When building Laravel applications that need content management capabilities, two popular options stand out: Filament CMS and Statamic CMS. Both are powerful solutions, but they approach content management differently and serve different needs.
Having built websites with both platforms, we understand their strengths, limitations, and ideal use cases. This comprehensive comparison will help you decide which CMS is right for your Laravel project.
Understanding Filament CMS
Filament is a modern admin panel builder for Laravel applications. It's not a traditional CMS—instead, it's a toolkit for building custom admin interfaces quickly. Filament provides a beautiful, feature-rich admin panel that you can customize to match your application's needs.
Key Characteristics:
- Built specifically for Laravel applications
- Livewire-based, providing real-time interactions without JavaScript complexity
- Rapid development with resource management, forms, and tables out of the box
- Highly customizable admin panels
- Open-source and free
- Modern, responsive design with Tailwind CSS
- Excellent for building custom admin interfaces
Understanding Statamic CMS
Statamic is a flat-file, Laravel-based CMS that combines the power of Laravel with a user-friendly content management interface. Unlike Filament, Statamic is a complete CMS solution designed for content-heavy websites and applications.
Key Characteristics:
- Full-featured CMS built on Laravel
- Flat-file content storage (no database required for content)
- Built-in content management features (pages, entries, collections, taxonomies)
- User-friendly interface for content editors
- Commercial license required (with free tier for small projects)
- Powerful templating with Antlers templating engine
- Excellent for content-driven websites
Head-to-Head Comparison
1. Purpose and Philosophy
Filament: Filament is an admin panel builder. It's designed to help you quickly create custom admin interfaces for your Laravel applications. You build the structure, and Filament provides the UI components and functionality.
Statamic: Statamic is a complete CMS. It comes with content management concepts built-in (pages, entries, collections, taxonomies) and provides a ready-to-use content management interface. It's designed for content-driven applications.
Winner: Filament for custom admin panels, Statamic for content management needs.
2. Content Management Approach
Filament: With Filament, you define your content structure using Laravel models and migrations. Content is stored in your database, and you create resources to manage it. You have complete control over the data structure, but you need to build the content management logic yourself.
Statamic: Statamic provides built-in content management concepts. You work with entries, collections, taxonomies, and pages. Content can be stored as flat files (YAML/Markdown) or in a database. The CMS handles content relationships, versioning, and publishing workflows.
Winner: Statamic for content-heavy sites, Filament for data-driven applications.
3. Ease of Setup and Development
Filament: Filament is straightforward to install and start using. You install it via Composer, create resources for your models, and you have a functional admin panel. The learning curve is gentle if you're familiar with Laravel and Livewire.
Statamic: Statamic requires more initial setup. You need to understand its content structure (entries, collections, taxonomies) and configure your content types. The learning curve is steeper, but you get a complete CMS out of the box.
Winner: Filament for quick admin panels, Statamic for comprehensive CMS features.
4. Customization and Flexibility
Filament: Filament is highly customizable. You can customize forms, tables, pages, and widgets. You can build completely custom admin interfaces while leveraging Filament's components. Since it's built on Livewire, you can add custom interactions easily.
Statamic: Statamic is also customizable, but within the framework of its CMS concepts. You can customize fields, fieldtypes, and templates, but you're working within Statamic's content management paradigm. For highly custom data structures, you might need to work around Statamic's concepts.
Winner: Filament for maximum flexibility, Statamic for structured content management.
5. User Experience for Content Editors
Filament: Filament provides a clean, modern admin interface. However, the user experience depends on how you structure your resources. You need to design the content editing experience yourself, which can be excellent if done well, but requires more work.
Statamic: Statamic is designed with content editors in mind. The interface is intuitive, with features like live preview, content versioning, and publishing workflows built-in. Content editors can work efficiently without technical knowledge.
Winner: Statamic for content editor experience, Filament for developer-focused admin panels.
6. Performance
Filament: Filament is lightweight and performant. Since you only build what you need, there's minimal overhead. The Livewire components are efficient, and you have full control over database queries and optimization.
Statamic: Statamic can be very performant, especially with flat-file storage. However, the CMS layer adds some overhead. With proper caching and optimization, Statamic performs well, but it may require more tuning than a custom Filament admin panel.
Winner: Filament for maximum performance control, Statamic for good performance with less optimization effort.
