly known as Gutenberg. But its functionality is limited enough that a high percentage of WordPress-based sites use a more fully-featured page builder. The most popular is Elementor ($84/year). Two of the best are Bricks Builder ($79/year) and the upcoming Etch.

Statamic: Yes. The team behind Statamic has developed the Bard Fieldtype, which can be used to build out complex pages.

Drag and drop page builder with fully visual option where you can see what the page looks like as you build it

WordPress: Yes, kinda. Gutenberg’s builder view is similar but not identical to the end result. Elementor, Bricks, and Etch are all fully visual page builders.

Statamic: Yes, kinda; a page built with Bard isn’t built in the visual builder, but a fully visual preview will be visible on the right hand side of the screen.

Drag and drop page builder enabling complex layouts and all CSS features

WordPress: No. Gutenberg has enough limitations that users who need complex layouts end up using a page builder like Elementor, Bricks, or Etch, unless they want to do a considerable amount of custom development.

Statamic: No; as best as I can tell, complex layouts and templates can’t be built in Bard.

CSS Framework to set and later change CSS settings on a sitewide basis

WordPress: No. Bricks Builder and Etch both integrate with Automatic.css ($79/year).

Statamic: Yes, CSS frameworks (including TailwindCSS) can be integrated in core.

Pre-built modules like accordions, heroes, news layouts, and image portfolios

WordPress: Not in core. Elementor has their own; Bricks and Etch have several options, one of which is Frames.

Statamic: There are some options in core via Bard and the Statamic Peak Starter Kit.

Figma integration

WordPress: Not in core. Figma to WordPress ($79/year) integrates Figma designs with WordPress blocks. Frames for Figma integrates Figma designs into Bricks and Etch.

Statamic: Not available.

eCommerce

eCommerce options available

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce (free core with paid plugins of its own) is the most common eCommerce solution for WordPress. NorthCommerce ($499 one-time fee) is a new and promising alternative.

Statamic: Not in core. One directly integrated option is Simple Commerce for Statamic ($139/site). (There are also services like Ecwid that can be embedded via iFrame into most Content Management Systems.)

PayPal integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free PayPal integration (transaction fees apply).

Statamic: Not in core. Included in Simple Commerce (transaction fees apply).

Stripe integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free Stripe integration (transaction fees apply).

Statamic: Not in core. Included in Simple Commerce (transaction fees apply).

Square Payment Gateway integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free Square integration (transaction fees apply).

Statamic: Not available.

Authorize.net integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has an Authorize.net integration (transaction fees apply).

Statamic: Not available.

Google Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooPayments (free) for WooCommerce can enable this.

Statamic: Not available (though Simple Commerce supports it indirectly through Stripe).

Apple Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooPayments (free) for WooCommerce can enable this.

Statamic: Not available (though Simple Commerce supports it indirectly through Stripe).

Amazon Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via Amazon Pay for WooCommerce (free).

Statamic: Not available.

Sales tax calculation

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via WooCommerce Tax (free).

Statamic: Not in core. You can manually define taxes within Simple Commerce on a country/region level, but it appears that Simple Commerce does not come with the sales tax rates for each country, region, and city already set and kept up to date.

Sales tax collection

WordPress: Not available.

Statamic: Not available.

If you want a service that collects sales tax for you and handles the paperwork, you’ll need a platform like Shopify.

UPS / USPS calculations & labels

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce via WooCommerce Shipping (free).

Statamic: Not in core. UPS Shipping for Simple Commerce ($10/site) enables calculating the cost of shipping an item via UPS. It doesn’t enable generating shipping labels. There does not appear to be any option for USPS shipping.

Digital Downloads

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce core. If you’re only selling digital downloads and not physical items, you might choose Easy Digital Downloads ($199/year) instead.

Statamic: Not in core. Available in Simple Commerce.

Digital Downloads from Amazon S3

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce via Amazon S3 Storage for WooCommerce ($89/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Inventory Management

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce.

