md0

What md0 is

md0 is a GitHub-native CMS and a set of free markdown tools. Its homepage describes the CMS this way: "Your GitHub repo is your CMS. Visual editing for your markdown files. GitHub stays the source of truth. No API. No setup. 2-minute onboarding." It is for developers who keep content in Git, and for the writers or clients on their team who would rather edit in a visual editor than in a code editor. The tagline across the site is "Zero complexity. Pure markdown." The pages do not name a company location or founding year, and the footer says it is "Made by developers."

What you build and how

Blogs and static sites with content in Git. md0 does not build the site. It edits the markdown that your site is built from. The comparison page says it supports "any static site," so the typical use is a blog, documentation site or marketing site where your static site generator reads markdown files from a repository. The homepage's category is a GitHub CMS, and that is the job: connect a repo, edit a file, save.

Getting started. You go to cms.md0.io and sign in with your GitHub account, then grant md0 access to the repository that holds your content. The migration steps on the site say md0 reads your repo structure and detects existing content directories automatically. The comparison table gives a setup time of under 5 minutes, against 30+ minutes for Netlify or Decap CMS, which needs configuration plus a proxy. The homepage also says "Connect your GitHub repo and start editing markdown in under five minutes."

Authentication and hosting. The key design choice is that "md0 authenticates directly through GitHub OAuth with no intermediary. You connect your repo and start editing. There is nothing else to configure or host." In the comparison table, md0's GitHub integration is "Native," and no backend or proxy server is required. For a team, this means one less service to deploy and maintain next to the site.

The editor. md0 offers a "modern WYSIWYG" visual markdown editor. The page says it writes standard GitHub-flavored markdown: "What you see in the editor is exactly what lands in the .md file. No hidden HTML attributes, no non-standard extensions, no lock-in to a particular renderer." The site argues that other rich text editors produce MDX or HTML fragments that cause trouble when you change generators, and that md0 avoids this. For a blog author, this means a file you can still open and edit by hand.

The schema builder. Instead of hand-writing a YAML config, md0 provides a visual schema builder, which the page contrasts with the "manual YAML only" approach of Netlify CMS. Editors can define fields, set required states and add validation without touching a config file. The page says the schema is saved as a file in your repo, so "your CMS configuration comes along automatically" if you change hosts or restore from a backup. The page says standard field types such as string, text, boolean, datetime and image map across directly when migrating.

Collaboration and workflow. Editing is tied to GitHub: the page says editing creates a commit that you can check on GitHub, and that your site build should still pass after an edit. md0 does not publish anything itself. Your existing deployment, whichever host you use, picks up the commit. The pages mention no roles, approvals or scheduling features.

Active development. The comparison page states md0 is under active development, that when GitHub changes an API md0 updates to match, and that bug reports get a response. That is the company's claim about itself.

The free markdown tools. Beside the CMS, the homepage offers 21 tools that work "with no installation, sign-up, or tracking." Those shown are a live markdown editor, markdown to HTML, markdown to PDF, a table generator, a README generator, a markdown formatter, a markdown table editor, a WYSIWYG editor and PDF to markdown, which converts a PDF with automatic heading detection and is described as "100% private, runs in your browser." The site says tools load right away, processing happens in your browser with no server round trip, and the tools keep working offline. The homepage badges read "100% Free" and "0 Trackers."

The evidence from the pages

Pricing. The homepage says: "Tools free forever. CMS free for public repos." The comparison table lists the free tier as "Free for public repos." A Pricing link appears in the navigation, but the pages do not state what private repositories cost or whether there is a paid plan, so a team with private content should check that page before committing.

A comparison with Netlify CMS. The site's page on Netlify CMS gives background: Netlify CMS launched around 2016, was open source, and supported GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket. Netlify deprecated it in March 2023 and handed maintenance to the community, and it was renamed Decap CMS. The site says activity dropped after that and that community issues go weeks without response. This is md0's description of a competitor, so treat it as that.

What md0 says Decap does better. The page is candid. Under "Where Decap CMS Still Has an Edge," it lists a larger library of built-in widget types and a larger community with years of answers, blog posts and plugins since 2016, and it says md0 is newer, so community documentation is still growing. The comparison table also notes that Decap is open source and can be self-hosted, while the md0 row for that line does not claim either.

Migration. The site says migration from Netlify CMS "takes less than an hour for most sites," because your content files do not move and only the editorial configuration changes. It walks through reviewing your admin/config.yml, connecting your repo, and making a small edit to check the commit. When you are satisfied you can delete the old admin directory.

Support. The footer links to documentation, a cheatsheet, a changelog and a support page. No support hours or contact numbers are published. The pages make no security or compliance claims.

Who it suits and who it does not

md0 suits a developer or small team with a static site whose content is already in a public GitHub repository, who wants writers to edit in a visual editor and who does not want to host an auth proxy. It is also handy for anyone who needs a quick markdown conversion, since the tools need no account. People moving off Netlify or Decap CMS are the audience the site most clearly writes for.

The limits are visible on the pages. It works with GitHub only, as far as the pages say, so a team on another Git host should check first. It is newer than Decap CMS, with fewer widget types and less community material by the site's own account. It edits files rather than structured data, so relationships between content items are up to your own file layout. And the free tier is for public repos, so a private site needs the pricing answer first.