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It certainly would be a good idea to give a proper comparison in the future!
For now, here’s a few key differences:
- Piklist is code-based while ACF is database-driven. This means a few different things. First, everything you build with Piklist is easily version controlled. That’s a big win. Second, and what drew me to it, is that I’m not limited by some UI. I can create a metabox, for example, and use the Piklist functions to build fields, or do something completely different! As an engineer, I love this.
- Piklist is very careful about how data is stored. ACF has a tendency to store data in a serialized form and then search within serialized data later one. From a performance standpoint, that’s not good. But we also wanted to make it possible to do all sorts of queries that are simple, fast, and clean. So Piklist stores data in a quick, queryable form.
- Piklist loves WordPress. Ok, I’m sure ACF loves WordPress, too, but here’s what I mean by that. In building Piklist we were manic about making sure that Piklist never deviated from WordPress in a way where we were building our own thing entirely. Piklist really just tries to take what WordPress already does and take it to the next level. That means that we use all the best WordPress practices and if you’re familiar with WordPress you’ll be comfortable with Piklist. You can extend Piklist, ignore it, and tweak it using all the usual tools (e.g. hooks, WordPress functions, actions, etc.).
That’s certainly not the whole thing, but it’s a good start. We don’t consider Advanced Custom Fields a bad plugin, and there are certainly similarities. ACF wanted to be a way to bring fields to freelancers and designers and has grown from there. Piklist aims to be a framework that takes WordPress developers to the next level with speed and good practice for everything from small projects to enterprise level work (which we do). We’d like to provide UI plugins in the future that look and feel a bit more like ACF, but we wanted to start by building an incredible core that will always be free.
Hope this helps! 🙂
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I agree with Jason. I answered this question in some detail in the WP Chat forum in November 2015.
I just re-read my answer, and wouldn’t change my conclusions. I know ACF just made a major release and I haven’t tested it to see if they’ve improved their architecture, but I have no reason to believe that it would serve me better than Piklist.
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What I miss, nor is the graphical interface. It is easy and intuitive to write the code and the documentation is very good. I miss examples, which allows you to explore resources better. I saw a video presentation that considered a system of sales, products and invoice.
Not all of us are engineers, but a ready example can help the development of those who use it as a starting point. Hyperlinks and relationships are among the questions you would like to address.
For example, I would like to include links in an ad more field. And that these links could be touch sensitive. A field on an invoice that could read a product register and bring related information (description, price, quantity, dimensions). Anyway. I think in addition to good documentation, the examples guide the understanding of the developers who are starting. -
Piklist has been incredible for building data structures via their grouped meta boxes, conditionals and addmores. We use the final product in our wp-based REST API without the bloat of a GUI. I also feel the lack of a gui makes it easier for the devs to release new needed features without one extra step they need to go through.
The forum replies is nothing short of impressive. Steve, Jason and team are incredibly helpful in working out issues considering it’s an open source product.
My only issue is that sometimes the docs lack robust examples but that’s really where the community should step in. If you guys did docs on github, I’d totally contribute.
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