Why we're starting again—nd how we keep it free for the independent web.

WordPress democratized publishing for over forty percent of the internet. It proved that anyone should be able to spin up a website, write in a visual editor, and own their database without asking permission from a closed platform.

But the runtime underneath that editorial workflow carries twenty years of PHP-FPM and MySQL architectural debt. Serving a simple article shouldn't require booting sixty PHP classes, running a hundred SQL queries, or paying for five layers of compensatory caching.

In the legacy ecosystem, table-stakes publishing features—isual layout building, SEO metadata, XML sitemaps, redirects, contact forms, database backups, and static caching—were outsourced to dozens of competing third-party plugins.

Every plugin adds another unverified dependency, another database schema migration, and another attack surface. In Daypress, core publishing capabilities belong inside the main audited binary.

We chose native Rust (Axum + Tokio) paired with embedded SQLite in Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) mode because infrastructure should be both fast and boringly reliable.

Memory-safety bugs fail to compile. There is no network hop between the HTTP server and the database. A single 30 MB binary boots in milliseconds, idles at ~18 MB of RAM, and renders dynamic SSR pages in under a millisecond.

A new CMS is only useful if existing websites can actually move to it. Over seventy percent of active WordPress sites trap their layouts inside Elementor JSON blobs, nested Divi shortcodes, or Gutenberg block comments.

Our Rust AST compiler (crates/daypress-ast) transpiles those legacy page builders into a unified, inspectable layout tree (Daystudio). And where our importer still has gaps, we publish an honest public ledger on our homepage rather than hiding limitations behind marketing copy.

AI agents should not interact with a CMS by scraping admin forms or dumping fragile raw HTML strings into a database column.

Daypress compiles a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server directly into the core binary (--mcp-stdio and POST /mcp). Agents read and write typed Daystudio AST nodes, design tokens, and static edge deployments while human editors retain full visual control in the builder.

Great open-source infrastructure dies when maintainers burn out or when venture capital forces a project to cripple its free tier. We designed Daypress around a straightforward compact:

Independent site owners get the complete self-hosted CMS for free forever under the AGPLv3. We fund full-time core engineering through commercial licenses for agencies and future managed cloud hosting—so commercial revenue directly bankrolls a rock-solid, continuously maintained free edition for everyone.

If you are an independent creator, blogger, developer, small business, or non-profit self-hosting your own site, Daypress is 100% free forever under the AGPLv3.

You get the complete single binary: the Daystudio visual builder, the 1-click WordPress importer, the Static Edge Publisher (Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, ZIP), the built-in MCP server, and the in-app self-updater. No artificial feature gates, no seat limits, and no telemetry nags.

Digital agencies, design studios, and SaaS platforms that manage client portfolios, white-label the Daystudio builder and /d-admin portal under their own brand, or distribute proprietary modifications without AGPLv3 source disclosure purchase a Daypress Commercial / Agency License.

Agencies save thousands of euros per year in managed PHP hosting and plugin subscriptions while getting priority migration support and multi-site tooling.

While Daypress is trivial to run on any \ VPS or Docker host, many publishers and companies simply don't want to manage servers, TLS certificates, or off-site backups.

Our upcoming Managed Daypress Cloud will offer 1-click hosted instances with automated SQLite WAL replication, global edge caching, and concierge WordPress migration— urning hosting margins directly into core open-source R&D.