Where Spillway stands next to Drupal, WordPress and Contentful
Three systems we respect and borrow from. The tables say what each does well, including the things Spillway does not do yet. Spillway is at v0.1; judge it as an alpha.
Drupal
Drupal is the reference for structured content, and Spillway's content model is a deliberate descendant of it: typed fields, taxonomies, references, revisions, paths. Where they differ is in what it takes to run and extend them.
| Area | Drupal | Spillway |
|---|---|---|
| Content model | Entities, fields, taxonomies, references, revisions; the deepest ecosystem of field types and Views. | The same ideas with fewer parts: typed fields, vocabularies with term pages, collections instead of Views, revisions on every save. |
| Page building | Layout Builder, Paragraphs, Experience Builder in progress; many ways to do it. | One way: a Puck page builder with server-rendered blocks that share one config between admin and site. |
| Setup and hosting | PHP, a database server, Composer, a web server; mature managed hosts. | One Node process with SQLite or Postgres; a Docker image; a fleet CLI for many sites. |
| Governance | Content Moderation, Workspaces, roles and permissions, revisions; all available, configured per site. | Roles, review, checks, scheduling, workstreams and an audit log on by default. |
| Extensibility | Tens of thousands of contributed modules that run in-process with full access. | Trusted modules in-process plus sandboxed WebAssembly extensions with declared capabilities; a small registry that is just starting. |
| Multisite and localization | Mature, with decades of production use. | Present and tested, young. |
| Migration | Migrate API in core. | Importers from Drupal are on the roadmap; a domain importer is the planned centrepiece of 1.0. |
| Licence | GPL-2.0-or-later. | AGPL-3.0 server; MIT contract, blocks and kits. |
Choose Drupal when you need a module that exists there and nowhere else, or a team that already knows it. Choose Spillway when you want Drupal's model with one process to run and a page builder that ships as the default.
WordPress
WordPress runs a large share of the web and its editor and plugin market are hard to match. Spillway starts from structured content and governance instead of posts and themes.
| Area | WordPress | Spillway |
|---|---|---|
| Content model | Posts, pages and custom post types; structured fields through plugins such as ACF. | Content types with typed fields in core, editable in the admin or shipped in kits. |
| Page building | The block editor and site editor; many page-builder plugins. | One server-rendered block library in a Puck editor; blocks are plain HTML with theme tokens. |
| Setup and hosting | PHP and MySQL; the widest hosting market there is. | One process, SQLite or Postgres, a Docker image. |
| Governance | Roles and drafts in core; review workflows, audit logs and scheduling of sets usually through plugins. | Review queue, checks, locks, scheduling, workstreams and the audit log in core. |
| Marketing | Forms, SEO, analytics and CRM connectors through plugins. | Forms with HubSpot, webhook and email connectors, SEO files, redirects, personalization and analytics in core. |
| Extensibility | Tens of thousands of plugins and themes; in-process PHP. | Trusted and sandboxed modules; a registry that is just starting. |
| Licence | GPL-2.0-or-later. | AGPL-3.0 server; MIT contract, blocks and kits. |
Choose WordPress for a blog, a small site or when a plugin does exactly what you need. Choose Spillway when the site is structured, several people publish, and approval and attribution matter.
Contentful
Contentful is the model of a hosted headless CMS: a content API, a schema editor and a front end you build yourself. Spillway is self-hosted and renders pages itself, while still offering the whole API.
| Area | Contentful | Spillway |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | SaaS; nothing to run. | Self-hosted, one process; a fleet CLI when you run many. |
| Delivery | Headless: you build and host the front end. | Server-rendered pages out of the box; the same JSON API for a custom front end (Astro and Next.js adapters are on the roadmap). |
| Content model | Content types and fields with references and localization; a strong schema editor. | Content types and fields with references, taxonomy, media and layout; kits as config as code. |
| Page building | Through apps or your front end. | Built in, with server rendering. |
| Governance | Roles, workflows, scheduled releases and environments on higher tiers. | Roles, review, checks, scheduling and workstreams in the open core. |
| Marketing | Through integrations and your front end. | Forms, SEO, redirects, personalization and analytics in core. |
| Data and pricing | Your content lives with the vendor; priced per seat and usage. | Your content lives in your database; free software, your infrastructure costs. |
Choose Contentful when you want nothing to operate and a front-end team that owns delivery. Choose Spillway when you want to own the data and have pages rendered for you, with the API still there.
See it rather than read about it
A kit with sample content gives you a working site to click through in a few minutes.