Adobe announces end of Adobe Muse and Business Catalyst

[Mastan]

A product announcement on the official Adobe Muse website reveals that Adobe will end support for the website building software for Mac and PC.

The company released a final feature update yesterday (March 26, 2018) and plans to release compatibility updates and bug fix updates for Windows and Mac systems until May 20, 2019.

Adobe won't block the execution of the Adobe Muse software after end of support but it won't address bugs or compatibility issues either after the date.

Existing customers may use Adobe Muse to create new websites or edit existing ones using the application according to Adobe.

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.

Published Adobe Muse websites and applications will be accessible after the end of the product. Adobe Muse customers who use Business Catalyst to host websites and services will have to publish the sites on another hosting platform.

While not explicitly mentioned in the Adobe Muse product announcement, Adobe announced on the Business Catalyst website that the service will shut down as well.

Development ended on March 26, 2018 and customers won't be able to purchase new sites starting with June 18, 2018. Sites hosted on Business Catalyst will be deleted after March 26, 2020.

Adobe will stop hosting existing sites on Business Catalyst on March 26th, 2020. Adobe encourages customers to download their data and migrate to other systems well before March 26th, 2020. Detailed how-to information and assistance is available. Customers' data will be retained by Adobe until March 26th, 2020, after which date the data will be deleted. Data retention is for the sole purpose of allowing customers to export their data and transfer to another platform.

Adobe launched Muse in 2012 as an easy way for designers and customers to design and publish websites without having to write code.

The product announcement gives two explanations that led to the discontinuation of Adobe Muse:

Investments in UX design and prototyping skills when creating complex websites and applications.
The emergence of Do it yourself website creators.
Adobe admits that there is no 1:1 replacement for Muse in the company's portfolio of apps and services.

It suggests to customers who build complex sites and applications to use Adobe XD, that customers who build websites to showcase their work to use Adobe Portfolio, and that customers who create "basic" websites to use Adobe Spark.

The company plans to introduce Do it yourself website creation capabilities to Adobe Spark later this year.

Companies that compute with Adobe have started to react on the news. Below is a video by Webflow which showcases the product and highlights migration to the company product.