Craft CMS
Development.
Craft is the CMS we reach for when the content model matters. Not a blog with pages bolted on, but structured content with real relationships: a publisher with issues, articles, contributors and taxonomies, or a firm with people, services, locations and case studies that all reference each other. Craft models that natively, and editors get a control panel that shows them their content rather than a soup of blocks.
What we
actually build.
What we build with Craft
- Content-heavy marketing sites where the editorial team publishes daily and the structure has to hold up over years, not months.
- Craft Commerce stores when the catalogue needs bespoke logic: complex variants, B2B pricing tiers, quotes, or a checkout that does not fit a hosted platform.
- Headless and hybrid builds, serving Craft's GraphQL API to a Next.js or Astro frontend where the front end justifies it. We are equally happy rendering Twig, and we will tell you which one your project actually needs.
- Migrations from WordPress, moving posts, pages, media and URL structure across with redirects that protect the rankings you already have.
- Craft 3 and 4 upgrades to Craft 5, including the plugin audit that usually decides how big the job is.
How we work on Craft
Field layouts and entry types are designed before templates, because the content model is the part that is expensive to change later. Configuration lives in project config and moves through environments in git, so staging and production do not drift. Local development runs on DDEV, deploys are automated, and we run Craft on hosting built for it rather than on generic shared hosting where the console commands and queue workers become someone's weekly problem.
Licensing, in plain numbers
Craft Solo is free. Craft Pro is a per-site licence with an annual renewal for updates, and Craft Commerce is licensed on top of that. Plugins are mostly one-off purchases with optional renewals. It is not a large number next to build cost, but it is a real line item and we quote it up front rather than surprising you at launch. If that cost is the deciding factor, our Craft CMS vs WordPress comparison sets out where each one earns its keep.
Six things we do well.
Data modelling
We start from the entities, the events and the source of truth, not the screens. Get this right and everything else gets easier.
Web platforms
Multi-tenant SaaS, role-based admin, customer portals. Built on Next.js or Laravel depending on what fits.
APIs & integrations
REST and GraphQL APIs, webhook plumbing, the boring middleware that ties two systems together without surprises.
Internal tools
Operations dashboards your team will actually open. Designed by the people who’ll be on call when they break.
Migrations
Off legacy systems without losing data, downtime, or the trust of your customers.
Infrastructure
AWS, GCP, Fly.io, Vercel: pragmatic stacks sized to your traffic, not the conference talk circuit.
Tools we reach for.
We're stack-agnostic in principle and opinionated in practice. These are the tools we've earned strong opinions about.
Common questions.
Is Craft CMS better than WordPress?
For structured, custom content models and long-term code quality, yes. For a straightforward brochure site on a tight budget with a team that already knows WordPress, no. We build on both, and our Craft CMS vs WordPress comparison in the journal sets out the decision in full.
Can you migrate my existing website to Craft CMS?
Yes. Content moves through a scripted import rather than by hand, and we map old URLs to new ones so search traffic follows. Most migrations from WordPress take a few weeks, depending on how many custom post types and plugins are in play.
Do you offer Craft CMS retainers?
Yes. Most of our Craft CMS clients move onto a monthly retainer after launch. A retainer covers Craft and plugin updates, the Craft 4 to Craft 5 upgrade path, security patches, hosting and uptime monitoring, and a block of design and development hours for new sections, templates and integrations. Retainers start at a few hours a month and scale up, and you get the same engineers who built the site on a shared Slack channel, with a response time written into the agreement.
Are you Craft CMS developers based in Melbourne?
Yes. CodeDrips is a Melbourne studio and our Craft work spans Australian publishers, professional services firms and eCommerce brands on Craft Commerce. We work with clients across Australia and remotely, but if you want to sit down with your developers in person, we are in Melbourne.
Will our team be able to use it?
That is Craft's strongest suit. Editors see the fields for their content type and nothing else. We set the control panel up around how your team actually publishes, and run a training session at handover.
§ Contact
Let’s
scope it.
Send us an outline of what you're trying to build. We reply within one business day. If we're a fit, we'll book a 45-minute call and tell you honestly whether we're the right studio.