Comparisons
Most web editors fall into one of two camps: frameworks you spend months building on top of, or bloated office suites that embed as iframes. Stesura sits between them — a production-ready, React-native word processor you can drop into your app today.
It's built on ProseMirror, so you keep the full schema and plugin API. But unlike raw ProseMirror or headless editors like Tiptap, it ships with pagination, legal numbering, multi-section layouts, footnotes, cross-references, track changes, DOCX import/export, and threaded comments — all working on day one, all customizable.
Editor frameworks
Libraries you build an editor with. The spectrum runs from raw toolkits (ProseMirror) to nearly-complete products (CKEditor). None are word processors by default — pagination, legal numbering, DOCX fidelity, and document structure all require significant custom work.
The trade-off: maximum flexibility, minimum out-of-the-box. Expect to invest weeks to months in editor infrastructure before shipping anything to users.
Office suites
Full-featured document editors (OnlyOffice, Microsoft Word) that you embed as an iframe or service. They cover every word-processor feature but come with a fixed, unbranded UI, limited extensibility, and often per-seat licensing.
The trade-off: feature-complete on day one, but you don't own the editor — and your users know it.
| Tool | Pagination | Legal numbering | DOCX round-trip | Track changes | Out-of-the-box UI | React component |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stesura | ||||||
| Tiptap | No | No | Partial | Partial | No | Yes |
| CKEditor | No | No | Partial | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Lexical | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| TinyMCE | No | No | Partial | No | Yes | Yes |
| ProseMirror | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| SuperDoc | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| OnlyOffice | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| MS Word | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Partial = available as a paid add-on or with limited fidelity.
These are developer libraries. Choosing one means committing to building the features Stesura already ships.
Tiptap
Modern, headless, ProseMirror-based. Great developer experience.
Tiptap is headless — no default UI, no pagination, no word-processor features. You compose everything from extensions. Stesura ships all of that ready to use.
CKEditor
Mature WYSIWYG with a large plugin marketplace.
CKEditor is strong for general prose (CMS, emails, wikis) but has no concept of pages, sections, or legal document structure. Track changes and collaboration are paid premium features.
Lexical
Meta's open-source editor framework. Fast, minimal, composable.
Lexical provides primitives for short-form content (comments, social posts). It ships nothing out of the box — no UI, no document features, no DOCX. Every capability must be built.
TinyMCE
One of the web's oldest WYSIWYG editors. Common in CMS stacks.
TinyMCE is built for simple content areas and CMS drop-ins. No pagination, no track changes, and the iframe-based architecture makes deep customization difficult.
ProseMirror
The low-level toolkit Stesura is built on. Total control.
ProseMirror is not an editor — it's a toolkit for building one. It ships zero UI and zero features. Stesura is what you get after investing 12+ months building on top of it.
SuperDoc
A browser editor built around Word fidelity — DOCX is its native model.
SuperDoc is excellent at Word round-trips because it adopts OOXML as its internal model. Stesura makes the opposite trade: DOCX import/export with minimised losses, but a document model that stays independent of Word — easier to assemble, validate, and customise programmatically.
These are full products. Choosing one means accepting their UI, their integration model, and often their licensing.
OnlyOffice
Full open-source office suite. Self-hostable, DOCX-compatible.
OnlyOffice is feature-complete for word processing but embeds as an iframe, not a React component. There is no API for UI customization, and it brings spreadsheets and presentations whether you need them or not.
MS Word
The desktop gold standard. The .docx format's original author.
Word is unmatched as a desktop application but was not designed to be embedded in a web product. Embedding requires the Office JS API, a per-seat Microsoft 365 license, and accepting that the UI is not yours to control.