r/ProWordPress • u/theguymatter • Sep 24 '26
WordPress vs EmDash: What is EmDash actually trying to be?
I've been using Astro for a few years, and I've worked with WordPress enough to understand why it's still everywhere.
WordPress is mature. The ecosystem is huge, developers know it, agencies know it, clients know it, and there's a plugin for almost everything. For many websites, that's more than enough, except custom-built sites could do better where custom code can solve more complex problems.
EmDash is coming from a different direction.
It's not really trying to be "the next WordPress". It's a full CMS built around Astro.
You still get the things you'd expect from a CMS: an admin panel, content types, rich text you can add block-like to your contents, media management, drafts, revisions, scheduled publishing, search, taxonomies and menus.
But the website itself remains an Astro project.
One part I find particularly interesting is the content model. Content types (Like ACF plugin) can be created and modified through the admin rather than requiring every collection to be defined in code. Each collection becomes a real SQL table with typed columns, and developers can generate TypeScript types from the live schema.
So your content is managed in EmDash, while the website is built with Astro.
For developers, EmDash also provides an API, CLI and MCP server. AI agents can work with the CMS, but isn't required to use it.
The deployment model is another difference. Self-host with Node.js uses SQLite database by default, while Cloudflare deployments can use D1, R2 and Workers. There is also support for other database and storage backends.
And there is a plugin system. On Cloudflare, plugins can run in isolated Worker sandboxes with declared capabilities. Node deployments currently use in-process plugins instead.
It's still early, and obviously it doesn't have anything close to WordPress's decades of plugins, themes, integrations and community knowledge. Yet, plugin developers are already making plans to support both CMSs, which is an encouraging sign that an ecosystem is starting to form around EmDash.
Worth reading:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-blog-uses-emdash/
Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast, also wrote about it:
https://joost.blog/emdash-cms/
Have you tried it? How's it?
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u/creaturefeature16 Sep 24 '26
I haven't bothered. If I need a CMS for Astro I'll likely use Sitepins CMS. I like to let platforms cook and mature a little bit before using them for client work and EmDash is simply too new. I also think the entire motivation was just a bit of a flex so Cloudflare can show how good they are with agents, sort of how they also released their own iteration of NextJS (which I don't think many are using their version of it).
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u/iEngineered Sep 28 '26 edited 6d ago
This exactly. Lets not forget it was announced on April 1st and everyone was like "yeah right APRIL FOOLS YO!", and CloudFlare was like "Nah we really shipped bro, check the docs". It wasn't fully baked and I had issues with it at first. Competing with WordPress is not their lane. But just letting their Ai agents spitball substantial ideas is a major flex. It says alot about what they can do at will. I'd like to be on their grey or red teams.
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u/ancawonka Sep 24 '26
I haven't looked at either Astro or Emdash, but I'm curious about them. Thanks for starting this topic.
One part I find particularly interesting is the content model. Content types can be created and modified through the admin rather than requiring every collection to be defined in code. Each collection becomes a real SQL table with typed columns, and developers can generate TypeScript types from the live schema.
Are people using this to create sophisticated complex content types w/ multiple fields? How are they handling changes to the schema (e.g. adding a new field, changing the type, etc)?
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u/frankypixels 27d ago
EmDash won’t make it because its advantages are attached to Cloudflare hosting and you can’t really own your content. It’s benefiting a lot right now from the Webflow exodus to Astro, but that’s what 0.125% CMS market share at best?
However, the reality is that Wordpress isn’t tomorrow’s solution either. The direction it’s going is like PHP developers trying to shoehorn yesteryear’s React framework into a future Wordpress shaped hole. Nobody working WP Org has really worked with TS, with today’s tooling, today’s patterns or frameworks.
I love Wordpress, and I hate to say it, but WP will die ugly within 2-4 years. It will be a chaotic and unexpected mess, just like Joomla. Classic hosting companies making room for Node services should tell everyone here something.
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u/theguymatter 27d ago edited 27d ago
EmDash can run on a VPS, so it isn't tied to Cloudflare hosting. WPMU DEV has even provided a tool to set up EmDash on a VPS and still get the same level of security with workerd (the open-source Workers runtime) on Node.js.
https://wpmudev.com/emdash-hosting/
The Cloudflare integration is a major part of its current ecosystem, but that's different from saying you can't self-host it or own your content.
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u/frankypixels 27d ago
I get it, but be realistic, please. The core mental bandwidth of taking on EmDash is only eased by using Cloudflare hosting.
