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

[EZEZ1]

You appear to be pompous and self-important, It seems you have a tendency to rub people the wrong way. Do you have a license to do that? You should go volunteer at a homeless shelter. Be ready to tell anyone who will listen that "I'm kind of a big deal." Do you think because you know so much more than everyone else you can be so insensitive? I knew people like you who were pre-madonnas that knew Cobalt language they got paid their weight in gold there are none now. DIY will diminish you also one day, just keep living. Your day is also coming. Have a good life.

Be kind if you can.

[BenPleysier]

Being personal does not help anyone.

Yes, it is still a free speech society, last time I looked, and no-one will take that right away from you. But attacking the person rather than the content is counter productive and adds no value to the debate.

[EZEZ1]

People lost part of their lively hood and you want to brag about how coders are better than designers. I call that a first strike. You demean designers and you are proud of your knowledge as you should be, however, you slight designers as some numb skulls because they do not code as you do. That is your free speech right also and what you said was very personal and you can not even see or realize it was offensive to designers that are not as code savvy as you are. You think about it.

[BenPleysier]

EZEZ1  wrote

People lost part of their lively hood and you want to brag about how coders are better than designers. I call that a first strike. You demean designers and you are proud of your knowledge as you should be, however, you slight designers as some numb skulls because they do not code as you do. That is your free speech right also and what you said was very personal and you can not even see or realize it was offensive to designers that are not as code savvy as you are. You think about it.

All I am trying to say is that, if you cannot code, don't pretend to be a web developer in much the same way that I will never become a designer. I do not have the artistic knowledge. If this is demeaning designers than I have put myself in the same boat.

However, if the personalised attacks continue, I will be forced to delete the relevant post(s). Please stick to the subject.

[dannygarber]

Peter,

I politely disagree with anyone who finds fault with your succinct description. I agree, Designers should Design, Coders should Code, etc. If you can do both (without Muse or other semi-WSYWG tools) that's great and more power to you. I'm old-school and have honed my craft in print, from the manual days to the present. I have a small network of web designers that I either hand work off to, recommend, or collaborate with (my side of the equation is providing them with the materials, images, text, fonts, that i've created for a particular job that needs to made into or incorporated to an existing site).

Wouldn't want my mechanic performing a root canal on me. I had planned to investigate MUSE, quite literally the week it was announced EOL. So much for timing.

I can also appreciate the craft and expertise of coders. I'm just no one of them.

"Man's got to know his limitations"

-D.H.

[EZEZ1]

I do not know why you are on this blog either. You have read how devastating this has been to designers. You make light of their devastation with a simple "Designers should design, and coders should code." "Wouldn't want my mechanic performing a root canal on me."You should stop being a designer's shrink when we need one we will go to a real one, not you. I may be wrong, and others may not feel this way. Nonetheless, you are not helping you are antagonizing. I thought this blog was for Muse and Business Catalyst EOL and people trying to pick up the pieces and share new outlets and ideas on how to continue. You two-seam to have taken over to finish the kill and shame whoever you can and let us numb skull designers know we are stupid and you are smart. You and your friend sound like "big fish in the little pond." However, free speech right is yours, go holler fire somewhere else we know it is burning down we are trying to salvage what is left for us.

[dannygarber]

I understand your hostility but pointing at me is way off base. I'm not making light of anything and I'm not anybody's shrink. If you let up on your anger for a moment you'd see that I'm with you. I DON'T want to learn code. I was about to actually give Adobe my hard earned money and "purchase" MUSE as it seemed like the perfect tool for a Designer. I did, in fact, purchase PageMill years ago, and Adobe yanked the plug on that as well.

You seem to be thriving on lashing out at everyone. I don't think anyone has called you a "numb skull" designer (if they have, I missed that post). I'm hardly a "big fish in the little pond." I'm a freelancer and I ride the roller coaster of "feast or famine" in regards to jobs. How you see this as antagonizing is beyond me. I certainly don't understand what you mean by "finish the kill."

Adobe has killed off more worthwhile programs that I have used for no good reason. Fireworks, PageMill, Flash, Muse, etc. They also seem to let the core PS, AI, and ID become bloated and sloth-like without offering much innovation.

