Dear WPMU DEV Team,
As an active developer and EmDash early adopter on your new hosting clusters, I want to share a strategic suggestion regarding the future of your EmDash offering.
While the current VPS-based Node.js hosting provides the stability and dedicated resources we’ve come to expect, the “serverless-first” shift in 2026—pioneered by platforms like Cloudflare and Vercel—has set a new standard for global performance. For example, with our multilingual sites (3+ languages), the current single-origin VPS model introduces unavoidable latency for international users, specifically regarding how assets are served.
I’m proposing that WPMU DEV integrates its existing 119-node global CDN directly into the EmDash hosting stack. This would be a major strategic move for the following reasons:
Bridging the VPS-to-Edge Gap: By enabling Edge Caching with Stale-While-Revalidate (SWR) for EmDash SSR routes, WPMU DEV can offer the “instant” feel of serverless edge computing while maintaining the reliability of a managed VPS origin.
Integrating Smush for Portable Text: Unlike WordPress, EmDash stores content as Portable Text (JSON). Currently, my media assets are stored on the local VPS NVMe drive. By extending Smush Pro’s CDN logic to EmDash, you could automatically mirror these local assets to your global nodes. This allows the JSON data to point to a high-speed CDN URL rather than a single-origin server path.
Asset Parity with R2: This integration would allow developers to migrate fully from Cloudflare R2 into the WPMU DEV ecosystem. If the Smush App could manage EmDash media directories (Directory Smush) and serve them via the CDN, it removes the last reason to keep assets on Cloudflare.
The Future of “Managed Serverless”: EmDash is an AI-native CMS. By leveraging your CDN as a reverse proxy and distributed storage layer for EmDash, WPMU DEV moves beyond traditional “hosting” and becomes a global Content Delivery Platform, positioning yourselves as the premier managed alternative to native Cloudflare/Astro stacks.
This integration would give us the best of both worlds: the stability and expert support of WPMU DEV with the distributed global speed of the Edge.
Best regards,
Flavio