Statamic is a content management system (CMS) like Wordpress, but with a few differences which make it great for the client, user and the developer. I’d like to start by saying that if all you want is a generic theme which you can update a few bits of info on here and there, then Wordpress is great and you should probably use it. However, if you’re looking for a more bespoke website then perhaps Statamic is for you.
The first and biggest difference between Statamic and Wordpress is that Statamic doesn’t have a database. Instead of storing a website’s data in a database it instead stores all the site’s content and configuration settings in files. The main benefit of this is that everything can be version controlled. Changed some settings and somehow broke the whole site? No problem, just revert to the previous version in the git repo and you’re good to go!
Secondly the Statamic backend is much cleaner and easier to use than the Wordpress backend. They have created their own content editor, Bard, which is highly customisable, allowing you to insert custom sets of fields where ever you'd like. Want a section with 2 columns? No problem. Select the field set and away you go.
The Statamic backend also allows you to easily manage your assets. You can organise them into folders, add meta information to your images (title and alt tags), rename them, resize them, crop them, and so on. And one of the really cool features is that Statamic also allows you to set focal points for your images, so if your site has a cropped version of the image then you can be sure that the main focus of the image is always in frame!
Statamic has a one-off license fee of $199 (approx. £156) whereas Wordpress is completely free, however when using Wordpress it's likely you'll end up needing to purchase extra plugins in order to have all the features you require such as Advanced Custom Fields, Gravity Forms or WP Rocket (caching plugin) and so on. Statamic includes all of these out of the box so you won't need to spend any extra on top of the license fee in order to have all these core CMS features.
Fun bonus: their documentation is pretty funny too.