My post was not to disparage anyone. Collaboration works. When a company like Adobe strips US of tools that we have come to depend on, obviously there will be anger. I'm not crazy about people suggesting my only alternative (now that MUSE is going away) is to learn coding, Java Script, CSS, etc. That's not a solution for a Designer. Muse was the solution. I don't want to know how InDesign or any other program works, I just want to do my job. Muse seemed to be that tool for web design, despite the seeming snobbery of those who looked down on it.

[TanaSP]

I think the coders chiming into this thread need to look at the title of the thread again, Alternatives to Using Adobe Muse. This is for people who use Muse professionally. These people are designers who fit into a particular niche in the web building world. Imploring designers to become coders, or telling them to stop building websites altogether, is not helpful. The kind of professionals who use Muse are not being helped by much of your advice that is really for budding coders.

Although it may be a bit personal, I have to agree that some of this commentary is coming off as pretty self important and largely is about "everyone should work the way I work." Clearly, that isn't always the case. The design world is large and varied.

You're making the same mistake Adobe is making in assuming there are two markets for web creators, the DIY and the coder/developer/team approach. There is also a wide, third middle section, of the independent designer making custom sites that are more complex than what DIY can achieve but not as wide reaching as a large corporate site. That is largely your Muse market, and it's made up of designers who use tools to design websites for clients who need exactly what they're providing and the way they provide it.

I get that you work the way you do. Good for you. But we should be trying to help designers left in the cold by the cancellation of Muse by helping them to work the way they do, which I don't think you understand. A lot of what you're suggesting simply doesn't apply to their business models.

The discussion should be focused on tools that are most similar to Muse and ways to migrate to them. Chiding people for not being code saavy or telling them they have no business putting their grubby hands on a web page to begin with is ... well, I think it speaks for itself.

So please, set the egos aside and consider the audience. I understand, I've been making websites since the days before there were any real tools, hand tooling HTML in text editors. It's easy to get locked into your way of doing things and forget that there's a wider world out there.

For my part, I'll continue to post in these forums my experiments and experiences with branching away from Muse and what I discover, hopefully to the benefit of other Muse users who are feeling abandoned and worried about how to continue their web building work.

Peace

[EZEZ1]

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

My apologies to all.

[dannygarber]

Don't worry. I understand the anger. Unlike a vast portion of the posters here, I have no Muse EOL horror story to tell. I'm fairly certain that I would NOT have contained myself if I had invested the time and funds the rest of you have only to have Adobe take

it away. I think there's a big difference between most of their other products and MUSE. As is obvious by this forum, there is no 1-for-1 replacement for MUSE. There  are plenty of options for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, etc. Muse was unique in every sense of the word. I pay no mind to those that disparage it. I missed an opportunity but at the same time, I'm not going to invest in MUSE if it's only got about 2 years of life left, especially from a company that knowingly killed it and all that doing so implies.

[EZEZ1]

My apologies. Thank you for contributions.

[dannygarber]

If I'm coming across as arrogant, I apologize as that's not the intention. I come to this forum because I am looking for an alternative to Muse that, as a Designer, will allow me to sidestep coding and all the backend programming. Muse is/was that tool.

I'm well aware of the impact of the Muse EOL announcement on those Designers who use it to whatever degree. As I've gleaned from this thread, it has or will destroy the livelihood of thousands. I read with full empathy about many who were in my position (about to purchase/rent MUSE) and opted for a full year's subscription only to find that within a month/week of doing so Adobe pulled the plug (no refunds, especially on time invested in learning new software that is going to be shelved and without further development/support, obsolete). I certainly know my limitations and was looking forward to being able to offer web design to my clients, especially since I've designed their product/campaign/identity and would be able to sidestep HAVING to hand the work off to a web designer or coder (no offense), or use an online option which wouldn't allow me the flexibility and creativity of a program like Muse. So, either I purchase/rent Muse knowing it's time is up (unless Adobe reverses their decision) or seek out an alternative.

[TanaSP]

From what I can glean from all the discussions, our alternatives to Muse at this point looks like this list of options (in no particular order):

• Wappler

• Pinegrow

• Webflow

• Dreamweaver

• MuseXPress

None of these do what Muse does, so that's not even on the table. There's also the issue of not just making new sites in a new program, but what to do with your old sites, so migration is another issue.

I encourage those who are using the above programs, and other approaches, to post your experiences in these forums. It's very helpful to the rest of us. Personally, I want to hear about your impressions in actually using the app, and your experiences with migrating Muse sites over to the new app. Did you have to rebuild it from scratch? Could you use Muse generated code and take off from there? If so, what problems did you encounter? That kind of thing.

