If you have worked with Brixio over the last decade, you know that WordPress was our foundation. We did not just use it — we mastered it. My team and I developed over 400 WordPress websites during that time. We lived in the world of Sage roots and complex, custom-native Gutenberg blocks. We knew exactly how to bend the CMS to our will.
However, recently I started feeling a specific kind of friction. As a CEO, I wanted more than just a functional site. I wanted a platform that was faster and where we could contribute without the overhead of “building” a page every time we had an idea. I wanted to push the team to publish directly by leveraging Claude with minimal effort and maximum speed.
The search for total independence
For a long time, we hosted our high-stakes projects on Azure. It was powerful, but it required a lot of heavy lifting. In an effort to give our development team total independence, we made a temporary move to Hostinger. It served its purpose as a transitional home, but it did not solve the core issue. The problem was not the hosting — it was the architecture of the “monolith” itself.
I was actually spending time trying to automate our posting process using Claude. I wanted to create an auto-generator for pages since we were so comfortable with our custom block system. But honestly, it felt like I was trying to force a modern engine into an aging frame.
The Teams message that changed our roadmap
Everything shifted about a week ago. Our internal MS Teams channel for Solution Architecture started buzzing. A link was being reshared by everyone at Brixio. It was an article titled:
“Introducing EmDash — the spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security.”
Reading it was a revelation. It addressed the exact pain points I was feeling. It described a world where the security risks of the “plugin-and-patch” cycle were replaced by a modern, sandboxed architecture. I looked at the team and we decided to make the jump.
The shift: 5 days of intensity
Moving a company's entire digital presence is never a small task. It took our dev team about 5 days to execute the shift. For the first time in years, we were unlearning the “WordPress way” and embracing something entirely new.
We moved to EmDash, which is built on the Astro framework and hosted on Cloudflare. Here is why this was a non-negotiable move for our future:
1. Security through sandboxing
In WordPress, a single compromised plugin can put your whole site at risk. EmDash changes this by running plugins in a Wasm-based sandbox. Third-party code is isolated — it can only do what we allow it to do. That effectively solves the biggest security headache we faced over 400 builds.
2. The power of the edge
By using Astro, we have moved to a “zero-JS by default” architecture. Our site is no longer being “built” by a server every time you visit. It lives on Cloudflare's Global Edge, distributed across hundreds of cities simultaneously — making load times almost instant.
3. Built for AI (the Claude workflow)
This was the most important part for me. EmDash is AI-native. It supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which lets me use Claude to help manage content and keep our data structured. I can now go from a thought in my head to a published post with incredible efficiency.
WordPress dominates the CMS market in April 2026, powering about 43.4% of all websites and over 60% of sites using a known CMS, roughly 9× its closest competitor.
Comparison of Brixio's decade of WordPress work against the new EmDash / Astro / Cloudflare standard: 400+ sites vs 1, 43% vs < 1% market share, Lighthouse 50 vs 99.
A decade of Sage-rooted, custom Gutenberg-block builds. The ecosystem we mastered.
Still dominant on the web — but sluggish without heavy tuning.
Zero-JS by default, edge-first, sandboxed plugins. Built for the edge, not retrofitted.
Tiny footprint today — fast by default, engineered for tomorrow's web.
What a pleasure it is to be done
I will be honest — making this jump took some courage. When you have 400 successful projects in one ecosystem, leaving it feels like a big risk. But now that we are on the other side, the difference is night and day.
The site is secure, the dev team has the independence they wanted, and I have a publishing pipeline that keeps up with the speed of my thoughts. We are no longer wrestling with blocks — we are building on the edge.
Welcome to the new Brixio. It is fast, it is secure, and it is just the beginning.
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Geoffroy Morgan de Rivery
CEO, Brixio
