On a company where I worked I was there “WordPress expert” for about 10 years. They almost fell off their chairs when I told them I don’t like WordPress anymore and that I switched to Kirby.
For a client to understand the difference, I think it’s really hard. Many of them judge what they see when comparing screenshots of the wp-admin/panel.
Pros with WordPress
- Tons of docs and examples around the world
- Tons of plugins and themes
- Easy to customize, select, drag & drop and you have a site
- Easy to change developer because many developers knows WordPress
Cons with WordPress
- The admin contains many things that are not even used by our site
- The frontend contains classes, javascript and css that we did not ask for. It came from WordPress or plugins
- Because of the above the page takes more time to load
- It require a database which will slow down the system a bit
- There is much to load with PHP before the page is displayed which slows down the site
- In my experience the wp-admin is quite slow as well
- Because of popularity it’s hacked from time to time
- It needs automatic updates all the time to stay secure
Pros with Kirby
- Much better crafted. We can do more with less code in many cases.
- In the panel you add what you need, instead of remove what you don’t.
- Building a site feels almost like only using pure html/php/css/js without a CMS, not in the way
- Because it does not require a database it’s in most cases both fast and easy to backup.
- Plugins can’t force js/css into our site. We developers are in complete control.
Cons with Kirby
- Less known CMS means less plugins, docs and examples.
- It costs money, but it’s worth it because of the pros.
- It’s not yet possible to save to a database with the panel if needed. A database class is however available.
There are maybe more things and the above can be hard to describe to a client.
Maybe tell the story like this instead…
Once apon a time there was two houses. One house was called WordPress and the other was called Kirby. Both houses looked beautful from the outside. The WP family bought the WordPress house and the KB family bought the Kirby house.
The WP family was even more impressed when the discovered all the things in the house that they did not even ask for, like a built in ice machine and a helipad on the roof. Also they could move the rooms, objects and even change colors of things in the house. How cool! They decided to move the toilet to the livingroom. Taking a poo while watching fotball is awesome, they thought!
The KB family was also happy, but they did only get what they asked for. No toilet in the livingroom, no helipad on the roof and no ice machine.
One day the WP family noticed a really large cable in the garden, along with a big water pipe, when they was cutting the grass. They did not want it, but removing it was harder than expected.
When they finally succeded with removing the cable, they whole helipad fell down beside them. What a mess! Oh well, they did not care much because they had never used the helipad anyway.
Then they did the same thing with the water pipe and removing it resulted in a flying ice machine, landed on the grass.
The KB family was passing by and wondered “What’s going on? Why is there a helipad and an ice machine on the grass?”
The night came and the WP family noticed some monsters in the livingroom, building new doors and eating some of the furnishings. How did they got in? Later they found some holes in the basement. The KB family did not have any known holes or monsters.
The next day the WordPress house looked like a construction site. The KB family was passing by and wondered “What now?” Not even the WP family knew what was going on. A man from the construction team said “It’s a frequent update, get used to it! If you want your house secure from little monsters, this needs to be done!”.
After the update was done, a wall was missing. The WP family asked the man from the construction team why and he replied “This wall was not compatible with this update. Sorry, it’s nothing we can do. Build a new wall, or maybe it’s easier to build a new house from scratch.”
The WP family now got tired of all the fancyness that did not help them, so they bought a new house and they called it… Kirby.