A WordPress alternative for Astro sites

Moving from WordPress to Astro? Markstage gives writers a WordPress-style editor on your Astro site's real design, with content in git. Checked 3 Nov 2026.

Facts about WordPress checked on 2026-11-03, from its own website. Markstage is not affiliated with it.

Markstage
Visual editor

A visual editor for Astro: writers edit on the site’s real design; content stays Markdown and JSON in git.

Edits on the real page
Yes The site's own components and CSS; text and rich text typed on the page, other fields in a side panel. Components mark their fields with a helper ⁴

Content in git
Yes ³

Self-host
Yes One docker run with the server image, Docker Compose, or systemd and nginx ⁹ ⁸

Price to start
Free to self-host ³

Licence
Elastic License 2.0 Source-available, free to self-host ²⁰
WordPress
Publishing platform

A publishing platform with a very large ecosystem of themes and plugins; headless with Astro.

Edits on the real page
No Headless: written in WordPress's admin ⁹³

Content in git
No Read by REST API ⁹³

Self-host
Yes ⁹³

Price to start
Free software; you pay for hosting ⁹¹

Licence
GPLv2 or later ⁹¹

From the full comparison; each number links to its source.

Many teams leave WordPress for Astro to get a fast, static site, then miss the editor. You can run WordPress headless and read it from Astro, or you can give writers an editor that works on the Astro site itself. Markstage is the second kind.

Who each one is for

WordPress suits sites that want its huge plugin and theme ecosystem, or that use it headless as a familiar admin for content Astro reads by API.

Markstage suits teams who moved to Astro and want a WordPress-style editing journey (drafts, scheduling, roles, media, revisions, trash) on the Astro site's real design, with content as files in git. Markstage is pre-release.

Side by side

	Markstage	WordPress (headless, with Astro)
Editing	On the Astro site's real design	In WordPress's admin; Astro draws the pages
Where content lives	Markdown and JSON in git	WordPress's database, read through its REST API
What you run	A Node server next to your static site	A WordPress site, plus your Astro site
Roles	Owner, Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, plus custom roles	Super Admin, Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, Subscriber
Revisions	Every save is a git commit; restore any version	Built in
Plugins	Block packs and site config	A very large plugin ecosystem
Licence	Elastic License 2.0 (source-available)	GPLv2 or later

Where WordPress is stronger

The ecosystem: themes, plugins, hosts and people who know it.
Everything in one place when WordPress also draws the site.
Memberships, comments and e-commerce through plugins.

Moving from WordPress to Markstage

Markstage imports a WordPress site, new after 0.3.0:

The whole site, from its export file (.xml) or its REST API with an application password: posts and pages (Gutenberg or classic) as Markdown, their images and PDFs, authors, categories and tags, Yoast or Rank Math search titles and descriptions, and every old address (permalinks, ?p=, attachment pages, uploads) sent on to the new page. A dry run shows the whole plan first, everything arrives as a draft, and blocks or shortcodes it cannot convert are marked in the text for review (docs/IMPORT.md in the repository). It is proven on a real 148-post site's export; SVG pictures stay at their old address, so save them as PNG first.
Reusable blocks (patterns) come in from a WordPress export (.xml) or a database dump (.sql or .sql.gz) as shared sections in the Library, with their Gutenberg HTML read into Markdown and the site's blocks.
Old contact form messages come into the Inbox with markstage-server forms import-wordpress.
Anything else comes in through the import API from JSON: a dry run first, imported as drafts, and idempotent on each source id.

Writers then find familiar ideas: drafts, scheduled publishing, roles with WordPress's names, a media library, trash, revisions, password-protected pages and "Additional CSS".

Frequently asked questions

Can I use WordPress with Astro?

Yes, as a headless CMS. Astro's docs show how to read posts through the WordPress REST API, which every WordPress site has.

What is the best WordPress alternative for an Astro site?

It depends on what you miss most. If it is the editor, Markstage gives writers a WordPress-style journey on the Astro site itself, with content in git. If it is plugins, headless WordPress keeps them. If you are also weighing Ghost or Prismic, see Markstage vs Ghost, Markstage vs Prismic and the comparison of all four.

Is Markstage free like WordPress?

Markstage is free to self-host under the Elastic License 2.0. It is source-available, not a GPL licence: you may not offer it to others as a hosted service without a commercial licence.

Sources

Checked on 2026-11-03: WordPress licence · WordPress roles · Astro: headless WordPress guide. Markstage facts: the full comparison, Library import and import API.

Get Markstage on GitHub All comparisons Read the docs