I have a 12 page website built in Muse that is about 80% complete that I'm thinking about completing in Pinegrow. If I do, I'll post my impressions about what it was like to switch to it from Muse at this stage of the game.

I have another, larger site built in Dreamweaver that I continue to develop that I may also use as a comparison.

I'm eager to hear more experiences in the other apps, especially real world problems they solved for you that you used to use Muse for. I hope no one has been turned off about posting their experiences here by some of the discussion.

[pziecina]

TanaSP  wrote

From what I can glean from all the discussions, our alternatives to Muse at this point looks like this list of options (in no particular order):

• Wappler

• Pinegrow

• Webflow

• Dreamweaver

• MuseXPress

None of these do what Muse does,

Whilst I agree that concentrating on the programs you mention is a good idea from now on, I also think starting a separate discussion for each program would be better than multiple mixed reply/answers in this discussion.

I would also like to suggest that in addition to discussing each program separately, such discussions should also be broken down to what framework if any is used by each program.

(note - a framework is a set of pre-prepared css rules, often acompanied with html starter templates and a set of pre-written code snippets for things like menus, accordions, carousels, etc, and often use jQuery for javascript).

As I have previously said frameworks like Bootstrap, are not what I would recommend for use by anyone who does not already know code, or even someone willing to learn the basics, as for Wordpress it adds to the problems for none coders by being php and database driven.

[Path11]

I'm going back and forth between Pinegrow and Wappler. leaning toward Pinegrow but, Wappler has database capability and there is a project of mine that I want to get off the ground that will be a web site for an online video series incorporating video and 3D animation. It will have a lot of additional information that will only grow, kinda like an encyclopedia of organic foods and recipes, and with episodes being added, plus new content being added, I won't be able to really control it if it just grows more pages so, pages generated from database info will be the way to go. Now, I've worked databases a long time and, could go back and brush up on code but, I'm not going to. I learned a long time ago you can't wear all the hats. So, with Wappler I can throw down the basic database, and do front end to start and get others to do back end coding as it grows. Pretty quickly I have to let someone else do the front end as I can't be behind a camera directing crews AND working the web site so, I need something I can easily train or hand off to someone else. Pinegrow seems to draw me but the backend ability of Wappler has its pluses too. So, Pinegrow seems to be clean HTML producer, think that would make up for no backend? I kinda like being able to have a system that lets me deal with the database populating myself.

[TanaSP]

I think that’s a good idea. Separate discussions for each program would be helpful.

[BruceKap]

I am in favor of keeping the discussion of alternatives together, because I am trying to get information to compare and contrast and make a decision of what tool(s) to move forward with. Webflow looks pretty good to me on the surface. What about Pinegrow? Has anyone tried them both with any depth?

All of the discussion of whether you can or should code is kind of irrelevant - there are all kinds of projects, and the mostly design with not much coding segment serves a lot of small businesses a custom site that would otherwise be using a template based system. If you're a coder, good for you. Why don't you go play in the Dreamweaver forum!

[Ussnorway]

as a web design tool Pinegrow covers 90% of my current work load and is very Muse like in the way it lays the canvas out... the main difference is I can get under the canvas to see the code when I need to without the work arounds that Muse required when real code had to be added

on the down side its not linked up to a hosting service like BC for one click publishing of your site so that step takes more effort and there isn't the high 3rd party widget support that Muse users enjoyed

BruceKap  wrote

All of the discussion of whether you can or should code is kind of irrelevant - there are all kinds of projects, and the mostly design with not much coding segment serves a lot of small businesses a custom site that would otherwise be using a template based system. If you're a coder, good for you. Why don't you go play in the Dreamweaver forum!

honest answer = you are screwed without at least some code skill... Muse was a special one off case and there really isn't a one stop replacement

[Nancy OShea]

Actually I am a coder and I do "play" in the DW forum .  But that's irrelevant. 

The point is, If you choose tools wisely and don't put all your eggs into one basket, you can have both "ease of use" and freedom to work with code when necessary.  It's not an all or nothing world as some folks might have you believe.  

[claygoldstein]

Excellent refocusing of the conversation, thank you.

We can and should partner with a coding person we work well with when required, learn a little coding theory but most of us can deliver on our client’s needs with a program like Muse, where we utilize our design skills, Adobe knowledge and the tools Muse provides. For me, the ability to work off line before publishing is an Important element.

