Compare
Gansey and Craft CMS
Craft CMS is a carefully made CMS for structured content, and popular with agencies. Here is where Gansey has the edge: layouts editors change themselves, and one small program to run.
Running it
Craft CMS
A PHP application, installed with Composer, on a web server with MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Gansey
One compiled program per site, with Postgres underneath. It serves the site, the admin and the API itself, backs up its database and media every night, and updates itself from signed releases.
The front end
Craft CMS
Developers write the templates in Twig, so the front end is exactly what they build. Layout changes usually go back to a developer.
Gansey
Pages, headers, footers and content templates are built in the page builder and the theme builder, on the rendered page, so editors change layouts themselves. Custom code is there when a design needs it.
Content structure
Craft CMS
Sections, entry types and fields are kept in project config files. Craft recommends switching off admin changes on production, so the structure there changes only through a deploy.
Gansey
Content types, fields and taxonomies live in the database and as files in the repository, and each deploy merges the two. A change made on the live site is kept, and where both sides changed the same thing, the live version is kept for review.
Speed
Craft CMS
Pages are built by PHP and Twig on each request. Template caching helps, and full-page caching usually comes from a plugin.
Gansey
Pages are rendered by compiled code and kept in memory until something is published, so most visits are answered straight from the cache, with nothing to add. Images get their sizes on upload, with WebP and AVIF copies when you want them.
Extending it
Craft CMS
A plugin store of PHP plugins, many of them paid, which run with full access to the site.
Gansey
Official modules for a blog, forms, member accounts, cookie consent and performance. Each one says up front what it may touch, and core holds it to that.
Gansey summary
- Editors build and change layouts themselves, on the page
- Structure can change on the live site and in the repository, merged on each deploy
- One small program to run instead of a PHP stack
- Pages served from memory, with no caching plugin to add
- Modules say up front what they may touch, and core holds them to it
Written in November 2026. Every project here changes over time; if something is out of date, tell us and we will put it right.
See it for yourself
Read what Gansey does, look through the docs, or check what a licence covers.