Statamic: Not in core. Available in Simple Commerce.

Subscription capabilities

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via WooCommerce Subscriptions ($279/year). If you’re only selling subscriptions to digital downloads and not physical items, you might choose Easy Digital Downloads ($199/year) instead.

Statamic: Not available. Statamic can enable users to set up a recurring transaction in Stripe, but (as best as I can tell) this isn’t tied to ongoing access to member-only downloadable materials or member-only sections of a website.

Google Analytics events

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via Google Analytics Pro for WooCommerce ($79/year).

Statamic: Yes, through a snippet that can be easily pasted in.

Facebook Pixel integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Facebook for WooCommerce (free).

Statamic: Yes, through a snippet that can be easily pasted in.

Bookings & Reservations

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in WooCommerce Bookings ($249/year).

Statamic: Not in core. Avaialble via Statamic Reserv ($195/site).

Paid Memberships

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in WooCommerce Memberships ($199/year).

Statamic: Yes, through a workaround. Charge allows recurring payments and can connect those payments to a user role. Content can then be made available to that user role.

Complex Discounts

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Product Dynamic Pricing and Discounts for WooCommerce ($99/year).

Statamic: Not available. (Simple Commerce has basic coupon functionality.)

PDF invoices

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce (free).

Statamic: Not available.

International customers can switch currencies

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Currency Switcher for WooCommerce ($99/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Accessibility

Out of the box default WCAG 2.2 AA compliance

WordPress: Yes, in core. Accessibility in the ecosystem is more hit and miss. There are some tools that have really focused on it (like Gravity Forms, Bricks Builder, and Etch) and others that are more problematic.

Statamic: No, as best as I can tell. In 2020, W3C, the organization behind WCAG 2.2 AA, included Statamic on its top-3 shortlist for its website redesign. Their accessibility audit of Statamic raised several concerns. All in One Accessibility® offers an overlay for Statamic ($319/year) to remediate some issues. But accessibility experts like Adrian Roselli advocate that the best results come from pages that are themselves fully accessible and don’t rely on an overlay.

Tools to achieve full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance on complex landing pages

WordPress: Not in core. Most elements in Bricks Builder lend themselves to building a fully WCAG 2.2 AA-compliant complex landing page.

Statamic: The front-end HTML and CSS is generated by the site’s developer, with the optional assistance of a starter kit. Compliance is reliant on the developer and the starter kit.

Built-in accessibility prompts in the editor for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance fails

WordPress: Not in core. This can be achieved through Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker (free version with $229/year pro version).

Statamic: No.

Built-in accessibility scanning/audits for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance

WordPress: Not in core. This can be achieved through Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker (free version with $229/year pro version).

Statamic: No.

Privacy

Privacy policy generator

WordPress: Yes, limited. Complianz (€59/year) builds more comprehensive privacy policies.

Statamic: No.

GDPR / CCPA compliance

WordPress: Not in core. Put another way, WordPress core does not enable ways to make an entire WordPress site including its themes and plugins GDPR and CCPA compliant. Complianz (€59/year) enables more comprehensive compliance with these and several other privacy laws across the world.

Statamic: Not in core. Several extensions, including Cookie Byte ($19/site) and Cookie Notice ($39/site), enable cookie consent. However, there is more to full GDPR and CCPA compliance than just cookie consent, and both of these extensions come with disclaimers that they do not make representations of ensuring compliance beyond the cookie consent component.

Cookie Consent

WordPress: Not in core. There are plenty of cookie consent plugins for WordPress; Complianz (€59/year) is one of the best because of how it enables compliance with many other privacy-related laws.

Statamic: Not in core. Several extensions, including Cookie Byte ($19/site) and Cookie Notice ($39/site), enable cookie consent.

Multi-lingual

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: English

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Mandarin Chinese

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Hindi

WordPress: Not fully. WordPress has partial Hindi support but not a complete, up-to-date site editor translation.

