Features
Everything the platform does today. No roadmap promises — if it's listed here, it works right now.
Provision in 60 seconds
Fill in a site name, pick a location, pick a plan, pay. Within ~60 seconds you have a live site at an assigned address on em-dash.app with HTTPS, a CMS admin, and automatic daily backups running.
If you pick a region with no existing server capacity, we spin up a new DigitalOcean droplet automatically — first site in a region takes ~5 minutes, but subsequent sites in that region are fast.
9 DigitalOcean regions
Sydney, New York, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Singapore, London, Toronto, Bangalore, San Francisco. Spin up in any region — servers provision on demand.
Free SSL, automatic renewal
Let's Encrypt certificates issued at provision time, renewed automatically. You never think about cert expiry.
Assigned em-dash.app subdomain
Every site gets an auto-assigned subdomain on em-dash.app — free, persistent, and tied to your account. Add a custom domain when you're ready.
Custom domains, unlimited
Point any domain you own at your site. Add an A record, we issue the cert. Primary domain can be changed any time; WebAuthn stays stable on the platform subdomain.
One-click version updates
When a new EmDash version is released, your dashboard shows an "Update available" notice with release notes. Click Update — site is on the new version in 30–60 seconds.
Automatic pre-update backup
Before every update, we take a full snapshot automatically. If the new version misbehaves, click Restore on the pre-update backup — takes ~15–30 seconds.
Per-site version pinning
Different sites on the same account can run different EmDash versions. No forced upgrades. Update when you're ready.
Update without the anxiety
Version updates cause a brief restart (~5–15 seconds of downtime). That's fine — and we say so upfront rather than papering over it. What makes it low-risk is that a backup runs first and rollback is one click.
Pre-update backups are kept for 30 days, so you can roll back well after an update if a subtle issue surfaces later.
Three kinds of backups, one place to manage them
All backups are stored in DigitalOcean Spaces, encrypted at rest. Every backup can be downloaded as a .tar.gz — your data is always in your hands.
Runs every day. The oldest backup rolls off after 7 days. No action required.
Created automatically before every version update. Kept for 30 days regardless of the rolling schedule.
Hit "Back up now" any time. Kept permanently until you delete them yourself.
One-click restore
Click Restore on any backup. ~15–30 seconds of downtime. The current data is preserved on the droplet as a safety net before the restore runs.
Download any time
Every backup has a Download button that generates a signed URL. Take your data with you. No vendor lock-in.
Stripe-hosted billing, nothing custom to maintain
One card, all sites
Sign up once with a card. Add more sites — they all charge to the same card. You're not re-entering payment details for each site.
Per-site subscriptions
Each site is its own Stripe subscription. Cancel one, the others keep running. Billing is transparent — no pooled credits to track.
14-day grace on failed payments
Payment fails → site is suspended, not deleted. 14 days to fix it. All data is preserved across the full grace window.
Invoices and payment methods
View, download, and manage invoices. Update your card. All of it in Stripe's hosted portal — linked from your account page.
Cancel any time
Delete a site and the subscription ends immediately. No lock-in, no proration. Download your backup first.
No egress or traffic fees
We don't meter bandwidth. You pay for compute. The amount of traffic your site serves doesn't show up on your bill.
DigitalOcean, with resource isolation you can trust
Resource caps enforced by cgroups
Each plan's CPU, RAM, and disk are enforced as Docker cgroup limits. A noisy site on the Starter plan can't starve your site on the same droplet. The numbers in the plan are real limits, not guidelines.
Dedicated plan: your own droplet
The Dedicated plan runs your site on its own DigitalOcean droplet with no shared neighbours. If resource isolation and performance predictability matter, this is the plan.
Australian infrastructure
Sydney (syd1) is available alongside every other DO region. Worth picking if you need Australian data residency or want to minimise latency for AU/NZ users.
DigitalOcean Spaces for backups
Backups are stored in DigitalOcean Spaces (object storage), encrypted at rest. Independent of your site's compute — if the droplet has an issue, the backups are unaffected.