Adobe Muse EOL announcement - Alternatives to Adobe Muse?

[Preran]

Hi all,

For those of you that haven't received the email around the Adobe Muse EOL, see the FAQ Product Announcement that tries to answer some the common questions around the announcement including the reasons behind the decision.

Before we proceed with discussing alternatives, the Muse application will continue to open on your computer. You will be able to continue to edit existing or create new websites with the application. Adobe Muse will continue to be supported until May 20, 2019 and will deliver compatibility updates with the Mac and Windows OS or fix any bugs that might crop up when publishing Muse sites to the web. However, it is quite possible that web standards and browsers will continue to change after Adobe stops support for the application.

While there is no 1:1 replacement for Adobe Muse at this stage, the FAQ link above provides some alternatives. Also, Adobe is making our own investment in DIY website creation and welcomes all Muse customers to join our upcoming pre-release program for a new format that will be introduced this year as part of Adobe Spark. Build a beautiful website—in minutes | Adobe Spark

That being said, I would like to open up this discussion for discussing other solutions and migration paths. It would be ideal if we could focus our efforts on the topic at hand.

Thanks,

Preran

[Illostraight]

Paz, I'm going that route for now. A few pages back on this forum, I loaded a page I did with it. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles Muse had, but for someone like me who doesn't know CSS or HTML, it's a huge help to get me back on my feet. It all depends on what your needs are. If I had a lot of clients and widgets, I would learn another builder. It's worth taking a look. I tried blocs and couldn't get my artistic head around it.

[Peter Villevoye]

Come on, you can't expect Preran to tell us his thoughts about it all, and it's a bit naive to think that the management would regret their decision as if they took it overnight...

[Preran]

Exactly what Peter said. I have no reason to believe that the decision was taken in haste.

[W_J_T]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Peter+Villevoye  wrote

But the vast majority of users, who are not in this thread, who maybe just don't mind, and patiently wait for new stuff to happen, might be very satisfied with it. That's a calculation Adobe is making and risking their business on – as always...

Agreed, sounds pretty familiar.

The previous fallout and anger from Adobe switching from perpetual desktop based Creative Suite apps to the Creative Cloud enabled subscription model, was far more dramatic than what is happening with the recent EOL of Muse and Business Catalyst. That decision effected every Adobe customer whom chose to move forward with Adobe as well as those whom didn’t, in every product category that Adobe offered.

The intro of Creative Cloud occurred in October 2011, the actual switch to CC only, occurred in May/June 2013.

So take a look at how that effected Adobe, given that it effected every Adobe customer and product:

Of course the overall market and Adobe's stock has fluctuated, every stock does. But look at the rise in growth and profits and how the switch to CC even with all the anger and fallout from Adobe customers didn’t matter then or since.

Adobe will move forward through this decision just the same. The CC decision was put in place to have constant income from subscriptions, its built for user loss and gain. The recent EOL Muse and BC decisions are the same, it's a business decision based upon whatever factors Adobe decided upon and rest assured they projected the losses and gains as part of their decisions.

Of course that does not help the customer. But please understand your anger in Adobe will not change their decision or direction. So everyone should instead use your time, efforts and energy to move forward as well. In whatever direction you see as the best fit for your needs and requirements over the next year and beyond.

[Peter Villevoye]

That's a fantastic graph you've put up ! It clearly shows that Adobe is crying all their way to the bank, like Liberace once said. The strategies Adobe is following are paying off. There's just no place anymore for a renegade tool that can just put up a website on a webserver, untethered, unmetered. So as far as Adobe is concerned, we either call ourselves sheer designers, pick up Adobe XD and team up with a developer, or we wait for that new Sparkle tool to arrive, and see how easy it gets. If 10 out of 100 potential users still might find it too difficult to work with (and still need a website), then this might replace the services which current Muse users are offering.

Like @Studio96 mentioned: the end of Muse is disrupting his business model. But then again, that's what the Internet and the web have been doing since the eighties: disrupting conventional distributions, media, platforms, again, and again. So try to find new ways to build your business. And don't be too afraid of getting your head around those HTML building blocks. They're not so difficult at all to understand – any designer with a knack for structural thinking (not coding) will be able to grasp it. However, the issue is which tool visualises this principle most elegantly. (Muse was very good at hiding it all...)

