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Comparison · Mkt Auto
Craft CMS vs Litmus
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Craft CMS and Litmus — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Craft CMS vs Litmus: at a glance
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.
What is Litmus?
Litmus is publishing deliverability practitioner content, not shipping product
The window is entirely editorial and weighted toward deliverability and lifecycle craft: protecting a sending domain through a rebrand, promoting preference centres to lift opt-in quality, birthday email mechanics, a deliverability primer, and a summer prep guide for the holiday sending season. Two shorter posts on e-receipts and email anatomy round it out. Publishing runs every few days with no release notes among them.
Craft CMS vs Litmus: editorial side-by-side
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.
Litmus
5.0MKT AUTO
Litmus is publishing deliverability practitioner content, not shipping product
◆ Current state
The window is entirely editorial and weighted toward deliverability and lifecycle craft: protecting a sending domain through a rebrand, promoting preference centres to lift opt-in quality, birthday email mechanics, a deliverability primer, and a summer prep guide for the holiday sending season. Two shorter posts on e-receipts and email anatomy round it out. Publishing runs every few days with no release notes among them.
◆ Where it's heading
The consistent thread is sender reputation as the thing that actually determines email program performance — domain handling during a rebrand, consent quality via preference centres, and seasonal warm-up before Black Friday all sit on that axis. That is the ground Litmus's testing and monitoring products occupy, so the content maps to the product's value even though it never mentions a change to it.
◆ Prediction
Expect more seasonal deliverability content as the holiday sending window approaches. Product signal is not available from this feed and would require the release notes instead.
Alternatives to Craft CMS and Litmus
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 Craft CMS or Litmus.
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 Craft CMS alternatives → · See all Litmus alternatives →
Recent activity from Craft CMS and Litmus
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 13h 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
- 14d agoLitmusHow to Protect Your Email Program During a Rebrand: A Practitioner’s Guide
- 25d agoLitmusWe Want Your Email Preferences: The New Approach to Opting In
- 27d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha 14 breaks plugin providers and lifecycle hooks ⚡
- 28d agoLitmusHappy Birthday, Now Buy Yourself a Present! The Potential of Birthday Emails
- 29d agoLitmusTaking the Mystery Out of Email Deliverability
- 1mo agoLitmusYour Holiday Emails Start Now: A Summer Deliverability Prep Guide
- 1mo agoLitmusElements of a Perfect E-Receipt (With Examples)
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Craft CMS and Litmus?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Craft CMS is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Craft CMS better than Litmus?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Craft CMS is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Mkt Auto products to evaluate alongside.
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.
What are the best alternatives to Litmus?
Top Litmus alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Litmus alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/litmus for the full list with editorial commentary on each.