Adobe has long been admired for its ability to reinvent itself, shifting from boxed software to a subscription-first model and building one of the strongest creative ecosystems in the world. Yet one of its most glaring blind spots has been in user-friendly web site building—a category that exploded in relevance as small businesses, creators, and entrepreneurs flocked to platforms like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace. Adobe had an opening to capture this space, either by acquiring one of these rising platforms or by nurturing its own builders like Muse and Business Catalyst, but instead chose to sunset them. This left a void between the creation of digital assets in Creative Cloud and the publishing of those assets as real, working websites.
The difference matters because site building is not simply about design; it is about giving users a turnkey platform where creativity meets functionality. Wix and Weebly understood this, packaging design templates, hosting, commerce, SEO, and scheduling into a single subscription. Adobe, meanwhile, doubled down on higher-end commerce with its $1.68 billion Magento acquisition, aiming at enterprise customers rather than the long tail of small businesses. That strategy may have paid in revenue per customer, but it meant ignoring millions of entry-level subscriptions that not only generate recurring revenue but also form the on-ramp for deeper creative engagement.
Adobe Portfolio, which today remains the company’s closest consumer-friendly website tool, is elegant but limited. It works well for photographers, designers, and artists who want a showcase, but it is not a true platform. Portfolio cannot compete with Wix or Squarespace on integrated e-commerce, business features, or site flexibility. It is a tool, not a business foundation. The distinction is crucial: a platform locks in a user’s workflow and grows with them, while a tool is something they may use temporarily before graduating to a broader ecosystem. By not providing a robust, user-friendly builder, Adobe risks losing creators at the very moment they want to professionalize their work.
This is why the decision not to acquire Wix or Weebly now looks like a missed opportunity. Square’s acquisition of Weebly in 2018 was a masterstroke, marrying presence with payments. Wix’s IPO in 2013 gave it the capital to become a household name for small business websites. Adobe could have owned that growth, turning Creative Cloud assets into live sites with seamless publishing and commerce. Instead, it left the SMB market to competitors while positioning itself at the extremes—professional creatives and enterprise marketers—without capturing the connective tissue in between.
Adobe’s current push into generative AI with Firefly and its deep data infrastructure still leave the company well-positioned to build a new kind of site platform, one where AI continuously adapts layout, content, and design based on live performance. But to make that vision real, Adobe must once again embrace user-friendly site building as a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Without it, Creative Cloud will remain a brilliant suite of tools, while the real platform power continues to sit with others.