Thanks for the input. Hopefully, but unlikely, Adobe is reading this too...

[Guest]

Clearly this is as usual...management decision. Preran is not in a great position that any of us would like. The real people are higher up so to speak...where we can’t get to them insulated by poor people like Preran.

what I meant to say earlier my last post here...I’m sure many will be happy for that! (GH)

“Over the last few years many from Adobe and a few ACP's were more intent on attacking the messengers than fixing the issues. Harsh criticisms were met with defiant "aggressive" responses. rather than actions to fix things. Luckily I just sold my Adobe stock. It's at an all time high. Facebook, Patreon (a membership platform) and others seem to have made huge mistakes lately.

Maybe Adobe needs new management at the very top level. All their Marketing seems to be shifting to DATA based business. Kind of funny if it were not that they miss their own customer base while preaching marketing "know how" to the same customers.

Maybe the top management saw the writing on the wall. Not just Muse but Adobe in general has tons of competition.

The social community is not just graphic designers using Muse. The "Social Networks" are buzzing with word of this move from Adobe. It reflects a much larger issue. Do you really think that the age group you have just dissed will take this lightly.  The "blow back"  is that they just don't  think Adobe is such a "cool" company anymore. Even though they don't all use Muse the creative community does communicate with one another almost instantly across the many social outlets.

This guy just streamed this video today... MUSE IS DEAD...He sates "Customer Support is awful at Adobe". Almost non existent.

Adobe pulls the plug on Muse and Business Catalyst - YouTube

You wanted Feedback...you got it Adobe and did not listen. There are so many options out there now. 40 years ago Hank Sieden, ( a marketing GURU) said don't just look at your numbers. Get off your butt and get out there to find out what is going on. Looking across many of Adobe's forums, you would have to be blind to not see there is a problem.”

[sstuart48]

No HMAM there are not many solutions like muse. This is an incorrect statement I am afraid. People that understand muse intimately understand this. Only real alternative is Webflow.

Preran....There is someone in Adobe, possibly a team that knows what is going on. Or to be more specific.... Whether Adobe wants to keep its 'middleweight web designers' audience. You need to break through to them and get answers instead of spinning us a yarn. Like I said earlier. This is not a 'hobby' app. Muse is sophisticated enough to build a whole digital marketing business workflow around it. So business owners like myself, and there will be thousands of us globally, will need to go to Webflow...because it is the only real alternative for a clean-code build without getting into the nitty gritty of the code until then end ie after export. People would not go to the lengths to build a workflow around Muse when WordPress is so accessible... Think about it. There was a reason we built our workflows around Muse....You need to get real answers Preran ASAP because thousands of businesses like mine will need to make decisions quickly due to our workflow setups...

[Guest]

I didn’t say they were good options. Many apps have unceremoniously been dropped before. Flash...everyone was using it despite its security, lack of SEO, battery robbing, etc. just poof! One day Adobe woke up. Too bad about Muse. But I’ve been doing this 40 plus years. Getting known for poor customer service becomes a companies downfall sooner or later.

[bobmepp]

Yours is an excellent response. My heart goes out to those who have invested time and money into building a business around Muse. I was just about to go down that road, but of course will not now. I had decided to upgrade from the Photography plan to the full plan, mainly because of Muse, and secondarily because of Illustrator and Indesign. I may now downgrade to the Photography plan, depending on the usefulness I see in Illustrator and Indesign,  and continue to pursue alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator, which keep getting better, namely Affinity, Aurora, Luminar, OnOne, and Topaz Studio. Judging from the websites, all of them seem to see an opening for becoming a full Lightroom/Photoshop replacement.

This is a bad mistake on Adobe’s part, and I could hardly believe the announcement when I saw it. For web design, I am just going to go back to where I have been, Wordpress.org, as the hosting solution provided by Webflow seems ridiculously expensive campared to the hosting service I use, hostm.com, in Canada, where I get unlimited everything for $10.00 per month with no slimy up-sells. (Incidentally, hostm features Muse compatibility). I guess it is time to learn to customize and build wordpress themes ....

[Adobe_junkie]

Preran,

I'm concerned about my clients loosing the "in-browser" editing feature! I, like many others, spent a huge amount of time learning this tool, and then creating client sites that allowed them to update content within my designs. When re-designs were requested we could temporary host fully functional sites (Sandbox) so clients could view/approve before making them live. Please let the appropriate individuals know these are important features a future product should have.