Statamic: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Spanish

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: French

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Modern Standard Arabic

WordPress: Not fully. WordPress has partial Modern Standard Arabic support but not a complete, up-to-date site editor translation.

Statamic: Yes.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Bengali

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: No.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Portuguese

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Russian

WordPress: Yes.

Statamic: Yes.

Site editor available in top 10 worldwide languages: Urdu

WordPress: Not fully. WordPress has partial Urdu support but not a complete, up-to-date site editor translation.

Statamic: No.

Out-of-the-box features to build multilingual websites

WordPress: Not in core. There are several good plugins for this, including WPML (€99/year).

Statamic: Yes, in core.

Translate entire site automatically through AI

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Statamic: Not in core. The One-Click Content Translation ($39/year) add-on offers this feature.

Translate entire site automatically through ChatGPT

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Statamic: Not available.

Ability to stylize language switcher

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Statamic: Yes, in core.

SEO

Sitemap generation

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Statamic: Yes, in core.

Ability to add meta title and description

WordPress: No. Available via a number of plugins, like Yoast, RankMath, and SEOPress (the free versions work for all three).

Statamic: Yes, in core.

Schema Markup (e.g. recipe, job postings)

WordPress: Not in core. Available in RankMath (pro version, $95.88/year).

Statamic: Not in core. Available through SEO Pro ($55/site).

Built-in audit tools for missing or poorly structured data

WordPress: Not in core. Available in RankMath (pro version, $95.88/year).

Statamic: Not in core. Available through SEO Pro ($55/site).

In-admin content audit

WordPress: Not in core. Available within the admin in the Ahrefs SEO plugin (some features for free, more for $99/month).

Statamic: Not available.

In-admin Google Ranking tracker

WordPress: Not in core. Available within the admin in the Ahrefs SEO plugin (some features for free, more for $99/month).

Statamic: Not available.

Backups

Full-site offsite backups

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year) or VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Statamic: Not in core. Available through Magpie Backups for Statamic (free). Most developers also use Git to track changes.

Full-site offsite backups to your storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year).

Statamic: Not in core. Available through Magpie Backups for Statamic (free).

Incremental backups (only back up what’s changed)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year) or VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Statamic: Not available.

One-click full site restore from backup

WordPress: Not in core. Available through VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Statamic: Not in core. Available through Statamic Content Backups (free).

One-click full site incremental restore from backup, only restoring what broke

WordPress: Not in core. Available through VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Learning Management Systems (Course Building)

Learning Management System: Course Builder

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Statamic: Not fully available. The Courses add-on ($49/year) allows building free courses, but does not enable paid courses, quizzes, assignments, or certificates, In 2023, an effort was made to build a LMS for Statamic, Archimedes LMS, but this project appears to have been abandoned in an incomplete state and has not been updated for two years.

Learning Management System: Quiz Builder

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Learning Management System: Gamification (leaderboards and points)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Learning Management System: Scheduled release (drip) of lessons based on days since a course started

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Learning Management System: Scheduled release (drip) of lessons based on date of the calendar

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Learning Management System: Paid courses

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Learning Management System: Multi-lingual courses

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Learning Management System: Analytics to identify struggling learners

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year) plus the ProPanel extension ($99/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Learning Management System: Two-way communication with students for coaching

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year) plus the Notes extension ($49/year).

Statamic: Not available.

Performance

Lazy Loading

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Statamic: This is a front-end feature; the developer building the site needs to implment it. Available through Flexipic (free).

Code Minification

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Statamic: Not in core. With some custom development, Laravel Mix can be used, since Statamic is based on Laravel. (There is a Statamic Minify open-source extension, but it advertises Statamic v3 compatibility when the current version is Statamic v5).

Easy CDN integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Statamic: Not in core.

Excellent default Core Web Vitals Statistics

No plugin produces excellent Core Web Vitals by itself. The user needs to follow best practices in creating and optimizing the content. But the right technical optimizations will give users a much better head start in Core Web Vitals compliance.