7. Pricing and Licensing
Filament: Filament is completely free and open-source. There are no licensing fees, and you can use it for any project, commercial or personal. There are premium plugins available, but the core is free.
Statamic: Statamic requires a commercial license for most projects. There's a free tier for small projects (Solo license), but commercial projects typically need a Pro license. Pricing is per-site, which can add up for multiple projects.
Winner: Filament for cost-effectiveness, Statamic for comprehensive CMS features (with licensing cost).
8. Learning Curve
Filament: If you know Laravel and Livewire, Filament is relatively easy to learn. The documentation is excellent, and the concepts are straightforward. You can be productive quickly if you understand Laravel's MVC pattern.
Statamic: Statamic has its own concepts and terminology (entries, collections, taxonomies, fieldtypes). The learning curve is steeper, especially if you're not familiar with CMS concepts. However, once you understand the system, it's powerful and efficient.
Winner: Filament for Laravel developers, Statamic for those familiar with CMS concepts.
9. Community and Ecosystem
Filament: Filament has a growing, active community. There are many plugins and extensions available, and the core team is very responsive. The community is helpful, and resources are expanding rapidly.
Statamic: Statamic has a dedicated community and marketplace. There are addons available, and the team provides good support. The community is smaller than Filament's but very engaged.
Winner: Filament for larger community, Statamic for dedicated CMS community.
10. Use Cases
Filament is ideal for:
- Custom Laravel applications needing admin panels
- Data-driven applications (CRUD operations)
- Internal tools and dashboards
- Applications where you control the data structure
- Projects where cost is a concern
- Rapid prototyping of admin interfaces
Statamic is ideal for:
- Content-heavy websites (blogs, marketing sites, documentation)
- Projects where content editors need a user-friendly interface
- Sites requiring content versioning and publishing workflows
- Applications with complex content relationships
- Projects where flat-file storage is preferred
- Content-driven applications with multiple content types
Real-World Experience
Having built websites with both platforms, here are our observations:
Filament Experience
Filament excels when you need to quickly build custom admin interfaces. We've used it for applications where we had specific data models and needed efficient CRUD operations. The development speed is impressive—you can have a fully functional admin panel in days, not months. Of course, the actual timeline depends on your project's scale and complexity.
The Livewire integration makes it easy to add interactive features without writing JavaScript. Forms, tables, and custom pages come together quickly, and the resulting admin panel feels modern and responsive.
Statamic Experience
Statamic shines for content-driven projects. We've used it for websites where content editors need to manage pages, blog posts, and other content types regularly. The built-in content management features save significant development time, and content editors appreciate the intuitive interface.
The flat-file storage option is particularly useful for smaller sites or when you want to version control content. The Antlers templating engine is powerful and makes it easy to build flexible frontend templates.
When to Choose Filament
Choose Filament when:
- You need a custom admin panel for your Laravel application
- Your application is data-driven rather than content-driven
- You want complete control over the data structure and admin interface
- Cost is a primary concern (Filament is free)
- You need rapid development of admin interfaces
- Your team is comfortable with Laravel and Livewire
- You're building internal tools or dashboards
When to Choose Statamic
Choose Statamic when:
- You're building a content-heavy website (blog, marketing site, documentation)
- Content editors need a user-friendly, intuitive interface
- You need built-in content management features (versioning, publishing workflows)
- Your project has complex content relationships (taxonomies, collections)
- You want flat-file content storage
- You need a complete CMS solution without building it yourself
- Budget allows for commercial licensing
Hybrid Approach
In some cases, you might use both. For example, you could use Statamic for content management (blog posts, pages) and Filament for managing application data (users, orders, settings). This hybrid approach leverages the strengths of both platforms.
Conclusion
Both Filament and Statamic are excellent solutions, but they serve different purposes:
- Filament is perfect for building custom admin panels quickly. It's free, flexible, and ideal for data-driven applications where you control the structure.
- Statamic is ideal for content-driven websites. It provides a complete CMS with excellent content editor experience, but requires commercial licensing.
The choice depends on your project's needs: if you need content management features and a user-friendly editor experience, Statamic is worth the investment. If you need a custom admin panel for your application data, Filament provides an excellent, free solution.
Having experience with both, we can confidently say that both platforms deliver on their promises. The key is matching the tool to your project's requirements and your team's expertise.
