Contentful vs. Laravel PHP Framework

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Contentful
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Contentful is a cloud based CMS solution that provides the ability to manage content across multiple platforms.The editing interface allows for managing content interactively and provides developers the ability to deliver the content with the programming language and template framework of their choice.
$489
Laravel PHP Framework
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Laravel is a free, open source web application PHP framework.N/A
Pricing
ContentfulLaravel PHP Framework
Editions & Modules
Team
489/month
Community
Free
Enterprise
Custom
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ContentfulLaravel PHP Framework
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
ContentfulLaravel PHP Framework
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
7.3
8 Ratings
11% below category average
Laravel PHP Framework
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions7.38 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.0
9 Ratings
5% above category average
Laravel PHP Framework
-
Ratings
API8.38 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.76 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
7.7
10 Ratings
0% below category average
Laravel PHP Framework
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor7.34 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.56 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates7.64 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of website themes7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.75 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.0
9 Ratings
8% above category average
Laravel PHP Framework
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support7.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management7.75 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.56 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ContentfulLaravel PHP Framework
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 10.0 out of 10
CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Symfony
Symfony
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ContentfulLaravel PHP Framework
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(10 ratings)
7.7
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
ContentfulLaravel PHP Framework
Likelihood to Recommend
Contentful
Contentful is well suited for folks who want a simple, clean, easy-to-use interface for a JAVASCRIPT website. If you do not want a javascript website you should look [elsewhere].
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Open Source
Laravel is ideally suited for fluent PHP developers who want a framework that can be used to both rapidly prototype web applications as well as support scalable, enterprise-level solutions. I think where it is less ideal is where the client has an expectation of using a certain CMS, or of having a certain experience on the admin side that would perhaps be better suited to a full CMS such as Drupal or WordPress. Additionally, for developers who don't want to write PHP code, Laravel may not be the best solution.
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Pros
Contentful
  • Clean, modern interface (not clunky and outdated, like WordPress)
  • High degree of flexibility (I can structure data any way my clients need)
  • Enables headless frontend (i.e. I can build any frontend I want without having to change my CMS)
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Open Source
  • Many libraries available which simplify integration of SaaS APIs within your application (eg, MailChimp, Mandrill, Stripe, Authorize.net)
  • Pre-packaged tools to facilitate common tasks when building applications (eg, User Authentication and Authorization, Background Jobs, Queues, etc)
  • Support for a broad set of technologies out of the box (eg, PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, MemcacheD, BeanstalkD, Redis, etc)
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Cons
Contentful
  • The new Contentful "branches" feature looked promising (it appears to mirror a git-like repository) but it requires the CLI, which isn't necessarily practical for teams that aren't current CLI users. It would be nice if the management of this feature were available via the UI (without that it causes more confusion than anything).
  • The Contentful data modeling method makes for a bit of an awkward SDK developer experience in some strongly typed languages like Java. Most things that you might need can be accomplished, but it feels like the experience could be smoother.
  • It would be nice if there were a way to migrate data between spaces (e.g. from your staging space to production).
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Open Source
  • Significant learning curve. You cannot be an expert in a week. It takes many experimentations to properly understand the underlying concept. We ourselves learned it by using it on the job.
  • Too much to soak in. Laravel is in everything. Any part of backend development you wish to do, Laravel has a way to do that. It is great, but also overwhelming at the same time.
  • Vendor lock in. Once you are in Laravel, it would not be easy to switch to something else.
  • Laracasts (their online video tutorials) are paid :( I understand the logic behind it, but I secretly wish it would be free.
  • The eloquent ORM is not my recommendation. Let's say you want to write a join, and based on the result you wish to create two objects. If you use Laravel to do automatic joins for you, Laravel internally actually makes two calls to database and creates your two object rather than making one join call and figuring out the results. This makes your queries slow. For this reason, I use everything except eloquent from Laravel. I rather write my own native queries and control the creation of objects then rely on Laravel to do it. But I am sure with time Laravel will make fewer calls to DB.
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Alternatives Considered
Contentful
Easy to use and much more organized as a single platform versus multi. The layout is clean and easy to read and we don’t have to worry about certain users safe guarding data or content then losing it when they leave the company. It’s a one stop shop for imagery
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Open Source
Supporting unit testing is bigger plus point in Laravel than any other framework. Developing with Laravel is much easier. Other frameworks have value in market, but Laravel has taken the lead in popularity among PHP developers in recent years. The large community supports you if you have problems. Using Laravel, integration became easy with third-party libraries, but it was costly too.
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Return on Investment
Contentful
  • There was no negative impact as such.
  • Positive impact is increase in sales.
  • More work is delivered due to reusability and other features within a time and less manual effort.
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Open Source
  • Laravel allows us to rapidly prototype and build complete, scalable applications internally, which saves us time and allows us to have internal tools that fit out precise needs. We use Symfony for a similar purpose, but Laravel is an even higher-level framework that we find saves us substantially more time when building many types of web applications.
  • Laravel solves many of the underlying concerns of building a large application (such as authentication, authorization, secure input handling) in the right ways. It saves us from handling those low-level concerns ourselves, potentially in a way that could take a lot of time or sets us up for issues in the future. It's tough to assign an ROI to this, but I'm sure it has prevented issues and saved time, which both have an impact on our financial situation.
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ScreenShots

Contentful Screenshots

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