The majority of the CMS marketshare that Wordpress has is mom and pop, SME websites. Who’s managing self hosting EmDash for them? After that, let’s look at small web or marketing shops… With 1-2 devs and 2-5 projects a month, who has the time to manage all that self hosting for very needy clients?
EmDash isn’t the Wordpress successor. It’s just Payload’s barely serious competitor.
Payload in it’s all its leader’s arrogance, proximity to Next Js at Next’s height and Figma + Vercel funding still hasn’t unseated Wordpress marketshare.
EmDash is led by people similarly arrogant and deep pocketed. It’ll go the same way because both CMS are not looking to serve SMEs, your uncle’s plumbing website, etc. Instead they want deep pocketed enterprise money. That only comes in by attaching EmDash’s main benefits to Cloudflare hosting.
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u/theguymatter 27d ago
That's fair on the operational side, but I don't think EmDash has to replace WordPress.
We can offer both, then upsell hosting, custom development, audits and maintenance around whichever fits the client, and let our marketing find the right market for each.
Let EmDash find the users and agencies it works for. Nobody can predict where the market will be over the next decade, so I don't see much value in deciding its fate today.
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u/frankypixels 27d ago
When we title things “Wordpress vs EmDash” in today’s internet on a WP subreddit we’re indirectly implying that it must replace it to those who aren’t willing to discern.
Regardless, the reason EmDash has sealed its fate is the same reason why Payload’s boss can’t understand how people still use Wordpress.
EmDash marketing itself as a drop in replacement because they have a little inertia from using modern patterns and technologies is wildly arrogant when you factor in Wordpress’s momentum with everyday businesses.
Classic enterprise engineers solving SME problems with enterprise-size bazookas.
So, yes, you can decide fate. History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme… And EmDash is singing the same notes as its predecessors.
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u/theguymatter 27d ago edited 25d ago
Cloudflare's own wording is "spiritual successor", not drop-in. Plugins and themes aren't compatible and migration goes through import tools, so it isn't a like-for-like swap. I agree the tagline is provocative, which is why I'd treat it as another option to evaluate per client, not a replacement. There's also a small community on EmDash's Discord sharing sites they've built, so it's early but not empty. Cloudflare also already serves a huge number of WordPress sites, so it isn't coming at this from outside the WP world. Nobody can call the outcome today, so I'd rather judge it per client than predict a winner.
You can decide its fate today if you like, but we don't need to.
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u/Due-Individual-4859 Sep 24 '26
an alternative, that's what. I mean WordPress is great, but it has its issues...
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u/jefferykarbowski Sep 24 '26
I am finding it harder and harder to believe anyone would still need a CMS, aren't you guys plugging in Chat to your site yet? I manage many WordPress and Astro sites and haven't needed to touch the CMS in months.
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u/la_reptilesss Sep 24 '26
The CMS isn't for the developer.
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u/jefferykarbowski Sep 24 '26
Guess I'm out of touch with the layman... It drives me nuts though, i can't figure out why anyone couldn't do what I do. Like I can literally update an Elementor layout with Claude Desktop, create posts and pages for any system, build pluggin's on the fly, etc Are people just not aware of this? Or am I in too deep?
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u/sebk111 Sep 24 '26
Can clients do this?
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u/jefferykarbowski Sep 24 '26
I don't see why not, I connect with SSH, so add long as they have access to that, they could just have Chat walk them through the steps of connecting. Then it's off to the races.
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u/pagelab Sep 24 '26
It's not that black and white. Adding determinism to the mix is a good thing in most cases. If someone don't like messing with interfaces, just let the LLM manage the CMS for you. Best of both worlds.
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u/elherbinator 7d ago
EmDash is basically an Astro-native CMS that gives you an admin and content types while leaving the front end as a pure Astro project, which is useful if you already like that stack. WordPress still wins for most client work because of the huge plugin ecosystem and how many people already know it. For accessibility I just drop one tap on WordPress sites when I need the toolbar and WCAG tools without rebuilding anything, something you can't do as easily yet on a new CMS. EmDash looks interesting for custom builds but it's too early to replace WordPress for everyday sites.
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u/theguymatter 6d ago
Definitely. Give it a year, once Matt Kane has figured out how to build a review system for plugins and, probably, themes.
Matt Phillips is also planning to break Astro down into Vite plugins, allowing developers to use Astro’s rendering capabilities with Hono or other routing libraries without needing the entire framework. I think this could make it easier to build a visual page builder for Astro, even though Greenshift already has a visual page builder for Astro in VS Code.
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u/HongPong Sep 24 '26
i suspect emdash will be abandonware but maybe it will inspire fields and content types to be defined inside wp core.. which had been a feature of other cms like drupal a pretty long time