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Statamic: No dedicated core web vitals optimizations; but the headless structure of Statamic gives users an automatic head start.

Excellent built-in caching options

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Statamic: Yes, in core; full static and Redis caching are built-in.

Optimizing for Largest Contentful Paint with rules for it to load as fast as possible

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Statamic: No dedicated optimization in core; but the headless structure of Statamic gives users an automatic head start.

Gzip/Brotli compression

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year). (Often handled by the web host.)

Statamic: Not in core. (Often handled by the web host.)

Visual Regression

Before and after scans after core or plugin updates to detect unwanted changes

WordPress: Not in core. Some hosts (including WPEngine and Flywheel) include this with hosting. Otherwise, Visual Regression Tests $90/year).

Statamic: Not in core.

Before and after scans after core or plugin updates to detect unwanted changes, with automatic rollback if something unintended changed

WordPress: Not in core. Some hosts (including WPEngine and Flywheel) include this with hosting. Otherwise, Visual Regression Tests $90/year).

Statamic: Not in core.

Security

2-factor authentication for user login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Statamic: Yes, in core (Enterprise version, pricing not public). Or use the Alt Google 2FA add-on (free).

Vulnerability and Malware Scanning

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Statamic: Not in core (but their headless structure eliminates many potential vulnerabilities).

Firewall for real-time detection of cross-site-scripting (XSS) and other threats

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Statamic: Not in core (but their headless structure eliminates many potential vulnerabilities).

Ability to blacklist all IPs except approved IPs from login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Statamic: Not in core. Available through Alt Inbound (free).

Ability to restrict country blocks of IPs from login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Statamic: Not in core.

Lock-in

Ability to export to formats that several other content management systems can import

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Statamic: Not in core, but available through Exporter (free).

Ability to import from formats that several other content management systems can export

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Statamic: Not in core, but available through the free Statamic Importer extension.

Developer Features

Availability to access CMS features via API

WordPress: Yes, through the REST API in core.

Statamic: Yes, through the REST API in core, and GraphQL in the pro version.

Local development enviroment options

WordPress: Not in core. Available in LocalWP (free).

Statamic: Since Statamic is founded on Laraval, local development options are available through Laravel Homestead.

Ability to integrate with headless front-ends

WordPress: Not fully in core; REST API can be used but has limitations. Developers who build headless front-ends often use WP GraphQL (free).

Statamic: Yes, in core. Statamic is a static site generator that includes Rest API and (in Pro) GraphQL in its core. It has official integration with Next.js and Nuxt.js.

Scalability for massive traffic spikes

WordPress: Not in core. A considerable amount of caching and other optimizations has to happen at the plugin and hosting level for

Statamic: Yes; its headless / static site generation sets it up well to scale to traffic spikes.

Scalability for massive websites

WordPress: Not in core. Its database starts to slow the site down dramatically in sites with millions of posts, pages, or custom post types. Custom development work will usually be required to set up database sharding.

Statamic: Yes, in core. It offers both a flat file system and an optional database integration. For the largest sites, database sharding may require custom development work.

Community

Number of third-party add-ons

WordPress: 59,000 plugins in official directory, plus hundreds of premium plugins that aren’t listed there.

Statamic: 388 add-ons in official directory. (But many features above that require plugins in WordPress are included in Statamic’s core offering.)

Largest YouTube channels with consistent how-to content

WordPress: There is an excellent educational community around WordPress on YouTube.

Official brand channels include:

• Elementor (356,000 subscribers)
• Elegant Themes (Divi) (213,000 subscribers)
• WordPress (110,000 subscribers)

Independent creators include:

• Ferdy Korpershoek (1,240,000 subscribers)
• WPBeginner (1,020,000 subscribers)
• Tyler Moore (473,000 subscribers)
• WPCrafter (250,000 subscribers)
• WPTuts (177,000 subscribers)
• Jamie WP (175,000 subscribers)
• Web Squadron (114,000 subscribers)
• Kevin Geary (20,000 subscribers)

Statamic: The official brand channel has 2,900 subscribers.