[osxmarky]

Blocsapp is looking the one for us to replace Muse... easy to use... CMS.. built in effects etc... exports html... free trail and £79  to buy = happy times again!

[Studio96]

CMS is a third parrty add on at extra cost, plus i’ve had a tricky time working within containers when it comes to positioning, resizing and more fluid layouts, happy to hear if you have a different experienc- i’ll keep plugging away!

[Peter Villevoye]

That's indeed the difficulty which Muse tackled so discretely and elegantly (at least, most of the time). The concept of containers in HTML and CSS. E.g. try sticking a slightly tilted "Special Offer" banner somewhere on an item on a page, while keeping it responsive and stuck to the item it belongs to. Any developer will tell you that it's a rotated DIV relatively sized and positioned inside its parent DIV, floating along in the order and direction of the other elements surrounding it.

In Muse you just stick it to the page and see what happens – that's it...

[BAILEYCS]

I have to add to the complete dismay, frustration, anger and massive disappointment that everyone feels here. Just when Adobe Muse starts to feel like a solid piece of kit (with 3rd party supplies like MuseThemes and QooQee expanding Muse's capabilities too) Adobe dumps it! Just dismayed! Really really - think again. One of the major issues - which goes beyond Muse itself - is most subscribers to the Adobe Creative Cloud will now think twice about investing time in learning new products that you put out onto the market as you are likely to dump them. There really is no point in believing any marketing message from Adobe about new products being launched because it's only worth investing time in their key heavy weight products. Anything new will by default fail because no one wants to invest time in new Adobe products as they are likely to fail. Really, this is a laughable strategy. This whole column is about viable alternatives and what is really showing up is there really isn't one out there. So you've cornered the market and you're ditching it!? My eyes simply can't get any wider. If you want this thing to succeed you should be pushing this as hard as Wix push there product. The only thing better is their marketing! The Wix product is pants comparatively. Muse is way better, REALLY! Just market it to more people and not just Existing Adobe customers. Don't give up on great product market it more heavily. Turn it into a heavy weight.

[Zav]

Agreed

[yardgirl-gb]

Totally agree. I do wonder though if CC users other than those who directly Muse users know anything about how Adobe are treating their customers. We've all been posting our dismay here in the Muse forum but surely this should have a wider audience. There seems to be a lot of people including my colleagues who never received the original notification so I guess there are many CC customers who don't realise what's been going on.

[dannygarber]

If what you say is true (and I have no reason to doubt you) that is both sad and frightening. Sad for those who don't know (even those who are just coming to CC and deciding to use MUSE) and frightening that Adobe didn't contact those subscribers/users.

[greenskin]

Adobe Muse is far superior in the creative free flow web design space... all the ones out their are based on a grid which doesn't allow for free-flow canvas design. I would say Adobe has ditched Muse because it is not a cloud based application, it doesn't keep track on our keystrokes, and it is not supplying user stats that Adobe now uses to create marketing business! And it is most likely on their best buddies advice - Microsoft!

The only way I see Adobe Muse coming back is if they could totally cloud-base it, but I won't be waiting for that!

[jeand61949633]

Next step is to cancel all Adobe subscriptions and blacklist Adobe apps for the next 20 years.

[aaronh65404035]

Preran,

Since the debut of Muse, this software has been an integral part of my livelihood. I rave to other designers as to how easy it is to create websites using Muse and how it is unparalleled to other software/services that allow the user to create websites without code. Before Muse, I attempted at using Squarespace and other services but they had many drawbacks in my opinion such as limiting the designer to templates and only allowing in-browser edits. I have countless clients that I have designed websites for and continue to make ongoing updates as well as new clients that I am working on websites for using Muse. Websites are currently the lion's share of my freelance business and with the discontinuation of the software, it will be extremely detrimental to my livelihood as well as having many unhappy clients. I hope that at Adobe, you will revisit this topic and reconsider giving the axe to a software that has been so beneficial to myself and many other designers. Thank you.

[danielf]

Hi Peter -- I"ve been appreciating your contribution to this very large and impactful topic!  For myself, I've been using Muse since it came out, and GoLive prior to that.  Let me explain: I'm not a designer nor in the website field.  I just like to build my own personal website, and Muse gave the opportunity to do that in a more creative way then online template service.  SO, learning code is outside my interests, though i do find it interesting, i just don't have the time to dedicate being efficient with it.

The loss of Muse will hurt folks like me, too! 😞

[Peter Villevoye]

Thanks Daniel, I hope I've been able to encourage you not to be too frustrated.

I understand where you're coming from, and I also grew up with GoLive, in fact "CyberStudio" as it was called when Adobe had not acquired it (and PageMill/SiteMill was my Kindergarten). The comfort of just putting something somewhere on a canvas is obvious.

But then... you want your website to be responsive or at least adapted for mobile (otherwise Google ignores you). And then your content grows and needs some structure and a Search. And then you'd like visitors to leave a comment or send an enquiry form with some popups. And then you need a decent table to present some specs and prices. And then Adobe required the application to connect to the Cloud Libraries. And then, and then, and so on. The slowly but surely evolution of the web urged Muse to grow accordingly.

But Muse couldn't keep up, not even with a slew of third-party widgets. Its technical foundation probably needed to be completely overhauled again (requiring a hefty budget), the marketing people at Adobe didn't like it because it didn't fit the new strategy, and the rest of the world is either diving into dozens of Do-It-Yourself tools or team-driven projects. I understand their decision, not that I like it, but I can imagine why they decided to pull the plug.

On the other hand, if you don't want or need to change or improve your website drastically, you don't have to do anything for the next five years or so. Don't panic ! You just keep using Muse for as long as it works, and leave your website as-is (with just some simple content maintenance). Some solution must come around in the next five years, won't it ?

So in your situation, don't worry too much, or too early...

[W_J_T]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Peter+Villevoye  wrote

On the other hand, if you don't want or need to change or improve your website drastically, you don't have to do anything for the next five years or so. Don't panic ! You just keep using Muse for as long as it works, and leave your website as-is (with just some simple content maintenance). Some solution must come around in the next five years, won't it ?

5 years ? That might be a stretch concerning compatibility and compliancy with browsers as well as a persons computer from which they run Muse.

[Peter Villevoye]

My answer addressed a specific situation. For some one who's not interested in improvements (at which Muse was already stalling and lagging behind), and who's rightfully using Muse as a canvas to put stuff on, his or her website is probably not overly depending on new or evolving technologies. So a 5-year span might not be so much of a stretch at all...

[W_J_T]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Peter+Villevoye  wrote

My answer addressed a specific situation. For some one who's not interested in improvements (at which Muse was already stalling and lagging behind), and who's rightfully using Muse as a canvas to put stuff on, his or her website is probably not overly depending on new or evolving technologies. So a 5-year span might not be so much of a stretch at all...

Ok lets revisit it in 5 years and see how it turned out. I guess anything is possible.

[work_at_it]

...when I see a 2013-built site on the web today, that hasn’t been touched.... why is this even being seriously being discussed? ...don’t answer that anyone please...

[W_J_T]

work_at_it  wrote

...when I see a 2013-built site on the web today, that hasn’t been touched.... why is this even being seriously being discussed?

If you look at my original statement I mentioned browsers and the computer Muse runs from, a lot can happen with each in 5 years. Also one only has to look at Muses own Feature, Release and Fix logs to see all that changed with it in the past 5 years. The web, browsers and computers move forward, if people and static websites don't wish to then thats another thing.

So why are you then concerned and talking about rebuilding websites?

[work_at_it]

Sorry WJT, I wasn’t very clear. I think you and I are in agreement about what little use a 5 year old untouched site is.

[juchis2009]

I did some sites in muse 7/6 years ago I have not touched them at all, except for updating the SEO or a few pictures and they are still up and running perfectly, the clients are happy they still bring in new clients for them.

[W_J_T]

juchis2009  wrote

I did some sites in muse 7/6 years ago I have not touched them at all, except for updating the SEO or a few pictures and they are still up and running perfectly, the clients are happy they still bring in new clients for them.

Does it have a client cms for changes, how about a blog, does it have social feeds, dynamic content, etc., ? Or is it simply just a static site and the seo and few images are all that has changed in 6/7 years and the rest remained the same since the initial launch?