Eleventy is changing its name, among other things, and I don't love it.

March 4, 2026. Day .

I heard today that Eleventy, the beloved static site generator used by all the best web developers (the site you're looking at is built using Eleventy), is not "going away", but it's been absorbed by the company behind Font Awesome (should be called Font Okay, or Font Tiresome maybe) and will now have the embarrassing name "Build Awesome".

I don't want to use Build Awesome. I wouldn't have even looked at a product called that. I've been using Eleventy for years. I want to use Eleventy.

Plenty has been written by Eleventy and Font Awesome explaining why they did this and why it's good. (The "good" part is they will make more money, an admirable goal. There's now a Pro (paid) tier that gets you some collaborative WYSIWYG editing tools, which I bet will be used about as much as Wordpress's on-page editing tools. But please, keep reading.)

Before I write any more, I just want to include a quote and point you to an article by developer Brennan Kenneth Brown, who really nailed down what's not great about this change, from a developer's point of view.

First, he includes some quotes from developers who, like me, don't care for the name change. (They're right!) But then he points out the functional change that could make working with Eleventy less of a pleasure: they're adding tools for non-programmers.

Here's the quote, from Brennan Kenneth Brown:

“With Font Awesome deciding to attempt to monetize the static-site generator by rebranding it as an accessible alternative to clunky full-stack CMSes. Just take a look at the pro features:

• Collaborative visual editing (another way to say "headless CMS")
• Build-in-a-browser (no local dev setup, no terminal needed)
• Premium built-in templates and hosted import tools

[...] This is what NetlifyCMS was trying to do before becoming DecapCMS and barely having any support or popularity.

The truth is, there has been no successful CMS for static-site generators because the only people that give a fuck about creating static sites would much prefer to use a (free and local) IDE and a terminal.

This is the existential problem and Build Awesome does not solve it.

You are creating and providing tools (which I personally think would be amazing) to people who do not understand nor care for them. And in doing so, you are neglecting your base audience who is actually already using what already exists.”

Please consider reading the whole article: The End of Eleventy, by Brennan Kenneth Brown

Maybe it's just gatekeeping, but I'm not looking forward to an Eleventy ecosystem that caters more to the end clients than the developers. Catering to clients is the developer's job! And I still don't like the name. I stopped saying "awesome" years ago. You can't make me say it's awesome. If you hear me say "Build Awesome", consider my eyes rolled.

Eleventy web development Font Awesome Build Awesome Brennan Kenneth Brown Canada notes post