Opinion: 7 Reasons Nobody Should Still Be Using TYPO3 in 2026

I know this article will generate pushback. TYPO3 has a passionate community, long-standing advocates in agencies and companies, and a tradition that runs deep in the German-speaking world. I respect that.

And yet: anyone starting a new web project today and choosing TYPO3 is making a decision I cannot recommend. Not because TYPO3 is bad software. But because the cost of that decision – in development effort, operational complexity, recruiting, and strategic flexibility – bears no reasonable relationship to what other systems deliver today.

That is my opinion. Here are my reasons.

There is a simple question that should be asked before choosing a CMS: how easily will I find someone in two years who genuinely knows this system?

For WordPress the answer is: very easily, worldwide, at reasonable cost. For Sanity, Payload, or Strapi: growing quickly, because these systems are built on technologies developers are learning anyway. For TYPO3: difficult, expensive, and the curve is pointing in the wrong direction.

The TYPO3 ecosystem is shrinking. Not dramatically, not overnight – but the numbers are unambiguous. Fewer new developers are learning TYPO3 because the barrier to entry is high and the knowledge acquired barely transfers to other systems. Someone who knows TYPO3 knows TYPO3. Someone who knows Next.js, TypeScript, and a modern headless CMS can do almost anything.

For organisations, this means: TYPO3 expertise is not getting cheaper. It is getting more expensive and more scarce. Anyone investing in TYPO3 today is building a strategic dependency that could be a real problem in five years.

For startups this means: you will either pay too much for TYPO3 developers or spend too long looking for them – both are damaging for a company that needs to iterate quickly. Every hour spent searching for specialised expertise is an hour not spent on the actual product.

For SMEs this means: the agency that built your TYPO3 site is your only lever. If they stop supporting the project, switching becomes costly and complex – not because the site is bad, but because almost nobody else will truly know it.

For enterprises this means: recruiting and internal training on TYPO3 becomes increasingly difficult to justify when the same development budgets could be invested in technologies that appeal to broader talent pools and are easier to hire for.

TYPO3 is complex. That is not a criticism of poor software development – it is the result of over twenty years of accumulated architecture that has been continually extended but never truly rethought from the ground up.

TypoScript is a configuration format that no other platform uses and that even experienced TYPO3 developers occasionally find maddening. The concepts of pages, content elements, Fluid templates, and Extbase are powerful – and they are so different from everything else in modern web development that a developer who learns TYPO3 has primarily learned TYPO3.

This complexity would be justifiable if it delivered proportional value. For certain enterprise scenarios it once did. Today, Drupal, Sanity, or a bespoke headless architecture deliver the same power – built on technologies and concepts developers already know, because they belong to the standard toolkit of modern web development.

Complexity is not a quality indicator. It is a cost factor. And TYPO3 is more expensive to learn than any other CMS I know.

For startups this means: every hour spent on onboarding is an hour not spent on the actual product or market presence. Learning TYPO3 is an investment that is only redeemable in TYPO3 – a poor resource decision in a phase where every decision counts.

For SMEs this means: internal staff expected to maintain the website either need external support for every non-trivial change – or they face a learning curve that is simply no longer appropriate for a modern CMS.

For enterprises this means: onboarding new developers onto TYPO3 projects is significantly more expensive and time-consuming than onboarding onto projects using modern, standardised technologies. This structurally increases project costs – and becomes harder to justify internally as other departments move to more agile stacks.

Web development has moved towards API-first and headless architectures – not as a trend, but because the advantages in performance, flexibility, and integration capability are real. Capture content once, distribute it everywhere: website, app, newsletter, digital signage. That is the reality of modern content strategies.

TYPO3 can do headless. There are extensions, there are projects, there are agencies that deliver it. But it is not a system built from the ground up for this approach. Sanity was built for it. Payload was built for it. Strapi was built for it.

The difference is tangible: in systems where API-first is the foundation, headless is the simplest way to use them. In TYPO3, headless is an extension of the traditional rendering approach – with all the complexity and constraints that brings.

Anyone planning a headless architecture should start with a system built for it.

For startups this means: if you build on TYPO3 headless today, you are fighting against the architecture rather than with it. The additional effort compared to a system with API-first as its foundation is noticeable from day one – and grows with every feature.

For SMEs this means: omnichannel is no longer a future vision. Anyone wanting to deliver content consistently across website, app, newsletter, and other channels needs a system built for that purpose – not one that approximates it through extensions.

For enterprises this means: enterprise content strategies spanning international markets, multiple brands, and various digital touchpoints require an API-first architecture as a foundation. TYPO3 headless is technical debt built in from the start.

Operating a TYPO3 system means: regular major updates that require developer time because backwards compatibility between versions is not always guaranteed. Extensions that fail to keep pace and cause problems during updates. A hosting setup that requires PHP expertise and is not adequately supported by every host.

I am not talking about poorly built systems. I am talking about the normal state of well-built TYPO3 installations. TYPO3 updates are projects. Not clicks, not automated processes – projects that need to be planned, developed, and tested.

WordPress can have the same problem – poorly built installations with uncontrolled plugin sets are an operational risk there too. But WordPress has a broad ecosystem of managed hosting providers that structurally address this risk. With TYPO3 the ecosystem is narrower, the expertise more expensive, and the automation possibilities more limited.

