Craft CMS has a strong but relatively specialised developer community. The difference between someone who has built seriously with Craft and someone who has touched it once or twice is meaningful. If your site runs on Craft and you need ongoing development or support, knowing what to look for can save you a considerable amount of time and money.
The most straightforward indicator is whether the developer has recent, relevant Craft CMS work they can point to. Not just sites that were built on Craft three years ago, but active projects on current versions of the platform. Craft has changed substantially across major versions, and experience on Craft 2 or 3 doesn’t automatically transfer to working with Craft 4 or 5.
Ask specifically which version of Craft they’ve been working with most recently, and whether they’ve handled any major version upgrades.
Craft has its own ecosystem of plugins, its own approach to content modelling, and its own Twig-based templating system. A developer who knows Craft well should be able to talk fluently about the plugins they rely on, how they approach section and entry type structures, and how they handle common challenges like image transforms, Matrix fields, and custom field layouts.
If someone claims Craft expertise but can’t name the plugins they typically use, can’t explain how the element query system works, or hasn’t heard of SEOmatic or Sprig, that’s a red flag.
Craft sites don’t exist in isolation. They depend on a server environment, a PHP version, a Composer workflow, and in most cases a set of third-party integrations. A developer who only thinks about the Craft layer and leaves the server and hosting to someone else will struggle with the kind of problems that actually affect business-critical sites.
Look for someone who understands PHP version requirements, can assess hosting environments, and has experience managing Craft deployments rather than just building them locally.
Modern Craft development is Composer-based. Craft itself, its plugins, and its dependencies are all managed through Composer. A developer who isn’t comfortable with Composer, or who manages plugins by manually uploading files, is going to create problems for whoever maintains the site next.
Similarly, all Craft development should happen in version control. If a developer can’t give you a clear answer about their Git workflow, that’s worth probing.
Technical skill matters, but so does the developer’s ability to explain what they’re doing and why. A Craft site that’s well-built but undocumented is a liability the moment that developer is no longer involved. Ask how they handle documentation, what their handover process looks like, and whether they can explain technical decisions in plain language.
Related Services
Most businesses with a Craft CMS site didn’t choose Craft themselves. A web agency built it, recommended the platform, and handled everything from launch onward. That arrangement works well until it doesn’t, and there are several ways it can stop working.
A meaningful part of the work we do at Expression 37 involves inheriting Craft CMS sites that were built by developers or agencies who are no longer involved. The circumstances vary, but the practical challenge is always similar: a site you didn’t build, with code you didn’t write, and decisions that were never documented.
The question most business owners ask is some version of: what will this cost? When it comes to Craft CMS support, the honest answer is that it depends on factors specific to your site. But there’s enough of a pattern to give you a useful framework.
Most clients come to us when their site has started to feel like a risk rather than an asset. Whether the agency relationship has ended, an upgrade has been delayed, or the site has simply grown beyond what it can handle, a conversation costs nothing.
Get in touch with KarlTrusted by established businesses and growing brands across the UK
Expression 37 works with a small number of clients at any one time. These are some of them.
Karl is the founder of Expression 37 Ltd and has been working exclusively with ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS since 2007. In eighteen years he has supported more than 80 clients across the UK, from long-term retainer arrangements to emergency rescues when something has gone wrong at the worst possible moment. Every piece of work is handled personally by Karl, with no account managers or junior developers between you and the person doing it.
Find out how we workWe recently got in touch with Karl to help with some issues we were having with our site. All issues were dealt with in a very quick, efficient manner. Whilst our requests have only been minor ones, Karl's commitment to helping us out has been first class, and we would thoroughly recommend him!
Loretta Jones
Leeds Mencap