Ghost
Ghost is quietly turning its newsletter into a lifecycle marketing engine.
Comparison · Mkt Auto
AcyMailing vs Craft CMS
A side-by-side editorial comparison of AcyMailing and Craft CMS — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
AcyMailing vs Craft CMS: at a glance
What is AcyMailing?
AcyMailing spent its 11.0 cycle on privacy plumbing and a security rewrite, not features.
AcyMailing crossed into 11.0 at the end of July, and the release carried a reworked codebase aimed at security plus a GDPR-driven option for handling pixel tracking. The two follow-up patches since have been almost entirely corrective — automations display, followup creation, multilingual campaigns, and restoring the pot file that custom translations depend on. The 10.11 line before it patched an SQL injection and added toggles for IP collection and a statistics recording delay.
What is Craft CMS?
Craft 6 is being rebuilt on Laravel, and the alphas are breaking plugins to get there.
Craft runs two trains at once: a 6.0.0 alpha series rearchitecting the CMS, and 5.10.x patches that are single-bug fixes shipped within hours of each other. The alphas carry the work — queue jobs and dependency resolution moved onto Laravel's service container, control-panel serialization switched to Illuminate helpers, the imagine image library replaced with intervention/image, and a first-party control-panel component library added. Alpha 14 shipped with an explicit breaking-changes notice for plugin authors.
AcyMailing vs Craft CMS: editorial side-by-side
AcyMailing
5.0MKT AUTO
AcyMailing spent its 11.0 cycle on privacy plumbing and a security rewrite, not features.
◆ Current state
AcyMailing crossed into 11.0 at the end of July, and the release carried a reworked codebase aimed at security plus a GDPR-driven option for handling pixel tracking. The two follow-up patches since have been almost entirely corrective — automations display, followup creation, multilingual campaigns, and restoring the pot file that custom translations depend on. The 10.11 line before it patched an SQL injection and added toggles for IP collection and a statistics recording delay.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a mature self-hosted mailer working through compliance and hardening rather than chasing capability. The consistent thread across both version lines is giving administrators switches for data they previously collected by default — open-tracking pixels, IP addresses on subscription, statistics timing. The rapid 11.0.1 and 11.0.2 patches suggest the codebase rework shook loose regressions the major release did not catch.
◆ Prediction
Expect the 11.0.x patch stream to continue for a few more releases as rework regressions surface, before any new functionality appears. The entries give no signal about what the next feature cycle targets.
Craft CMS
6.3MKT AUTO
Craft 6 is being rebuilt on Laravel, and the alphas are breaking plugins to get there.
◆ Current state
Craft runs two trains at once: a 6.0.0 alpha series rearchitecting the CMS, and 5.10.x patches that are single-bug fixes shipped within hours of each other. The alphas carry the work — queue jobs and dependency resolution moved onto Laravel's service container, control-panel serialization switched to Illuminate helpers, the imagine image library replaced with intervention/image, and a first-party control-panel component library added. Alpha 14 shipped with an explicit breaking-changes notice for plugin authors.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is a Laravel-native Craft: Artisan command discovery, container-resolved queue jobs, Illuminate helpers, and plugins that no longer register through composer extra fields or automatic trait lifecycle hooks. The image pipeline swap brings libvips and formats like HEIC, JPEG XL and TIFF along with it. Meanwhile 5.10 receives nothing but same-day bug fixes, which is what a maintenance branch looks like once the team's attention has moved.
◆ Prediction
Expect further alphas to keep narrowing the plugin API surface ahead of a beta, with the 5.10 line continuing at one or two same-day patch releases a week.
Alternatives to AcyMailing 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 AcyMailing or Craft CMS.
Pimcore
Pimcore is spending 2026 hardening its data layer, one allowlist at a time.
MailBeez
MailBeez hardens its big 'V5' rewrite with PHP 8.x compatibility and up-to-10x page-load gains.
n8n
Two n8n release trains running in lockstep, both carrying only bug fixes this week.
OneSignal
OneSignal is arguing marketers should stop building journeys, and shipping agents to prove it
Buttondown
A near-daily fix stream, with flexible monthly RSS scheduling the only real addition.
See all AcyMailing alternatives → · See all Craft CMS alternatives →
Recent activity from AcyMailing and Craft CMS
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2d agoAcyMailingFixes for automations, followups and multilingual campaigns
- 2d agoCraft CMSAlpha 16 fixes double-required migrations and a widget gap
- 2d agoCraft CMS5.10.13.2 fixes a SQL error on empty Categories fields
- 3d agoCraft CMS5.10.13.1 restores rendering of sanitized SVGs
- 3d agoAcyMailingConsent option in form preview, Loco Translate support restored
- 3d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 swaps its image pipeline to intervention/image and libvips
- 9d agoAcyMailingGDPR pixel-tracking option and a full codebase security rework
- 16d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha 14 breaks plugin providers and lifecycle hooks ⚡
- 22d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 moves queues and DI onto Laravel's container
- 1mo agoAcyMailingSQL injection vulnerability patched
- 1mo agoAcyMailingIP-collection toggle and configurable statistics delay
- 1mo agoAcyMailingTimezone bug that blocked send and click statistics
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between AcyMailing and Craft CMS?
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 AcyMailing better than Craft CMS?
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 AcyMailing?
Top AcyMailing alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "AcyMailing alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/acymailing 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.