When comparing ProcessWire vs Kirby CMS, the Slant community recommends ProcessWire for most people. In the question“What is the best PHP CMS?” ProcessWire is ranked 1st while Kirby CMS is ranked 2nd. The most important reason people chose ProcessWire is:
You will always find one to respond politely in the forums. Sometimes even the creator Ryan Cramer himself.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Nice and helpful growing community
You will always find one to respond politely in the forums. Sometimes even the creator Ryan Cramer himself.
Pro Custom Fields on steroids
ProcessWire is heavily based on custom fields. All objects (Pages) inside ProcessWire are based on extensible templates comprised of fields that can be easily defined. Many useful fields come prebuilt and they can be extended with modules.
Pro Easy to learn
Processwire is extremely easy to learn. Consider this:
echo $pages->get('title=Hello World')->title; // "Hello World"
echo $pages->get('title=Hello World')->parent->title; // "Home"
echo $pages->find('Template=Category')->count; // 126
echo $pages->find('Template=Category')->each('title'); // ['Audio', 'Video' …]
Selectors are so powerful but yet so easy.
Check out the cheatsheet.
Pro Powerful and easy API
The API is jQuery like;
// find some pages:
$pages->find('template=skyscraper, architect=john, sort=title')->limit(4);
// mutate
$pages->get('title=Hello You')->set('title', 'HelloWorld')->save();
$pages->get('title=Old')->trash(); // trash page
// check user…
$user->isLogedin();
echo $user->name; // guest
$session->login($name, $pass);
$session->logout();
// redirect
$session->redirect($url);
Pro Powerful selector engine
The way you fetch, access and manipulate objects (Pages) in ProcessWire is extremely powerful and easy. You can receive any page and its custom fields, filter, travers, add…
Pro Template Engine Agnostic
By default, ProcessWire comes with 0 assumption on how you handle the output. You have 100% freedom on how you want to develop the frontend. Want to plain output stuff, go ahead. Want to use any number of Templating Engine, do it. Just use as Headless-CMS, okay!
Pro Extensible
Either using the modules already available or writing your own module, using the jQuery-like API.
Pro Open source
Source available on GitHub.
Pro Kirby is a file‑based CMS
Installing means uploading some files to your server and that's it.
Pro Great Community
Pro Good support
Well documented and friendly community.
Pro Markdown syntax
Write your content with plain Markdown or use Kirbytext.
Pro Custom panel
You can create custom panel (admin section) for every page type with ease.
Pro Very customisable
From very simple pages to highly customised content models, almost anything is possible. Fast prototyping.
Pro Great community
Pro Open source
Pro Not free for commercial
This is good thing. Free CMS always have some hidden pricing model that you eventually pay actually more than this.
Pro Super Flexible
The entire CMS is extremely flexible and very easy to use.
Pro Open for unconvetional/exoerimental solutions
Cons
Con Euro 99,– per domain
Kirby CMS costs Euro 99,– (plus VAT) per installation. There is no longer a discount for private websites.
Con Kirby 3 pricing went up
The price went up with Kirby 3 as the CMS grew. It's still worth it but maybe not for small websites. Tip: They sometimes offer social pricing on demand for small structures or students.