It feels faster
Distance is time. Cutting thousands of kilometres out of every request is the cheapest speed you will ever buy, and speed is the difference between reading and leaving.
The CMS we built
Meet Kanvas
Our custom-built CMS made for the edge.
Plain language
First, what is the edge?
It is one of those phrases the industry says without explaining. It is worth two minutes, because it is the difference between a website that feels instant in Perth and one that does not.
Nothing single to fall over
One machine can go down. A network routes around trouble, so a problem in one place does not become a problem for your visitors.
A busy day stays boring
A campaign lands, a story runs, everyone arrives at once. The network absorbs it instead of your website buckling at the worst possible moment.
Why we care about this here. Kanvas was built for that second picture from the start, rather than having it retrofitted later. What that means in practice is further down the page.
See how Kanvas publishesWhat Kanvas is
Finally, a CMS made for the person actually updating the website.
Most CMS projects hand a considered design to a general purpose tool and hope it survives. We went the other way and built the tool around the design, which means we can answer for how it behaves.
See the page while you edit it.
Editors work in context, on the real page, instead of guessing what a row of form fields will do to the layout.
Change content without changing the design.
Controls sit close to the thing they change, and the ones that would break spacing, type or hierarchy simply are not there.
Every site stays its own site.
Each website has its own structure, content, files and release history. Nothing is shared across clients by default.
How it works
Design + build
The visual direction is approved before the Kanvas build begins, so the technology is never asked to lead the design.
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01
Brief
We agree what the website actually needs to do, and for whom.
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02
Design
You approve a real visual direction before a single section is built.
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03
Build
The approved design becomes structured Kanvas sections and components.
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04
Edit
Your team reviews and updates the real pages in the visual editor.
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05
Live
The checked, approved release is published to the edge and ready to share.
Inside the editor
The website and the editor speak the same language.
Pages feel like pages. Sections look like sections. There is no separate mental model to learn before you can fix a typo.
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Pages
See the whole site structure and open the page you need.
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Sections
Build pages from clear, designed regions, not empty boxes.
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Components
Update a shared block once and it updates everywhere.
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Assets
Images and documents stay organised and correctly sized.
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SEO
Page names, descriptions and search details without the jargon.
Every screen
It holds together on every screen it lands on.
Most people will meet your website on a phone, so responsive is not a box we tick at the end. Every section is designed for the full range of widths, and the editor previews desktop, tablet and phone as you work, so nothing surprises you after it is published.
Served from the edge
Published to Cloudflare's network, not to a server you have to worry about.
A Kanvas site is not a database being queried while someone waits. Publishing pushes a finished release onto Cloudflare's global network, and the page is then served from wherever the visitor happens to be.
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Australian visitors get an Australian answer.
Cloudflare answers from inside the country rather than from a machine in Virginia, and the same holds for anyone reading you from Singapore, Auckland or London.
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The public site does not depend on the editor.
What gets published is finished output. The editor can be offline, mid update or having a bad day, and the live site keeps serving exactly what was approved.
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Publishing is a release, not a save.
Hitting publish pushes a new version across the network and clears what came before it, so everyone sees the same approved site within seconds, not whenever a cache decides to expire.
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Protection comes with the network.
TLS, denial of service mitigation and traffic filtering sit in front of every Kanvas site by default, rather than being bolted on after something goes wrong.
Careful underneath
Simple for editors. Deliberate about security.
Each Kanvas site is separate. Editors sign in with one time email access, published pages do not depend on the editor being online, and changes pass through review and publishing checks before anyone sees them.
An honest note. No website can promise zero risk. Because we wrote Kanvas, the surface is smaller and we know exactly what is in it, but we will always tell you plainly where the limits are.
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Passwordless editor access, one time and per person.
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Separate site, content and file storage for every client.
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Version history and restorable releases.
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Protected previews before an important update goes live.
The foundation
Modern foundations built on Cloudflare.
Kanvas runs on Cloudflare end to end: the storage your content sits in, the code that assembles a page, the network that delivers it and the protection in front of it. You should never have to manage any of it, but you should know what each part is there to do.
- R2Object storage for images and documents, with no egress fees
- D1Your site's own SQL database, holding its content
- WorkersServerless functions that run at the edge, not on a server
- SSLEverything encrypted in transit, certificates handled for you
- WAFA firewall filtering malicious requests before they land
- DDoS protectionAttack traffic absorbed by the network, not by your site
- CDNPages delivered and cached from the city nearest the reader
- Load balancingTraffic steered around trouble instead of into it
- AnalyticsTraffic and performance, measured without tracking people
The website and the editor are built in React and TypeScript, and every change to the site code is recorded in Git.
Fair questions
The things clients ask first.
You built this yourselves?
Yes. Kanvas is our own product, designed and written in the studio, not a licensed platform with our name on the login screen. That is why we can change how a section behaves when a client needs it to, instead of filing a feature request with somebody else.
Do we own the website?
Yes. The content is yours, the design is yours and the site code is recorded in version control. Kanvas is the system it runs on, the same way a building sits on a slab you did not pour yourself.
How much can our team actually change?
Copy, images, documents, page order, SEO details and the content inside every designed section. What you cannot casually change is the part that would break the design: spacing scales, type sizes, the grid and the brand decisions underneath them.
What if we need a section that does not exist yet?
We design it, then build it as a new Kanvas section. It arrives in the editor with the same controls and the same guardrails as everything else, so the site grows without drifting.
Is this a subscription?
Kanvas sites run on a hosting and care arrangement that covers the platform, updates, backups and support. We quote it plainly alongside the build, with no per seat surprises.
Why not WordPress?
WordPress is a reasonable answer to a different question. When a site needs a large plugin ecosystem, it wins. When a site needs a designed system that stays designed, a smaller controlled surface is safer, faster and far easier for a team to use well.
The Kanvas family
The same thinking.
Made for campaigns.
Kanvas CMS keeps your website current. Kanvas Studio brings protected templates, approved assets and controlled editing into your everyday campaign work.
Meet Kanvas StudioStart a Kanvas project