Independent creators include:

• From WordPress to Statamic (359 subscribers)

Up-to-date, detailed official documentation

WordPress: Yes, the official WordPress documentation is fairly extensive and detailed, though it is not equally up-to-date and equally detailed in all areas.

Statamic: Yes; Statamic fans consider its documentation to be one of the platorm’s greatest strengths.

Direct support from official team behind tool

WordPress: No.

Statamic: Yes. The team that creates Statamic is directly available to their customers via email and Discord.

Learning Curve

What is the onboarding process like?

WordPress: It is fairly easy to onboard onto core WordPress. Some hosts have it pre-installed, and the admin user interface is fairly easy to learn. But for users who need advanced features, it can take a long time to learn all the leading tools in the ecosystem, and to develop reasons to prefer one set of tools to another.

Statamic: You need development skills (PHP, Laravel, command line) to install and set up Statamic. So in that sense, it’s not beginner-friendly. But developers who do set it up love how much of the necessary features are included in core and do not require further research.

How easy is it for a beginner to find the best option(s) for each of these features?

WordPress: It’s hard. I’ve been working with WordPress virtually every day for nineteen years, and I was more than a decade in before I was really comfortable with understanding all the major players in the ecosystem and having solid reasons to prefer one over the other.

Statamic: Sometimes it doesn’t have the features you need. But if it does have them, it either has them in core or in its high-quality curated add-on library.

Official Resources

Statamic has an official Statamic vs. WordPress comparison. (WordPress doesn’t have an official comparison.)

One key point Statamic’s official comparison makes is that many of the features they have are integrated into their core offering. So these are tested to work well together. To make WordPress work for just about any application, you need a collection of plugins from different providers, and these can clash.

They also mention that their approach is headless by default, which eliminates most sources of website hacks (SQL injections). They do have the ability to integrate with a database if desired.

Marty Friedel also has a helpful developer-focused case for Statamic.

So is WordPress or Statamic better?

It depends on who you are and what you need. Let’s compare it for ten use types.

Beginners who need ease of use and a clearly marked pathway to key features

A beginner who is not a developer will definitely need to go with WordPress.

• Example tools and costs: WordPress core (free), Yoast or RankMath (both free) for SEO, and a small managed hosting plan like $300/year at Rocket.net
• Total cost: $300/year

Small brochure business websites that need basic functionality and affordability

WordPress and Statamic are equally good options.

WordPress:

• Example tools: WordPress core (free), Yoast or RankMath (both free) for SEO, Bricks Builder ($79/year), WSForm for Forms ($59/year), Wordfence for security ($149/year). WPRocket for performance (included with this Rocket.net plan), and Rocket.net hosting ($300/year)
• Total cost: $587/year

Statamic:

• Example tools: Statamic Pro ($275/year 1, $65/year afterwards); pro core includes some SEO tools, page builder, form builder, and security tools.
• One hosting option is A2 Hosting’s Statamic Hosting plan ($179.88/year after initial discounts).
• Total: $454.88/year for the first year, $244.88/year afterwards

Small eCommerce sites that sell physical items

You will need to calculate sales tax and shipping costs and integrate with services to print shipping labels; so you will want to go with WordPress.

Content publishers like blogs and news websites

WordPress and Statamic are equally good options.

WordPress:

• Example tools: WordPress core (free), Yoast or RankMath (both free) for SEO, Bricks Builder ($79/year), Wordfence for security ($149/year). WPRocket for performance (included with this Rocket.net plan), and Rocket.net hosting ($300/year)
• Total cost: $528/year

Statamic:

• Example tools: Statamic Pro ($275/year 1, $65/year afterwards); pro core includes some SEO tools, page builder, form builder, and security tools.
• One hosting option is A2 Hosting’s Statamic Hosting plan ($179.88/year after initial discounts).
• Total: $454.88/year for the first year, $244.88/year afterwards

Educational sites with courses/learning management

WordPress is the only feasible choice.

