Sulu
Sulu ships 2.6 and 3.0 in lockstep, and the 3.0 line still reads like a maintenance branch.
Comparison · Mkt Auto
Eleventy vs Craft CMS
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Eleventy and Craft CMS — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Eleventy vs Craft CMS: at a glance
What is Eleventy?
The v4 canary line is being renamed Build Awesome while 3.x is kept on pure maintenance.
Two lines run in parallel. The 3.x branch gets dependency-only releases — 3.1.5 and 3.1.6 explicitly ship no core code changes, after 3.1.3 and 3.1.4 failed to publish and were left as immutable dead tags. The v4 alpha train, meanwhile, is where the work is: Node minimum raised to 22.15, page.inputPathDir and page.dir removed, batched incremental builds added, and a large refactor of the Nunjucks fork onto a fully-async prerelease. The releases themselves now carry the Build Awesome name and offer an @awesome.me/buildawesome install alongside @11ty/eleventy@canary.
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.
Eleventy vs Craft CMS: editorial side-by-side
Eleventy
5.0MKT AUTO
The v4 canary line is being renamed Build Awesome while 3.x is kept on pure maintenance.
◆ Current state
Two lines run in parallel. The 3.x branch gets dependency-only releases — 3.1.5 and 3.1.6 explicitly ship no core code changes, after 3.1.3 and 3.1.4 failed to publish and were left as immutable dead tags. The v4 alpha train, meanwhile, is where the work is: Node minimum raised to 22.15, page.inputPathDir and page.dir removed, batched incremental builds added, and a large refactor of the Nunjucks fork onto a fully-async prerelease. The releases themselves now carry the Build Awesome name and offer an @awesome.me/buildawesome install alongside @11ty/eleventy@canary.
◆ Where it's heading
v4 is accumulating breaking changes faster than it is stabilizing — three of the entries in this window announce removals or minimum-version bumps, and alpha.10 exists only to hotfix a regression alpha.9 introduced. The Nunjucks refactor is the biggest bet: making the fork fully async removes the need for async-specific template tags, but the release notes flag it as risky for existing Nunjucks users. The naming change is proceeding on the same timeline, so users tracking canary are absorbing an identity shift and an API shift at once.
◆ Prediction
Expect more v4 alphas carrying breaking removals before any beta, with the Nunjucks async refactor generating follow-up regressions; 3.x looks likely to keep receiving dependency-only patches with no core changes.
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.
Alternatives to Eleventy 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 Eleventy or Craft CMS.
Pimcore
Nearly every release in this window carries security hardening — Pimcore is working through an injection sweep.
Hugo
Steady feature-then-patch cadence, with security reports rising because AI tools are finding them
ClickFunnels
Measurement gets granular while the API quietly opens ClickFunnels up to outside agents
n8n
n8n's daily patch train hides the real work: hardening its MCP server into a proper auth resource.
OneSignal
OneSignal is arguing a new category into existence before showing the product behind it.
See all Eleventy alternatives → · See all Craft CMS alternatives →
Recent activity from Eleventy and Craft CMS
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 9d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha breaks the plugin contract and adds control-panel components
- 15d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha moves queue jobs onto the Laravel service container
- 16d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha routes asset I/O through Laravel filesystem disks
- 24d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha adds Socialite provider logins
- 29d agoCraft CMSCraft 6 alpha runs Blade inside Twig and adds SQLite support ⚡
- 1mo agoEleventyNunjucks fork refactored onto a fully-async prerelease
- 1mo agoEleventyNode 22.15 minimum, page path properties removed
- 1mo agoEleventyHotfix for a layout cache invalidation regression
- 1mo agoEleventyEleventy v3.1.6: Everybody wants to do Maintenance
- 4mo agoEleventyCanary warns the Eleventy name is changing to Build Awesome ⚡
- 4mo agoEleventyDead tag: this release failed to publish, use 3.1.5
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Eleventy 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 Eleventy 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 Eleventy?
Top Eleventy alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Eleventy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/eleventy 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.