kitloom vs Statamic: two Laravel CMSs, two starting points

Statamic and kitloom are both CMSs installed into a Laravel application with Composer, both with an admin and templates in Blade. If you are choosing a Laravel CMS, you will look at both. They answer different questions, though: Statamic asks what content your new site should have, while kitloom starts from the site you already have on WordPress and asks how to keep all of it. Here is where each one is the better choice.

What each one is

Statamic is a Laravel CMS that has been around since 2012, now at version 6. A new site chooses at install whether content lives in flat files — Markdown and YAML that sit in git with the code — or in a database through the Eloquent Driver. It has its own control panel, the Bard editor with block sets, Live Preview, blueprints with more than 40 field types, forms, and templates in Antlers or Blade. Its addon marketplace is large: e-commerce, SEO, search and many more, some free and some paid. The Core edition is free, with one administrator and one form. Pro adds users and roles, revisions, multi-site and the REST and GraphQL APIs.

kitloom is a Laravel CMS whose storage is the WordPress database. Point it at one and the same site answers at the same URLs, with the same users and their passwords, and with the plugins' data read in the plugins' own formats. There is no WordPress code inside. The models speak Laravel ($post->title, $post->field('price'), Settings::get()), and requests are handled the way WordPress handles them: permalinks, the main query, the template hierarchy. On top of that it brings:

• an admin in Filament 5 or Laravel Nova 5;
• 43 modules, among them a shop, bookings, courses, listings, languages, SEO, redirects and forms;
• 14 themes in Blade, Vue or React;
• an MCP server, so an AI agent can run the site with the rights you give it.

Side by side

	Statamic	kitloom
Where content lives	Flat files (Markdown, YAML) or a database through the Eloquent Driver, chosen at install	The WordPress database, as WordPress left it
Coming from WordPress	The free official Importer brings entries, terms and users from XML or CSV, with special handling of Gutenberg content; you map the fields and build the templates and routes yourself	Nothing to import: the same URLs, users who sign in with their passwords, and ACF, Contact Form 7, Flamingo, WooCommerce and Rank Math data read in place; Yoast SEO and Redirection come over with one command. You can rehearse the move on the live database first
Admin	Statamic's own control panel	Filament 5 or Laravel Nova 5, with the same modules in each
Editing	Bard with block sets, Live Preview	A visual editor; existing Gutenberg blocks are drawn, there is no block editor for new content
Front end	Antlers or Blade; REST and GraphQL in Pro	Blade, Vue or React themes; every page as JSON, and the wp/v2 REST API
Shop, bookings, courses	Addons from the marketplace, such as Cargo for a shop ($199, then $85 a year)	Modules included: shop, bookings, courses, listings
AI agents (MCP)	No first-party MCP server; community addons such as cboxdk/statamic-mcp and danielgnh/statamic-mcp	Built in (kitloom/ai): an agent connects to /mcp and works on content, media, settings and every installed module, with the rights of the key's user; locked settings, nothing deleted for good, every change in the activity log
Requirements	PHP 8.3, Laravel	PHP 8.4, Laravel 13, a database: SQLite, MySQL or MariaDB
Price	Core free; Pro $349 per site with a year of updates, then $99 a year; free while in development	$149 for one site or $299 for every site you build, with a year of updates (then $75 or $149 a year); one admin per license, Filament or Nova
Age	Since 2012, with a large community, addon authors and agencies	Version 1 in October 2026, a small community

When Statamic is the better choice

• The site is new, and there is no WordPress behind it. Statamic is made for designing content from scratch: you shape blueprints around the site, not around tables someone else designed.
• You want content in git. Flat files mean content goes through the same review and deploy as the code, with no database on the server. kitloom always needs a database.
• The editor matters most. Bard, block sets and Live Preview are what Statamic is known for. kitloom has a visual editor and no block editor.
• It must be free to start. A personal site or a small one with one editor can run on Statamic Core for nothing. kitloom has no free edition: you see everything in the demos first, and there is a 14-day refund.
• You want a mature ecosystem. Fourteen years of addons, answers, tutorials and agencies that know it. kitloom is young.

When kitloom is

• An AI agent runs the site, under your control. kitloom ships an MCP server, not an addon. Claude, Cursor or your own agent connects to /mcp, calls describe_site first, then does the work through the same code as the admin: create_content and update_content for posts and pages, upload_media, menu_save, product_save and orders_list, and the tools of SEO, redirects, forms, bookings, courses and translations. Ask it to "draft three posts from these notes and put them in the Guides category", or to "fill in the SEO descriptions of the products that have none". It acts as the user whose key it holds: an author's key writes drafts, a read-only key only reads. The settings that decide who gets in or what code runs on every page are locked, trash_content is the only way out of a record and restore_content brings it back, every change goes into the activity log, and revoking the key stops it at once. See Run your site from Claude or Cursor.
• The site is on WordPress now. Every URL keeps working, users keep their passwords, and the plugins' data keeps working, not just reads: a Contact Form 7 form still sends, WooCommerce orders can still be refunded, Rank Math's redirects still redirect, and Redirection's rules come over with one command. With Statamic that is an import, routes and redirects to rebuild, and plugin behaviour to find addons for. See Moving a WordPress site to Laravel without moving the content.
• You build many sites. One kitloom license at $299 covers every site you own or build for clients. Statamic Pro is $349 for each site.
• The site sells, books or teaches. The shop, bookings, courses and listings are modules of the same product, tested together, with admins in Filament and Nova. In Statamic each is an addon, often from another author and with its own license.
• Your team works in Filament or Nova already. The admin is the one they know, and a module's screens are ordinary Filament resources or Nova resources they can extend.

Try both

Statamic's Core is free: install it with Composer from statamic.com and build a site.

For kitloom, open a sandbox in one click, no sign-up: Filament demo or Nova demo. Connect an agent to it from the dashboard and give it something to do. Then follow Migrate from WordPress on your own data, starting read-only. Prices and the refund are on Pricing.