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

[Lonnie_Kunkel]

There are no better solutions.

[nathanm89449950]

I am a small business owner and like most in the same have designed our business around adobe software as our main tools for the job in creating what ever we need for our clients. Our business may not have been around as long as others in the field but We have invested a whole lot of time and money in creating our business using your "well branded & reliable" software.  People like us use software from reputable companies so we don't have to go through the business destroying reality that you are presenting to us.  People will probably continue using you software even after all the bad rep you acquire because its the best, but just so you know decisions like this from whomever decides them destroy lives, ruin companies, and end trust.  Your products provide us with the tools we need to do the work you designed them for.  Don't take away our hammer n' nails and leave us with rocks and mud.    Keep Muse Alive.

[Nancy OShea]

<Keep Muse Alive.>

It's not going to happen, my friend.  Muse is dead and there's no life support for a corpse.  

Keep using MU if you feel you must but do so with the knowledge that what you create with it will work for only so long and then one day it won't.  The web isn't standing still and neither should you.  Start looking at multiple alternatives now so you can make informed decisions.  Or consider taking some  (cough, cough) code courses.  Uh, oh.  There's that 4-letter word again . 

[robertw86225165]

ADOBE have not given us a reason they are killing Muse. Is it not profitable? Not enough subscribers? Too hard manage? Why are you killing the only viable middle-weight web design app out there?

[Nancy OShea]

robertw86225165  wrote

ADOBE have not given us a reason they are killing Muse.

See my reply #1986

Re: Adobe Muse EOL announcement - Alternatives to Adobe Muse?

[chambersg]

Ok, I support a website for some friends of mine.  I have come to rely on MUSE for the web design as I am not a coder.  My suggestion?  Continue with MUSE. Make it better...unless Adobe desires to lose a substantial customer base, which it appears intent on doing.

[davidg99557846]

Preran:

You asked for a better solution...

DO NOT CANCEL MUSE.

This is a serious breach of trust.

Muse is now embedded in many school programs as an introduction to web design. It was provided to the Australian teachers students as part of the Creative Cloud contract paid for by the various state Departments of Education

[Guest]

I have been saying this for a couple of years. Many from Adobe and a few ACP's were more intent on attacking the messengers than fixing the issues. I have sold my stock. Its at an all time high. When this spreads we will see what happens. Facebook, Patroen and others have made huge mistakes lately.

Adobe needs new management. All their Marketing seems to be shifting to DATA based business. Kind of funny if it were not so bad that they miss their own customer base while preaching marketing know how to their customers. Maybe the top management sees the writing on the wall. Not just Muse but Adobe has tones of competition. The social community is not just graphic designers using Muse. The word is exploding about this move from Adobe and it reflects a much larger issue. Do you really think that the age group you have caused this "blow back from isnt going to just think Adobe is just not a "cool" company anymore.

This guy just streamed this today... MUSE IS DEAD...Customer Support is awful at Adobe. Almost non existent. You wanted Feedback...you got it Adobe and did not listen. There are so many options out there. I really do hope Adobe figures this out. I grew up down the road from the Adobe Creek that Adobe is named for. I'm old enough to have seen many companies come and go.

Adobe pulls the plug on Muse and Business Catalyst - YouTube

[hunterscotty]

Affinity products are excellent - and at such a low price.

Affinity also have STP software coming out.

Maybe they will also release Affinity Web. Then Adobe are finished.

[Cy233]

@hunterscotty: I really like Affinity products too. They used to have web design software but have discontinued it too. I would have loved to check it out. WebPlus has been discontinued

[hunterscotty]

Email me and I can supply you a copy. I used Webplus for years - it was excellent at the time. Serif decided to focus on Affinity and let their old range die. Now they are expanding Affinity - hopefully web will be part of the mix.

[Cy233]

Thanks for the offer to send me a copy of the old WebPlus hunterscotty. I've just found some old Webplus youtube videos I might watch. That will be an easier way to check it out. Thanks for the offer though, much appreciated.

[Jon Fritz]

This same thing happened to me, years ago when Adobe killed GoLive. Our company was one of the true GL fans, we used it in our web design business and needed that program to function daily. I wrote extensions for it almost monthly. It felt like a crippling blow, until we realized the truth of the situation...

One big thing that I think is getting lost by many here: Muse is not being revoked and taken away in 2019. Support is ending, meaning there won't be updates, patches made for the bugs, and the phone support guys will shunt you off to the forums rather than trying to find your issue.

As long as the program isn't taken out of the Creative Cloud (Fireworks CS6 is still in there from 2012), you should have far longer than the year left "in support" to come up with an alternative program or method to design sites.

The biggest issue, if you're going to rely on Muse after it has been out of production for a year or two, is don't be an "early adopter" of OS updates. Wait until you know the older program still works (check the forum). That will determine how long you can effectively use the program, much more directly than anything else being discussed.

As someone who has lived through this exact situation, just understand that once the shock of the announcement wears off, you will find it's "business as usual" with plenty of time to test new software or learn an alternative method to work online. I went from "Graphic Designer using GoLive" to "Graphic Designer able to hand write code", in under 2 years and I absolutely HATED code with every fiber of my being. Now I don't hate it and I also don't rely on any specific software, from any specific company, to do my web design work.

