The Django docs do explicitly state that the admin is just meant for when you need a quick admin dashboard for internal applications. Anything outside of this domain or more complex, you should consider building your own.

Yep. Unfortunately the trap extends further than just the Django admin site itself. ModelForm and generic views are what power the admin site and they're exposed and you're encouraged to use them. Same with the low level crud permissions it creates. Once junior devs start doing the remaining 20% without rewriting you end up with something really difficult to maintain.

Many frameworks have the "admin" sections with very similar drawbacks. It gets you 80% of the way there in 20% of the time, but the remaining 20% is very difficult to get done.

One framework which does not have this problem - or at least minimises the problem, is the Yii framework for PHP. A very nice and underrated framework

Oh, I've been disagreeing with this take on the admin for such a long time!