Build Awesome Minimal starters as of April 2026

Table of Contents

Awesome Eleventy ecosystem offers a wide variety of starters.

Not sure where to begin? Start with a minimal template:

Repo Stats
npm Dependencies Custom CSS
Custom JS
Custom Templates
What's Included?
/anyblades/build-awesome-starter

~10 ~30 lines ♻️ uses tailwind & blades[.css] 0 ♻️ uses eleventy-blades ~10 lines ♻️ uses blades[.njk] Sveltia CMS
/11ty/eleventy-base-blog

~10 ~300 lines ~200 lines ~200 lines uses .njk
/MWDelaney/zeropoint

~15 ~200 lines ~300 lines ~250 lines uses .njk
/anyblades/bladeswitch

3 ♻️ 0 ♻️ uses pico.css & blades[.css] 0 ♻️ uses eleventy-blades ~15 lines ♻️ uses blades[.liquid|.njk] Sveltia CMS
Not up-to-date:
/danurbanowicz/eleventy-sveltia-cms-starter

~10 ~150 lines ~130 lines ~250 lines uses .njk Sveltia CMS
Not so minimal:
/scottsweb/elva

~25 ⚠️ ~1000 lines ⚠️ ~30 files ⚠️ ~20 files Front Matter CMS local use only
/madrilene/eleventy-excellent

~40 ⚠️ ~40 files ⚠️ ~40 files ⚠️ ~40 files ⚠️
/adamstddrd/grease

~5 ♻️ ~25 files ⚠️ ~15 files ~15 files
/nhoizey/pack11ty

~15 ~30 files ⚠️ ~10 files ~10 files

🥷 Build Awesome Starter

Modern, lightweight Eleventy v4 starter with Tailwind/Pico, Blades, CMS and multisiting 🥷

Killer features

  1. Eleventy v4 by default
    both v4 (Build Awesome) & v3 supported
  2. "Thin client" architecture
    thanks Blades[-plugin] for reusability
  3. Tailwind v4 included
    with Typography plugin & Blades[-kit]
  4. Sveltia CMS included
    modern Decap/Netlify CMS successor
  5. Multisite support
    thanks to symlink-based setup
  6. One-click start
    Deploy to Netlify

How it works?

Build Awesome Starter is an advanced version of 🥷 Bladeswitch starter:

Local development

As simple as:

npm install    # dependencies
npm start      # development
npm run stage  # serve production version locally
               # ready to deploy! 🚀

CMS will be available locally at http://localhost:8080/admin/ (or similar port).

Showcase

any.digital    🥷 blades.ninja    minform.hostfurl.com   

More info

Repository: /anyblades/build-awesome-starter

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License: MIT

🥷 Bladeswitch

Ultra-lightweight Blades starter compatible with BOTH Jekyll˂˂and˃˃11ty (Build Awesome) at the same time.

Killer features

Easy to start, easy to switch:

It allows you to develop locally without Ruby friction (thanks to 11ty), and deploy natively to GitHub Pages using built-in Jekyll engine — no GitHub Actions required!

Also includes Sveltia CMS. All of this — with only 3 direct dependencies:

Minimal dependencies

🥷 × Jekyll 🥷 × 11ty (Build Awesome) 
1. pages-gem-jekyll
via Gemfile
 
1. eleventy-blades
via package.json
 
2. blades.css⁺
as remote_theme via _config.yml or via package.json for 11ty
 
3. pico.css optional
from CDN via _data/site.yml

Quick start

A. Natively, w/o GitHub Actions:

Using Jekyll on GitHub Pages

  1. Click ↑ to init your own repo.
  2. Go to ⚙️ Settings → Pages.
  3. Set Branch to main and Save.
B. Fully preconfigured:
Using 11ty (Build Awesome) on Netlify

All you need 

_includes/
└── default.liquid    # YOUR layout template
_data/site.yml        # YOUR site-wide metadata
*.md                  # YOUR content (editable via CMS!)

Under the hood:

_config.yml           # Jekyll config
Gemfile               # Jekyll gems
package.json          # 11ty packages
admin/                # Sveltia CMS configs

More info

/anyblades/bladeswitch

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