This decision is bad, but it's not going to be as bad as you think.

[amchambers]

I too was one of the very first GoLive users and felt betrayed when Adobe killed GoLive in favor of Macromedia Dreamweaver, an app so difficult to use that I wouldn't wish it on anyone. That's why I was thrilled with Muse, because it brought back many of the features I loved in GoLive.

My site is still running in Muse, but I'm starting to look for a replacement. Because my site already has 127 pages and needs to grow significantly, several developers have suggested coding it in Python with a Django framework so that new pages can be created and formatted automatically by pulling text and images from a database. I have no experience with this and don't really care to learn to code at this point. So, I'd be stuck with having someone convert my Muse site and start over. I just found a bunch of developers on Upwork, but most quoted 3 months and thousands to get that done. That seems ridiculous for me to spend just because Muse was cancelled.

Any thoughts? I'd appreciate any advise from other Muse users.

[greenskin]

amchambers...

I'm wondering if you can use what Musegain (www.musegain.com) has on offer (MusexPress) allowing your to convert your site to a Wordpress with a database and it is totally free! Adobe Muse acts like the template generator and Wordpress becomes your site with editable content plus all the plugins assisting with things like ecommerce, page creator, bookings, etc...

The good thing is that when Muse dies for you your site will still live on as a Wordpress site!

[amchambers]

Hi Greenskin,

Thanks for your idea. Maybe Wordpress has changed in the past few years, but I previously had a site about 1/4 of the size running on WordPress and it was soooo slow that I lost all of my visitors. I had to move the site to an alternative. Have you had this experience? Has WordPress started delivering content faster recently?

I'm checking out Webflow as suggested by some others and it looks like a better version of WordPress. Unfortunately, it says that you can only have a maximum of 100 pages and I'm already at 127 and growing rapidly.

[greenskin]

amchambers...

Sorry, I can only talk about Wordpress for the last 6 months but in that time I haven't noticed the issue you mentioned. I think for me the slowness of a website is more hosting server related unless the site's code is totally bloated and spaghetti-like.

That is really strange about Webflow only allowing 100 static pages? I checked it out and it seems hosting related but strange nevertheless!

Do you think you are only allowed to make 100 pages in the designer, because if you can make more than 100 pages in the designer then you can export the code and Musegain has a converter called Udesly which will convert everything to Wordpress.

I guess the other one you can check out that is similar to Webflow is Pinegrow (www.pinegrow.com) - it works on the same grid canvas layout as Webflow. Blocs (blocs app.com) works in the same way, but in both cases you'd have to nearly start from scratch although Pinegrow doesn't do a half bad job of importing a Muse website but if you are leaving Muse it would be better to leave its code behind!

You could try Sparkle (www.sparkleapp.com), but I'm not so sure how it would work for a growing 127+ page website?
Came across this yesterday - BlueGriffon, and its a bit like Muse but uses the grid canvas layout.

Ok, I hope that one of these can be of help to you with your plight... no thanks to Adobe!

[rayek.elfin]

Host your WP site with a host that dedicates itself to efficient WordPress hosting. One of my clients experienced similar lagging, and after switching to a good WP dedicated hosting the difference in speed was night and day. And make use of a good caching plugin.

As for layout design in WP: nowadays with plugins such as Elementor, Siteorigin PageBuilder, BeaverBuilder, etc. it's become quite simple to create nice looking pages.

[Path11]

The Musexpress is an interesting idea. It seems like you can get more life out of Muse while developers are coming up with newer methods. I'm guessing that in the next two years you can drop hanging on to Muse as other systems would be working better and take advantage of new internet technologies.

[BenPleysier]

This is a comparison chart https://wappler.io/comparison that may help.

[PatrickConnor]

Thanks @hunterscotty for the positive feedback on Affinity I am Serif Staff, but sharing copies of our legacy software WebPlus is not acceptable even though we don't sell it anymore. I would no more want you to do that than share illegal copies of Adobe products on our forums.

[curth12456337]

Yes Webplus was nice tool.  I used it till the pulled the rug out from me Adobe style.  Im scrambling to find replacements for Ps, Lr, Pr, and Mu.    I enjoyed it while it lasted but like everything Adobe you get screwed.  Can't wait to give my dollars to a company that gives a sh*t. Cleary Adobe does not.

[KayTea6]

I’m hoping they release Affinity web! I moved to Affinity to replace Photoshop/Illustrator. My last remaining subscription was for Muse. Affinity is bringing out Affinity Design hopefully soon. Great software.

[Lisa Buttmonkey]

Taking note of this! TY for the info

[renderdc0]

Another option is Corel Draw, it's only $600CAD for the full suite and it's not subscription based. I used it many years ago in the garment industry as it was fairly standard. I am pretty much fed up with Adobe along with every other designer I know because of their pathetic customer service and unreliable options such as cancelling Muse and messing with Adobe Send. I even lost full access to my Behance site when they took over Behance...nobody could help me so I had to create a whole new behance site and Adobe ID.

My advice to all is to leave Adobe, there are other option out there.