The End of Eleventy
Build Awesome is a rebrand of 11ty/Eleventy, backed by a successful $40k Kickstarter. But this attempt to monetize static site generators repeats the same mistakes that killed Gatsby and Stackbit—and misunderstands who actually builds static sites.
UPDATE: The Kickstarter has been [cancelled and rescheduled](https://blog.fontawesome.com/pausing-kickstarter/) for a few months from now due to emails not being sent, ruining the project's "momentum" despite reaching their goal in a single day.
esterday, the Font Awesome team launched a Kickstarter for a new project called [Build Awesome](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fontawesome/build-awesome) and Build Awesome Pro, looking to raise $40,000 USD. And it has already reached that funding goal.
*What is Build Awesome?* Simply put, it's a rebrand of 11ty/Eleventy. Or rather, it is **the end of Eleventy**.
I have personal stakes in this. 11ty is what my site, and [thousands of others](https://www.awwwards.com/websites/11ty/), are built and powered with. I support 11ty on [Open Collective](https://opencollective.com/11ty) and have [created themes](https://brennan.day/indieweb) for the framework. So how do I feel about this?
But before I get into why I (and many other 11ty devs) are not celebrating this hugely successful Kickstarter, let's first answer the question: *What the hell is 11ty?* Well, it's a static site generator.
*Okay, but what the hell is a static site generator, and why does it matter for the literal future of the Internet so much?* I'm so glad you asked.
## Part One: A Brief History of the Non-Dynamic
Static websites [predate dynamic content management systems](https://headlesshostman.com/a-complete-history-of-static-the-beginning-to-wordpress-headless/) with their fancy backends and databases. In the early days of the Internet, all websites were mere collections of static HTML files.
Dynamic sites started with the advent of the [Common Gateway Interface (CGI)](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/historical-context-and-evolution-of-cgi/) and later server-side scripting languages like PHP, ASP, and Ruby on Rails, along with database-driven CMS frameworks such as WordPress, which [powers roughly 43% of the entire Internet](https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/04/17/wordpress-market-share/).
Thankfully, the pendulum began to swing back towards static approaches with the rise of modern static-site generators. More secure, simpler hosting, and so much faster. Essentially, [all you need to do is build a folder with some template languages and Markdown files](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/SSG) and you end up with a fully-rendered website. Here's the timeline:
- **[Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/) (2008)** was created by GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner, dubbed "blogging for hackers" and repopularized SSGs, particularly with its integration into GitHub Pages, meaning any dev on GH could make a website instantly at `username.github.io` with the framework. - **[Hugo](https://gohugo.io/) (2013)**, five years later and w
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