Capell vs Statamic
Choose Statamic when flat-file/Git authoring or Statamic's control panel is the requirement. This is not a feature-count contest. Compare where the CMS sits, which editorial conventions the team wants to adopt, and what a move would cost.
Capell and Statamic are both Laravel CMS products installed with Composer, but they optimise for different centres of gravity. Statamic brings a complete content model, purpose-built Control Panel, established editorial features, and a mature addon ecosystem. Capell brings CMS structure into an application that already treats Eloquent, Filament, and its public frontend as the primary platform.
Where Statamic is the clearer fit
Choose Statamic when the site is content-first and the team benefits from collections, blueprints, more than forty fieldtypes, Antlers or Blade templates, Live Preview, flat-file content, and Git-oriented publishing. Its free open-source Core covers substantial single-user sites; Pro adds teams, revisions, multi-site, Git automation, APIs, and developer support. An established marketplace of addons and starter kits reduces the amount a delivery team has to invent.
Where Capell is the clearer fit
Choose Capell when the CMS must become one maintained layer inside a wider Laravel product. Pages, URLs, layouts, sites, languages, translations, and media remain application records. Editors work in Filament beside the product's other admin surfaces, while developers keep Blade, Livewire, Inertia, Vue, or another frontend stack in the same release boundary.
Do not migrate for vocabulary
Collections can map to page types, blueprints to schemas, and Bard or Replicator sets to approved composition, but those similarities do not make a migration cheap. Templates, addons, asset references, localization, permissions, preview, revision history, routes, Git automation, redirects, and editor habits still need explicit owners.
Prove the operating model
- Build the most difficult representative content type in both systems.
- Ask an editor to compose, preview, localize, publish, and recover a change.
- Trace a frontend change and a CMS upgrade through testing and deployment.
- Price the required commercial edition and packages, not the headline license alone.
Keep Statamic when those tests confirm that its CMS-led conventions remove work. Consider Capell when the same tests show that one Filament workspace, database-backed application records, and developer-owned public delivery are the simpler long-term shape.
Compare the operating model behind the features
Read the best-fit row first, then test the storage, editing, composition, preview, and release workflow with one representative page. Statamic's static caching and Capell's optional HTML Cache package should be evaluated as configured features; full-page HTML caching is not part of Capell Core. Pricing is useful only after the required edition and packages are known.
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| Decision | Capell | Statamic |
|---|---|---|
| CMS placement | A CMS layer inside the Laravel application. The application's domain model, routes, admin, and product workflows remain primary. | A full Laravel CMS whose collections, Control Panel, and frontend conventions can provide the application's primary shape. It can also be installed into an existing Laravel app. |
| Filament alignment | Admin is built on Filament, so CMS editing can sit beside the application's existing Filament resources and conventions. | Statamic uses its own purpose-built Inertia and Vue Control Panel. Filament is not its admin foundation. |
| Frontend ownership | The application team owns Blade, Livewire, Inertia, Vue, caching, and the release path. Capell does not require a presentation stack. | The team still owns the frontend, with more CMS-native options: Antlers or Blade, static generation, and Pro headless APIs. |
| Content storage and modelling | Database-backed Eloquent models for sites, languages, pages, URLs, layouts, translations, and media. | Collections, blueprints, taxonomies, and fieldtypes stored in flat files or in a database through the Eloquent Driver. |
| Page composition | Shared page types and layouts with approved widgets and assignable assets. Reusable structure is the default; custom pages remain an explicit choice. | Blueprints structure entries while Bard and Replicator sets let editors arrange approved field sets. Starter kits and addons can supply wider page-building patterns. |
| Multi-site and localization | Sites, languages, translations, and URLs are first-class database records. Validate the required roles, publishing workflow, and package mix against a real locale. | Pro multi-site manages localised or regional variations across domains, subdomains, or paths. Statamic explicitly separates this from independent multi-tenant sites. |
| Licensing and price | Capell Foundation costs £0. Public MIT-licensed Composer packages. Capell Membership is £199 GBP per year for protected downloads, updates, and support for 1 production domain, 2 non-production environments, and 5 named users. | Statamic Core is free and open source. Pro is $349 USD per site including one year of updates, then $99 USD per year for updates, and adds teams, revisions, multi-site, Git automation, and APIs. |
| Marketplace maturity | A focused, younger catalogue. Capell Foundation packages and visible Released or Beta listings state maturity and install impact; confirm the needed package is actually available. | An established marketplace for free and paid addons and starter kits, backed by substantial first-party CMS capability. An existing addon can remove delivery risk. |
| Preview and publishing | Preview follows the Laravel application's real route, and Admin includes Page History and validated page restore. Assignments, comments, approvals, scheduling, and coordinated releases require the licensed Publishing Studio package. | Core includes Live Preview. Pro adds revisions, drafts, content history, and multi-user editing, with working copies kept separate from the published entry. |
| Migration cost | A move from Statamic must map collections, blueprints, taxonomies, Bard or Replicator data, assets, URLs, templates, addons, and the Git workflow. Importing entries is only one part of the cost. | Staying avoids that rewrite when the current workflow works. Adopting Statamic also means accepting its content repositories, Control Panel, templates, and addon conventions; pilot the difficult content type first. |
| Best fit | An existing or growing Laravel product where Filament is strategic and application records, shared releases, and developer-owned frontend conventions matter most. | A content-first Laravel site where a mature Control Panel, flat-file or Git workflows, built-in editorial breadth, and an established addon ecosystem remove project work. |
Pick the product whose defaults remove work
Choose Statamic without apology when its content-first workflow already matches the project. Choose Capell when the application is the centre of gravity and the CMS should adopt its Filament, Eloquent, frontend, and release conventions.
Questions that settle the Statamic decision
Are Statamic and Capell both Laravel-native?
Does Capell replace Statamic's flat-file and Git content workflow?
Which product costs less?
What belongs in a Statamic migration estimate?
Capell learning journey
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