Operational costs are the costs nobody budgets for – and that nonetheless account for the largest share of total spend over ten years.

For startups this means: unplanned costs arrive regardless. A TYPO3 major update that costs several developer days is not a minor inconvenience for a small company – it is an unbudgeted expense that hurts.

For SMEs this means: the ongoing maintenance burden for a TYPO3 installation is, in a three-year view, almost always higher than for comparable WordPress or headless setups – at equivalent functionality. That money is missing elsewhere.

For enterprises this means: operating multiple TYPO3 installations across different countries or for different brands multiplies both the operational costs and the coordination effort considerably. What is manageable with one installation becomes a structural problem with five.

I say this carefully, because TYPO3 has improved its editorial interface in recent years. But the starting point was so far back that even significant improvements have not brought the system to what editors today have every right to expect.

The page tree, the backend concept, the way content is structured and edited – all of it carries the DNA of a system built for a different era of the web. For experienced TYPO3 editors this is not a problem because they know the logic. It is a significant problem for everyone else.

Onboarding times for new editors are meaningfully higher with TYPO3 than with WordPress, Sanity, or modern alternatives. In organisations with changing teams, freelancers, or cross-departmental website maintenance, that is a real cost factor.

For startups this means: anyone wanting to maintain their own website as a founder or small team will quickly become frustrated with TYPO3. The editorial interface is not built for people without system knowledge – and that costs time that is needed elsewhere.

For SMEs this means: every time a new employee needs to maintain the website, an onboarding phase begins that is simply not as long with modern systems. That accumulates into real costs over the years – and real frustration within the team.

For enterprises this means: large editorial teams required to work with TYPO3 need longer training, generate more IT support requests, and are less capable of working independently. This contradicts the goal of every modern content organisation that understands marketing agility as a competitive advantage.

Anyone investing in TYPO3 today is investing in a system with a specific technology stack, a specific community, and a specific pace of development.

The question I ask every client who is considering TYPO3: what does your website look like in five years? Which integrations will be needed then? Which channels will be served? Which technologies will your developers know?

TYPO3 gives no good answers to these questions. Not because the future of the system is uncertain – it isn't – but because the direction modern web development is moving is different from the direction TYPO3 was optimised for.

Composable architectures, AI integration, omnichannel delivery, API-first – these are not buzzwords. They are requirements that are already real in projects today and will be standard in three years. Anyone choosing a system that treats these requirements as extensions rather than foundations is building in a strategic brake.

For startups this means: you don't yet know exactly where you're headed – and that's as it should be. Choosing a system that constrains maximum flexibility is the worst possible decision at this stage. TYPO3 is the opposite of optionality.

For SMEs this means: if in three years you want to build an app, enter a new market, or integrate AI-powered search, TYPO3 as a foundation will become an obstacle – not because it explicitly prevents these things, but because the architecture was not designed for them.

For enterprises this means: strategic agility is not a luxury – it is competitiveness. Anyone building on a platform that slows integration and innovation cycles pays for it not in the IT department, but in the market.

This is the core of my argument – and simultaneously its strongest point.

TYPO3 was long the answer to a specific class of requirements: large, multilingual enterprise websites with complex user permissions, extended editorial workflows, and high security requirements. That was a genuine advantage, because at the time there were barely any alternatives that met these requirements.

Today there are. Drupal is the better choice for genuine enterprise requirements with high compliance demands and large editorial teams – it is more deeply embedded in that segment, has a clearer enterprise roadmap, and is used by more large organisations worldwide. Sanity is the better choice for complex, multilingual content models with omnichannel ambitions. A headless architecture with Next.js and a modern CMS is the better choice for anything that prioritises performance and flexibility.

TYPO3 has not gotten worse. The alternatives have gotten better. That is the difference.

For startups this means: there is no scenario in which TYPO3 should be the first choice. WordPress for fast market entry, Sanity for ambitious content strategies, Payload for tight CMS-application integration – all three are faster, cheaper to learn, and strategically more open.

For SMEs this means: the classic TYPO3 strengths – multilingual support, structured content, user permissions – are today better and more economically covered by Sanity, Strapi, or WordPress headless. The reason for choosing TYPO3 is usually habit. Habit is not an architecture decision.

For enterprises this means: anyone with genuine enterprise requirements – complex compliance, large international editorial teams, high security demands – is better served by Drupal. Anyone wanting to build modern composable architectures is better served by a dedicated headless CMS. TYPO3 is the second choice in both scenarios.

I am not saying TYPO3 is dead. It is being actively developed, it has a loyal community, and systems with this foundation do not disappear overnight.

I am also not saying that existing TYPO3 installations should be replaced immediately. A well-built TYPO3 installation that is reliably operated and whose team knows the system is not an emergency. It is infrastructure that serves its purpose – and that should be replaced when there is a concrete reason to do so: a relaunch, a strategic repositioning, a requirement the system structurally cannot meet.

What I am saying: anyone starting a new project today and choosing TYPO3 needs very good reasons. Habit is not a good reason. Existing agency expertise is not a good reason. "That's how we've always done it" is not a good reason.

The burden of proof in 2026 lies with those recommending TYPO3 – not with those questioning it.