OttoKit
OttoKit keeps widening its WordPress trigger surface one plugin at a time
Comparison · Mkt Auto
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) vs Craft CMS
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and Craft CMS — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) vs Craft CMS: at a glance
What is Kit (formerly ConvertKit)?
Kit rebuilt its landing page editor, then handed the controls to an AI agent.
Kit's recent releases converge on one thing: giving creators a full publishing surface inside Kit rather than sending them to a third-party page builder. The landing page editor was rebuilt in June with 20+ templates and full control over layout, fonts and sections; custom favicons and the Creator profile to Newsletter site rename finished the job of making those pages feel owned rather than hosted. The newest release lets the Kit MCP build and edit those pages directly. Alongside runs an audience-intelligence thread - Subscriber Signals in early access - and network features letting creators request connections with each other.
What is Craft CMS?
Craft 6's alphas keep converting the plugin API, one removal at a time
Craft is running two lines with very different energy. The 5.10 maintenance branch ships one-bug releases hours apart and nothing else. Craft 6 is in its seventeenth alpha, still migrating onto Laravel: alpha 17 removes Plugin::settingsHtml() in favour of a settingsForm() built on the Control Panel Form system, replaces the Pane.vue component with a craft-pane web component, and moves another management command onto Laravel's schema API.
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) vs Craft CMS: editorial side-by-side
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
6.3MKT AUTO
Kit rebuilt its landing page editor, then handed the controls to an AI agent.
◆ Current state
Kit's recent releases converge on one thing: giving creators a full publishing surface inside Kit rather than sending them to a third-party page builder. The landing page editor was rebuilt in June with 20+ templates and full control over layout, fonts and sections; custom favicons and the Creator profile to Newsletter site rename finished the job of making those pages feel owned rather than hosted. The newest release lets the Kit MCP build and edit those pages directly. Alongside runs an audience-intelligence thread - Subscriber Signals in early access - and network features letting creators request connections with each other.
◆ Where it's heading
The Kit MCP is the axis. It arrived in May as a read-and-analyze tool - ask questions about your list, create tags or broadcasts from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor - and has now crossed into building the actual published artifact. That sequencing is deliberate: rebuild the editor as a structured, template-driven system first, then expose it to an agent, because an agent can only assemble a page that is composed of describable parts. The rename and favicon work point the same way, toward Kit as the place a creator's web presence lives rather than just where email is sent.
◆ Prediction
Expect the MCP surface to extend from landing pages into sequences and the newsletter site itself, and Subscriber Signals to move out of early access as the data layer the agent reasons over.
Craft CMS
6.3MKT AUTO
Craft 6's alphas keep converting the plugin API, one removal at a time
◆ Current state
Craft is running two lines with very different energy. The 5.10 maintenance branch ships one-bug releases hours apart and nothing else. Craft 6 is in its seventeenth alpha, still migrating onto Laravel: alpha 17 removes Plugin::settingsHtml() in favour of a settingsForm() built on the Control Panel Form system, replaces the Pane.vue component with a craft-pane web component, and moves another management command onto Laravel's schema API.
◆ Where it's heading
The pattern established at alpha 14 has not changed shape, only advanced: every alpha retires another Yii-era extension point and re-lands it on the new stack, with craftcms/yii2-adapter carrying the compatibility burden. Alpha 17 adds an Inertia-native slideout system that renders any CpScreenResponse as an in-page panel, which is the control panel moving from a legacy JavaScript layer to a genuinely Inertia/Vue one rather than wrapping it. The long fix list — stale permission trees, autosave firing on unchanged values, provisional drafts created on page open, queue jobs stuck reserved — reads as the cost of that churn being paid down alpha by alpha.
◆ Prediction
Expect further alphas that remove specific Yii-era plugin APIs with adapter fallbacks, and the 5.10 line to keep shipping single-fix patches until a Craft 6 beta absorbs the team's attention.
Alternatives to Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and Craft CMS
Other Mkt Auto products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Kit (formerly ConvertKit) or Craft CMS.
Joomla
Two security releases ship the same day, and 6.2 finally clears alpha
Buttondown
Buttondown ships almost daily, and most of it is someone else's bug report closed.
Flodesk
Flodesk just moved its analytics out of the dashboard and into Claude and ChatGPT.
Formidable Forms
Formidable widens MCP compatibility and locks down signature files
Mailtrap
Mailtrap is assembling a full email operations platform, one category step at a time
See all Kit (formerly ConvertKit) alternatives → · See all Craft CMS alternatives →
Recent activity from Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and Craft CMS
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 12h agoCraft CMSAlpha 17 retires plugin settingsHtml and adds Inertia slideouts
- 13d agoCraft CMSAlpha 16 fixes double-required migrations and a widget gap
- 13d agoCraft CMS5.10.13.2 fixes a SQL error on empty Categories fields
- 14d agoCraft CMS5.10.13.1 restores rendering of sanitized SVGs
- 14d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 swaps its image pipeline to intervention/image and libvips
- 19d agoKit (formerly ConvertKit)Build and edit landing pages with the Kit MCP ⚡
- 27d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha 14 breaks plugin providers and lifecycle hooks ⚡
- 29d agoKit (formerly ConvertKit)Request to connect with other creators in the Creator Network
- 1mo agoKit (formerly ConvertKit)Your favicon, your brand
- 1mo agoKit (formerly ConvertKit)Try the new Kit navigation
- 1mo agoKit (formerly ConvertKit)'Creator profile' is now called 'Newsletter site'
- 2mo agoKit (formerly ConvertKit)Get early access for Subscriber Signals
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and Craft CMS?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and Craft CMS are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 6.3 vs 6.3, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Kit (formerly ConvertKit) better than Craft CMS?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and Craft CMS are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 6.3 vs 6.3, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Mkt Auto products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Kit (formerly ConvertKit)?
Top Kit (formerly ConvertKit) alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Kit (formerly ConvertKit) alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/convertkit for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Craft CMS?
Top Craft CMS alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Craft CMS alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/craft-cms for the full list with editorial commentary on each.