Craft CMS Moved to a New Pricing Model: What Does That Mean for Your Site Costs?

Craft CMS changed its licensing model from a one-off purchase to an annual subscription. If your site was built on Craft and you have not had this conversation with your developer, it is worth understanding what has changed and what the ongoing implications are for your costs.

The old model versus the new model

For most of Craft CMS's history, a licence was a one-time purchase. You paid once, received the software, and could use it indefinitely. The new model, introduced with Craft 4 and extended through Craft 5, is subscription-based. The Solo edition remains free for basic sites, but most commercial sites with multisite, user management, or content staging requirements fall under the Pro or Team tier, which carry an annual fee.

What this means if your site predates the change

If your Craft site was built before the licence model changed, your licence may have been grandfathered or you may be running a version that predates the requirement. However, if your site is eventually upgraded to Craft 4 or 5, the new licensing terms apply. Your developer should have factored this into any upgrade discussion, but not all have.

Plugin licensing is a separate consideration

Craft's own licence fee is one part of the picture. Many Craft sites rely on third-party plugins that also carry their own annual renewal fees. These are typically modest individually, but a site with five or six commercial plugins can accumulate a meaningful annual renewal cost that was not necessarily communicated when the site was originally budgeted.

What you should ask your developer

If you are running Craft CMS and are uncertain about your current licence position, the questions to ask are straightforward: What version of Craft are we running? Is our licence current? What plugins do we use that carry annual fees, and when do those renewals fall? A developer who has not volunteered this information is not necessarily being evasive. It is simply the kind of operational detail that does not always surface in normal conversations.

Budgeting for the ongoing cost

Treated as a platform cost, the annual fees associated with Craft CMS are not unreasonable for a business-critical website. The important thing is that they are budgeted for explicitly rather than discovered unexpectedly. If you are planning any Craft work this year, ask for a clear breakdown of the licence and renewal costs associated with the recommended configuration before the work begins.