What is Markdown Ninja used for?

Markdown Ninja is a Markdown-first CMS written in Go for blogs, documentation sites and newsletters, positioned as an open-source alternative to Medium, Mailchimp and Substack. It is a good fit for running a Markdown blog with a newsletter and publishing a documentation site without a build pipeline.

Is Markdown Ninja open source?

Yes. Markdown Ninja is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at skerkour/markdown-ninja and is written mainly in Go.

Is Markdown Ninja free?

Yes. Markdown Ninja is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Markdown Ninja?

Yes. Markdown Ninja can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Markdown Ninja an alternative to?

Markdown Ninja is an open-source alternative to Medium, Substack, Mailchimp and Kit (ConvertKit). Other open-source alternatives to Medium include Ghost and WriteFreely.

Is Markdown Ninja actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Markdown Ninja was on 9 July 2026. The project has 416 stars on GitHub.

Markdown Ninja: open-source alternative to Medium, Substack

About Markdown Ninja

Markdown Ninja is a Markdown-first content management system for bloggers, minimalists and startups. It lets you publish websites, blogs, documentation sites and newsletters from Markdown content, and it positions itself as the simple alternative to hacking together a static site generator, a theme, a CI/CD pipeline and a cloud platform. The project names Medium, Mailchimp and Substack as the services it replaces.

According to the README, publishing a site takes one command and getting started takes about two minutes. Topics include headless CMS, JAMstack and email. Usage documentation is at docs.markdown.ninja, while a dev folder in the repository covers development. There is also a hosted service at markdown.ninja, and the README invites you to try it for free.

The code is written in Go and licensed under AGPL-3.0, with documentation and assets under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0. The copyright holder is Arcane Services, which offers other licensing terms on request. Security issues should be reported through the contact page on the project site.

Key features

Markdown-based websites and blogs
Newsletter publishing
Headless CMS approach
One-command publishing
Documentation site support
Written in Go

Good fit for

→Running a Markdown blog with a newsletter
→Publishing a documentation site without a build pipeline

Built with: Go
Tags: cms; markdown; blogging; newsletter; headless-cms; golang; jamstack; agpl

Markdown Ninja: questions and answers

What is Markdown Ninja used for?: Markdown Ninja is a Markdown-first CMS written in Go for blogs, documentation sites and newsletters, positioned as an open-source alternative to Medium, Mailchimp and Substack. It is a good fit for running a Markdown blog with a newsletter and publishing a documentation site without a build pipeline.
Is Markdown Ninja open source?: Yes. Markdown Ninja is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at skerkour/markdown-ninja and is written mainly in Go.
Is Markdown Ninja free?: Yes. Markdown Ninja is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Markdown Ninja?: Yes. Markdown Ninja can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Markdown Ninja an alternative to?: Markdown Ninja is an open-source alternative to Medium, Substack, Mailchimp and Kit (ConvertKit). Other open-source alternatives to Medium include Ghost and WriteFreely.
Is Markdown Ninja actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Markdown Ninja was on 9 July 2026. The project has 416 stars on GitHub.