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title: Frequently Asked Questions layout: docs
If you're new to Embark you probably have a lot questions about what it can do and whether it supports the features you're looking for. Check out our frequently asked questions and don't hesitate to let us know if there's anything missing!
Embark in one sentence?
Embark is a developer environment for building, testing, and deploying Smart Contracts, as well as fully decentralized applications — computation (EVM), storage (IPFS, Swarm), and communication (Whisper).
How does Embark differ from other tools?
While Embark does have quite some things in common with tools like Truffle, it goes far beyond managing and deploying Smart Contracts, if you want to. Embark aims to be extensible so you can choose what features make most sense to you when building decentralized apps.
Whether you want to purely focus on building and deploying Smart Contracts, or you want to build a static website that should be deployed on IPFS. Or even all of that! The sky is the limit.
Can I use Embark purely for Smart Contract development?
Absolutely! Simply create your application using the --contracts-only option as discussed in our guide on Creating Apps and you're good to go.
Embark's configurations make it very easy to switch to a fully featured decentralized application later on, in case you change your mind.
Can Embark connect to a simulated blockchain like Ganache?
Yes it can! In fact, Embark comes with ganache-cli and batteries included. Simply run embark simulator to spin up a simulated blockchain. For more information, check out the dedicated command reference.
Is it Luri or Iuri?
Iuri, it is!