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Comparison · Mkt Auto
Craft CMS vs OpnForm
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Craft CMS and OpnForm — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Craft CMS vs OpnForm: at a glance
What is Craft CMS?
Craft 6 is being rebuilt on Laravel in public, one alpha at a time
Craft CMS is running its 6.0 line through rapid alphas, and each one moves another subsystem onto Laravel. Blade views can now be loaded inside Twig templates with Craft registering Blade directives for near parity; asset I/O resolves through Laravel filesystem disks; queue jobs resolve dependencies through the service container; user elements implement Illuminate's HasLocalePreference. SQLite is now a supported database, login is rate limited, and accounts can connect to Socialite providers.
What is OpnForm?
OpnForm's V2 bet: import your Typeform, generate the PDF, self-host the lot.
OpnForm is an open-source form builder that shipped a major V2 in June 2026 and has spent every release since hardening it for self-hosters. V2 brought PDF generation from submissions, computed variables, version history, and importers for Typeform, Tally, Google Forms and Fillout. The three releases after it are almost entirely OIDC, Docker and PDF reliability work.
Craft CMS vs OpnForm: editorial side-by-side
Craft CMS
6.3MKT AUTO
Craft 6 is being rebuilt on Laravel in public, one alpha at a time
◆ Current state
Craft CMS is running its 6.0 line through rapid alphas, and each one moves another subsystem onto Laravel. Blade views can now be loaded inside Twig templates with Craft registering Blade directives for near parity; asset I/O resolves through Laravel filesystem disks; queue jobs resolve dependencies through the service container; user elements implement Illuminate's HasLocalePreference. SQLite is now a supported database, login is rate limited, and accounts can connect to Socialite providers.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a framework transplant carried out in the open. The alphas move from templating and storage (alpha.10) through identity and asset handling (alpha.11, alpha.12) to session, queue and control-panel internals (alpha.13, alpha.14) — each step replacing a Yii-era mechanism with its Laravel equivalent. alpha.14 makes the cost explicit for the ecosystem: plugins must stop declaring extra.laravel.providers and lose automatic trait lifecycle hooks, while a new first-party control-panel component library (Button, ButtonGroup, Callout, Checkbox) arrives to replace ad-hoc markup.
◆ Prediction
Expect further alphas to continue converting Yii-era subsystems and to keep breaking the plugin contract until the component library and provider model settle; a beta is unlikely before plugin authors have a stable API to target.
OpnForm
5.0MKT AUTO
OpnForm's V2 bet: import your Typeform, generate the PDF, self-host the lot.
◆ Current state
OpnForm is an open-source form builder that shipped a major V2 in June 2026 and has spent every release since hardening it for self-hosters. V2 brought PDF generation from submissions, computed variables, version history, and importers for Typeform, Tally, Google Forms and Fillout. The three releases after it are almost entirely OIDC, Docker and PDF reliability work.
◆ Where it's heading
The product is aimed at teams leaving a hosted form builder: the importers remove the migration cost, PDF generation covers the paperwork workflows those tools charge for, and the run of self-hosting fixes makes the destination credible enough to move to. The plan-based feature access introduced in V2 is the commercial half — an open core with an Enterprise tier, now being enforced consistently across self-hosted installs.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next releases to keep filling in V2's surface rather than opening a new one, with PDF templates and computed variables the likeliest areas given how often both reappear in follow-up fixes.
Alternatives to Craft CMS and OpnForm
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 OpnForm.
Customer.io
Location becomes a trigger, Twilio stops being the only SMS path, and the LLM layer gets a memory
Buttondown
Buttondown ships something almost every day, and most of it is somebody's bug report.
Systeme.io
Systeme.io's feed is an unbroken run of customer success stories, not a changelog.
Customer.io
Customer.io's summer wave pushes messaging into location triggers and live device surfaces.
Mautic
Mautic is patching three supported branches at once while 7.2 grinds through release candidates.
See all Craft CMS alternatives → · See all OpnForm alternatives →
Recent activity from Craft CMS and OpnForm
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 8d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha breaks the plugin contract and adds control-panel components
- 14d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha moves queue jobs onto the Laravel service container
- 15d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha routes asset I/O through Laravel filesystem disks
- 16d agoOpnFormv2.2.2: E2E CI reliability
- 16d agoOpnFormv2.2.1: Self-hosted reliability and file-link controls
- 17d agoOpnFormv2.2.0: More reliable self-hosting and PDF generation
- 23d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha adds Socialite provider logins
- 27d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha runs Blade inside Twig and adds SQLite support ⚡
- 1mo agoOpnFormv2.1.0: Self-hosted form fixes
- 1mo agoOpnFormv2.0.0: OpnForm V2 ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Craft CMS and OpnForm?
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 OpnForm?
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 OpnForm?
Top OpnForm alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "OpnForm alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/opnform for the full list with editorial commentary on each.