Mutilingual sites

For sites translated by manually translators, both tools are equally viable, with Statamic having a price advantage by including multilingual in core. But if you want AI translation, WordPress + WPML has a clear edge over Statamic.

Marketers who need no-code, highly customizable drag and drop visual page builders and form builders

WordPress has the edge.

Controversial websites

Both tools are equally viable. Open source-based tools where you own your data and choose your hosting have an edge over hosted, closed-source platforms like Shopify and Squarespace, where a single entity can make a decision which cannot be appealed to end your website and force you to begin website development from scratch on a different platform.

Highly regulated industries (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FERPA, other forms of security and compliance)

WordPress has a slight advantage due to additional security features. But both can be made to work for a many highly regulated industries, with the right hosting environment.

Enterprise websites

It depends on the website. Some enterprises will unavoidably need a feature that Statamic doesn’t have; they will end up with WordPress or a third option. But those enterprises who only need features Statamic offers will probably find cost savings and will also have the advantages of its headless-by-default approach.

Agencies with 100 small and medium business clients

Let’s assume, for the purposes of the discussion, that this agency’s clients only need features that Statamic + addons can offer. That would make this comparison more oriented around pricing for 100 clients.

A WordPress agency might have a tool stack like this:

• WordPress core: Free
• Advanced Custom Fields: The Free version works for many websites
• Bricks Builder: $249/year
• Automatic.css: $149/year
• Yoast SEO: Free
• WP Rocket: $399/year (an apples-to-oranges comparison since it offers many features Statamic doesn’t)
• Wordfence: The Free plan is closer to an apples-to-apples comparison with Statamic
• WSForm: $249/year
• Complianz: $1596/year for full GDPR/CCPA compliance (from four 25-site plans at $399 each; the actual price is likely lower but not publicly listed)
• Hosting: Liquid Web offers a 100-site managed WordPress hosting plan for $6020.04/year. Pressable offers a 100-site plan for $6,750/year. Several of the best and most popular WordPress hosts, including Rocket.net, Kinsta, WPX, WPEngine, and Presslabs don’t give public pricing for a 100-site plan.
• Total: $8,662.04/year for tools and hosting

On first glance, it might seem as though a Statamic agency would pay well into the five figures for site licenses. But agencies would likely use Statamic’s Platform pricing:

• Statamic Platform Pricing: $8,400/year ($7/site/month); includes core plugins
• Statamic Flexible Forms: $3,900/year
• Cookie Notice: $3,900/year for partial GDPR/CCPA compliance
• Hosting: Laravel agencies often use Laravel Forge or Ploi.io to deploy inexpensive $6/month VPS (virtual private servers) from Digital Ocean or Hetzner at $6/month. At 10 sites/VPS, that’s $720/year in hosting fees.
• Total: $9,120 for year for core features; $16,920 if including Flexible Forms and Cookie Notice.

Statamic and WordPress have competitive pricing—close enough that price will unlikely be a factor for most agencies considering a switch.

Credits

Before recording the video, I shared the blog post version with Statamic for feedback. True to their reputation for amazing customer support and community engagement, they responded with detailed feedback within a few hours. I’ve incorporated their feedback into the final version. That said, this is not a sponsored video and all opinions are my own.

Final Thoughts

I really like Statamic. It’s one of the most promising newer offerings in the CMS space. It’s probably in my top 3 options for using for a new site in the next year.

That said, just about every feature I mention here is one that comes to mind because I’ve personally needed that feature for a project I’ve built within the last five years. These are real-world scenarios I’ve personally encountered. In several of these, WordPress has features I need that Statamic doesn’t. For the moment, that rules out the possibility of moving all of my sites to Statamic.

But Statamic is definitely an option to keep watching. The people who use it love it so much that there is a chance that the ecosystem around it grows. With ecosystem growth and perhaps some measures to lower the barrier to entry, it could be a top-5 CMS in five years.