# EDS Is Not a Platform Decision. It Is a Delivery Decision.

> Framing Edge Delivery Services as adopt-or-don't guarantees a bad outcome. EDS trades back end flexibility for front end speed. The useful question is which surfaces are performance dominant and which are integration dominant, then blending the two under one authoring surface.

- Author: [Gary Fuller](https://garyfuller.net/about)
- Published: 2026-07-16
- Topics: AEM, Enterprise Architecture
- Canonical URL: https://garyfuller.net/blog/eds-is-a-delivery-decision-not-a-platform-decision

EDS is not a platform decision. It is a delivery decision you make one surface at a time.

Most AEM roadmap conversations still frame it as adopt or don't. That framing guarantees a bad outcome because it treats a portfolio of very different surfaces as a single architecture problem.

Here is the actual tradeoff. EDS gives up back end flexibility to buy front end speed. No Publish tier, no Dispatcher, no server side composition. Code ships straight from GitHub. In return, performance stops being an achievement and becomes the default. That is the design, not a gap Adobe plans to patch later.

So the useful question is which surfaces are performance dominant and which are integration dominant.

Marketing pages, campaign landers, and SEO critical content belong on EDS. Authenticated experiences, configurators, and anything carrying identity or commerce complexity belongs on headless or traditional Sites, where server logic still earns its keep.

Universal Editor is what makes the blend work. One authoring surface across both tiers. Authors should never need to know which architecture renders the page. If they do, the architecture leaked.

Teams that struggle with EDS went all in, one direction or the other. All in on EDS and they hit the integration wall, then start rebuilding server logic in the browser and calling it composable. All in against it and they are shipping landing pages on infrastructure built for applications, paying application complexity for brochure work.

If your EDS decision fits on one line of a roadmap slide, your plan needs work.