EmDash 1.0 and five Cloudflare-native projects worth watching

EmDash 1.0 is out, and developers keep building new open projects on Cloudflare. I looked for them. This post describes six: the EmDash CMS and five projects from independent makers.

Four of the five run in your own Cloudflare account: Mailflare, Relaybase, DocFlare AI and Appflare. The fifth is a set of plugins for EmDash. Most of these projects are only a few weeks or months old. Each one has a maker you can follow on X.

*Note: Star counts and version numbers are correct on 13 October 2026. They change often.

At a glance

Project	What it does	Maker on X
EmDash	Open-source CMS for Astro, from Cloudflare	@EmDashCMS
Mailflare	Self-hosted email inbox for your own domain	@hieuSSR
Relaybase	Fast email inbox for your Cloudflare domains	@ycisaac
DocFlare AI	AI search and chatbot for documentation sites	@pierreneter
EmDash plugins	Plugins that carry WordPress features over to EmDash	@wpgaurav
Appflare	App manager for your Cloudflare account	@MendyOK

EmDash 1.0: the open-source CMS for Astro and Cloudflare

EmDash is an open-source CMS built on Astro and TypeScript. The project calls itself the spiritual successor to WordPress, and it is brought to you by Cloudflare. The homepage now says “EmDash 1.0 is here”, and the GitHub repository has about 13,500 stars*.

The EmDash homepage. Screenshot: emdashcms.com.

What stands out:

• A familiar admin. Pages, posts, media, menus, widgets and taxonomies, plus a WordPress importer.
• Content types you define yourself, with TypeScript types generated from them.
• Agent-ready. There is an MCP server, a REST API and a CLI, so scripts and AI agents can manage content too.
• Plugins in sandboxes. A plugin declares the permissions it needs, and it runs isolated.

To try it, use the browser playground or run npm create emdash@latest. I wrote a plainer guide in EmDash: Cloudflare’s open-source CMS built on Astro.

Follow the project: @EmDashCMS.

Mailflare: self-hosted email on Cloudflare

Mailflare is a self-hosted email inbox for custom domains. You run it in your own Cloudflare account. By default, Cloudflare Email Routing receives mail and Cloudflare’s email service sends it. Messages go to D1, attachments to R2, and you can swap in Resend or Amazon SES if you prefer.

Mailflare’s homepage. Screenshot: mailflare.co.

It does more than I expected for a project created in May:

• shared and personal mailboxes, with a calendar and public booking pages
• search, routing rules, contacts, webhooks and API keys
• an AI assistant and MCP access with per-key permissions
• an interface in 34 languages

It is AGPL-3.0, has about 5,000 stars* and 678 forks*, and offers a “Deploy to Cloudflare” button. There is also a Docker option. The README notes that receiving mail through Email Routing is free, while Cloudflare’s own sending needs a paid Workers plan.

Built by hieunc229 on GitHub. Follow on X: @hieuSSR. Code: github.com/hieunc229/mailflare.

Relaybase: an email inbox for your Cloudflare domains

Relaybase is also about email, but from a different angle. It is a keyboard-first inbox for every domain on your Cloudflare account. You install an open-source Worker, an R2 bucket and D1 databases into your account. Relaybase does not host your mail.

Relaybase’s homepage. Screenshot: relaybase.email.

The pitch is speed and tidy addresses. A few things from its page:

• a locally cached list, j/k navigation and a command menu
• product addresses like support@ without paying per mailbox
• threading, full-text search and a send/receive API with signed webhooks
• newsletters with templates and delivery stats, sent through Cloudflare Email Sending

The web app is available now. The Mac app is paused while a v0.2 update is finished. The page mentions a $35 license, and you pay Cloudflare directly for what you use.

Follow the maker on X: @ycisaac.

DocFlare AI: AI search and chatbot for your docs

DocFlare AI is a search box and chatbot you add to a documentation site with a single <script> tag. It answers from your own content and shows its sources.

The DocFlare AI repository. Screenshot: github.com/p10node/docflare-ai.

It is all Cloudflare underneath:

• Workers AI for embeddings, reranking and the chat model
• Vectorize for search, D1 for site data and chat logs
• Cron Triggers to crawl and re-index your sitemap

The project says it runs on the free tier, though Workers AI use above the daily free allowance needs a paid plan. It is MIT licensed and very new: the repository appeared on 7 October and has about 40 stars*. That makes it a good one to try early and give feedback on.

Follow the author on X: @pierreneter.

EmDash plugins: move a WordPress site to EmDash

Moving a WordPress site to EmDash goes smoothly until you reach the plugins. FAQ blocks, [year] shortcodes, lead magnets and contact forms have no EmDash version, so they break or show up as raw text.

Gaurav Tiwari ported four of his own WordPress plugins and added one more. All five are free and open source (GPL-2.0).

The plugins page. Screenshot: gauravtiwari.org.

• Core Forms: forms with spam protection, a submissions inbox, and email and webhook actions
• Lead Capture: lead magnets with expiring download links and optional double opt-in
• Content Blocks: ten editorial blocks, such as FAQs, callouts and comparisons
• Dynamic Dates: 36 date shortcodes that resolve when the page renders
• Emailit: an email provider for invites, magic links and account recovery

They need EmDash 1.1 or later, and some need Astro 7. If you want to see how the migration looks from the other side, my free WordPress to EmDash checker shows what is inside your export before you move.

Follow Gaurav on X: @wpgaurav.

Appflare: an app manager for your Cloudflare account

Appflare is a manager for apps that run on Workers. It is a single Worker in your account. You pick an app from its catalog of open-source apps (more than 100), install it from your browser, keep it updated and roll back if an update goes wrong.

Appflare’s homepage. Screenshot: appflare.dev.

What I like about the idea:

• Everything lives in your own account. Installed apps keep running even if Appflare is removed.
• It creates each app’s resources for you, such as databases and storage.
• You can install it from the browser, with Cloudflare’s Deploy button, or with npx create-appflare.

It is Apache-2.0, about three weeks old and has 93 stars*. The project says it is independent and not affiliated with Cloudflare.

Follow the maker on X: @MendyOK. Code: github.com/appflare/appflare.

Where to start

• You want a CMS for an Astro site, or you are leaving WordPress: try EmDash in the playground. Then add Gaurav’s plugins for forms, lead magnets and shortcodes.
• You want your own email inbox on your own domain: compare Mailflare (full inbox, calendar, teams) with Relaybase (fast, keyboard-first).
• You run a documentation site and want AI search: try DocFlare AI. It is new, so expect rough edges.
• You want to install open-source Workers apps without a lot of setup: try Appflare.

What these projects have in common

1. They run in your own Cloudflare account. Mailflare, Relaybase, DocFlare AI and Appflare install into your account instead of a vendor’s.
2. They are young and open. Most are weeks or months old, with public code you can read before you trust it.
3. Agents are a first-class user. EmDash and Mailflare both include MCP access.

If you try several of these, you will end up with many Workers, D1 databases and R2 buckets on your machine. WorkerDock is the free Mac app I built to see them in one window: status, ports, logs and bindings. If you build something on Cloudflare, tell me on X, @harishchouhan. I may feature it next time.