Hi guys,
a few weeks ago a company asked me for a quote for a website relaunch. Since I really like Kirby and my last 3 projects have been Kirby sites I offered them to do the job, guess what with Kirby.
Now they told me that I should use Wordpress instead because a employee is used in managing a Wordpress site. But the biggest issues would be, what if something happens to me. Who would be able to manage such an exotic CMS, where nearly all agencies are using Wordpress or Typo3. So they gave me the tip I should in general use Wordpress for all of my sites.
For the moment I told the customer, that I have to think on this and that it would be maybe better if they consult a wordpress expert.
Have you ever been in a similar situation and how do you sell Kirby to customers?
nice greets Daniel
Kirby actually has a considerable market share already (see this poll from Net magazine). There are a lot of skilled developers who are working with Kirby, so in case they ever need one, experts are easy to find (especially here in the forum).
Also, Kirby is not like WordPress. WordPress sites need to be updated all the time and stuff will break much quicker because of how unstable the whole WordPress platform is.
Kirby sites however don’t need that much attention by the developer after they are published. Of course you also need to update it, but as there are fewer plugins and fewer exotic setup combinations, stuff won’t break that easily (we are working on improving Kirby’s code quality even more in Kirby 3 so that there will be less new bugs after each release).
So basically, I’ve personally never had any issues when proposing Kirby as the CMS for a project. Of course I’m a member of the Kirby team and that might change the situation a bit, but maybe my arguments are helpful for you as well. 
I have had this conversation many times with clients and employers. Ive found the trick is not explain how awesome Kirby is. Go the other way instead - explain what is bad about Wordpress . I once made a boss of mine read an 8 page guide on securing a Wordpress site. At the end of it his response was “Yeah… we ain’t using that”.
Wordpress works for a lot of people, and that’s great, but it’s not for me and I don’t use it professionally. I am proud of the fact that in my 20 years as a web developer, I have never built a site with Wordpress for a public facing client. There are some amazing sites out there running on Wordpress, but unfortunately there are also a lot of dodgy ones built on hacked up themes from stores trying to market to everyone. The usual answer to a problem in Wordpress is “Just use this plugin”… i don’t like that ethos.
Stick your corner, fight for Kirby… you won’t regret it
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As a developer who have used both and now uses primarily Kirby I think I can contribute to this.
The points made by @lukasbestle are indeed valid. Kirby doesn’t need lots of updates and maintenance.
You can simply keep an eye on the releases and update it every now and then. Also, since you don’t need to deal with the craziness of the WP ecosystem you can build much more stable websites. Plus, Kirby is not an open source project, the direction they’re taking is clear and the communication here is great so you know what to expect moving forward.
With WP, that’s not always the case. Plus legacy code. WP has been around for a looooooooooong time and as much as I appreciate this philosophy of not wanting to break anything and always have backward compatibility is starting to hurt WP itself at this point.
If you’re dealing with a client who says they want WP because someone knows how to use it then you can show them that Kirby is as easy if not easier to use. You can really customize the heck out of it and make the admin with only what they need (particularly exited for what’s coming in V3 btw).
I must say that WP generally gets bad rep because of how most “developers” use it: they install a theme, a bunch of plugins and call it a day. That’s certainly one way to use it. If instead you know your way around it you can use it as a normal CMS, code a theme from scratch and use almost 0 plugins.
I coded many WP sites using essentially only 1 plugin, ACF, and that’s only to make WP do what Kirby does out of the box (almost).
One HUGE plus for Kirby is the multi language support.
Also, depending on the size of the project, WP can be a total overkill and be quite slow.
So yeah, I think the best way to convince someone is to show them what Kirby can do and show them the admin.
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