Get started Best minimal starters as of April 2026
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? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
   |
~10 | ~30 lines ♻️ uses tailwind & blades[.css] | 0 ♻️ uses eleventy-blades | ~10 lines ♻️ uses blades[.njk] | Sveltia CMS | |
   |
~10 | ~300 lines | ~200 lines | ~200 lines uses .njk | ||
   |
~15 | ~200 lines | ~300 lines | ~250 lines uses .njk | ||
   |
3 ♻️ | 0 ♻️ uses pico.css & blades[.css] | 0 ♻️ uses eleventy-blades | ~15 lines ♻️ uses blades[.liquid|.njk] | Sveltia CMS | |
| Not up-to-date: | ||||||
   |
~10 | ~150 lines | ~130 lines | ~250 lines uses .njk | Sveltia CMS | |
| Not so minimal: | ||||||
   |
~25 ⚠️ | ~1000 lines ⚠️ | ~30 files ⚠️ | ~20 files | Front Matter CMS local use only | |
   |
~40 ⚠️ | ~40 files ⚠️ | ~40 files ⚠️ | ~40 files ⚠️ | ||
   |
~5 ♻️ | ~25 files ⚠️ | ~15 files | ~15 files | ||
   |
~15 | ~30 files ⚠️ | ~10 files | ~10 files |
How to Build Awesome minimal yet long-living starter that support continuous updates and evolve with your project?
Let's try to make a shift from a commodity (a template) to a service (long-term stability), and solve the "maintenance trap" where developers spend more time fixing their build tools than writing content.
The problem of "maintenance trap" #
Why traditional starters might fail? Once a user clones a repo, they are "orphaned" from the original source. If a security patch or a new 11ty version comes out, the user has to manually port those changes into their "off-road", customized codebase.
The solution #
For a starter to evolve, it must be "pluggable" — allowing users to toggle/override features without touching the core reusable code.
First of all, let's separate all 11ty-specific yet generic enough components into separate 11ty plugin, so it can be highly reused across many different sites and even starters:
This way your generic 11ty config, filters, shortcodes, transforms, and even npm scripts live in a separate npm package.
So that the user’s project directory stays clean. Updating the "starter" is as simple as running npm update.
Same for generic "utility" templates, which can be potentially shared even outside of 11ty ecosystem: