Mobirise: a closed-source website builder whose repository holds release notes

Two files, and neither of them is the software

The Mobirise repository contains a README.md and a CHANGELOG.md, and that is the entire tree. The README is explicit about what this means. It is not open source, and the repository holds the release notes, not the source code of the app. The app itself is a website builder you can use for free, for your own sites and for paid client work, and the free licence covers both personal and commercial projects. So this is a different kind of repository from the ones most readers arrive here for, and the honest way to treat it is as a distribution and changelog channel rather than a codebase. It matters because the difference determines what you can do with it. You can read the release notes, you can follow the version history back to 1.6, and you can get the installers. You cannot read the editor, you cannot patch it, and you cannot fork it.

The browser version and the desktop app are the same product

Mobirise runs in the browser at ai.mobirise.com, and there is a desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux. The README states that both are the same Mobirise with the same features, which removes a question people usually have about products that ship two ways. The difference is the connection. The desktop app keeps working without an internet connection, and only AI and publishing need to be online, so you can build and edit sites on a plane or on an isolated network, while the browser version obviously needs to be online for everything. The current version is 6.1.12, and the installers are listed per platform: an exe for Windows, a dmg for Mac on Apple Silicon, a separate dmg for Mac on Intel, and a deb for Linux. Every version back through the history is kept on a separate history site, which is more than most vendors bother with, and the changelog in the repository covers all releases since version 1.6.

The workflow: describe it, then edit it

The process the README describes has five steps. You open Mobirise, in the browser or as the desktop app. You start a site, either by writing a prompt that says what the business or project is, which pages you need and the mood of the design, and letting Mobirise AI produce the first version, or by starting from a theme and building by hand. You then edit the pages: click any text to change it, drag new blocks onto the page from the blocks panel, and use the small toolbar on each block to move it, clone it, open its settings or remove it. Fonts and colours for the whole site are set once in Site Styles. Next you prepare each page for search and sharing, setting the page title and description, checking how it will look in Google results and choosing the image social networks show when the link is shared. Finally you check and publish, switching between the desktop, tablet and phone views and opening a preview before choosing where the site goes. The design choices in there, the page title and description and the social preview image, are the ones that quietly decide whether a page is found and whether it is clicked.

What the free tier covers and what it does not

The FAQ in the readme answers this directly. The app, a free theme and three AI generations a month cost nothing, while premium themes, extensions and larger AI plans are paid. The commercial question is answered next, and the answer is generous: the free licence covers both personal and commercial projects, including client work. The part that is easy to miss is code export. In the desktop app, saving the site as static HTML, CSS and JavaScript files to a local folder is free, and you can upload it anywhere with your own tools. In the browser version, code export is part of the paid plans. That asymmetry is the single most important thing for anyone evaluating this, because in the browser version you cannot export the code without a paid plan, while the desktop app hands you the files for free. The AI side has a similar split, with generating a whole site available to everyone and generating or rewriting an individual block reserved for premium AI plans.

Four ways to publish, and how the GitHub Pages route works

Publishing is a choice of destination, and the readme lists four. A local folder saves the site as static files in the desktop app for free, as described above. FTP uploads straight from the app to your own server over FTP, SFTP, FTPS or FTPES, and it can upload only the files that changed, which is the difference between a slow publish and a fast one on a large site. GitHub Pages hosts the site on GitHub for free, and the steps are written out: you need a GitHub account, you turn on Publish to GitHub Pages in the main menu under Account and App Settings, you create a personal access token with the repo and workflow scopes, you press Publish, choose GitHub Pages, paste the token and pick a folder name, and the site appears at your-username.github.io/folder/ with the published sites visible in your account so you can remove the ones you no longer need. The fourth is Mobirise Sites, a free subdomain such as yoursite.mobirisesite.com with SSL and a CDN, where connecting your own domain needs a paid plan.

Themes, blocks and the extensions that carry the weight

Themes arrive with ready-made blocks, and the list describes what you can assemble without touching anything else: menus, headers, features, galleries, sliders, video, forms, pricing tables, testimonials, maps and footers. You can save a block you have changed as your own block and reuse it on other pages, which is how a site becomes consistent without a theme for every page. Every theme is responsive and current themes are built on Bootstrap 5, and Site Styles sets fonts, colours and buttons for the whole site, with Google Fonts available or your own fonts added. The extensions are where the product becomes more than a page builder. The Form Builder adds custom fields and layouts and forms support reCAPTCHA, with submissions going to your email and no server code. The Lazy Load extension removes unused CSS and loads images lazily, icons are SVG rather than icon fonts, and images are resized for the web and can be converted to WebP on publish. The Code Editor extension lets you edit the HTML and CSS of any block and add code to the head or body of a page or of the whole site. Accessibility gets attention too, with the heading tag for each title chosen explicitly and a clear outline on the focused element for keyboard users. Other extensions include Popup Builder, PayPal Shopping Cart, Cookie Alert with GDPR consent and social feeds. Project history keeps earlier versions of each project so you can go back to any of them.

What the changelog says about the pace of work

The two most recent release notes show what the team is working on, and they are informative about where the product is going. In 6.1.12, Mobirise AI gains Import by Link, so sites generated in the AI product can be added to the app by a link, WebP conversion now supports .php pages, and there are fixes for the Video Popup in theme blocks, for Cookie Alert and for FTP publication. In 6.1.9, the premium AI plans gain Generate Block with AI and Edit Block with AI, FTP publication supports FTPES, more fonts can be added to a project in the Style Editor, and there is a fix for the Online Image Gallery along with many minor fixes. The direction is clear: the AI features are being pushed from whole sites down to individual blocks, and that push is exactly what sits behind the paid tier. The repository itself is kept current, with the last push on 2026-10-13, although it publishes no GitHub releases, so the changelog file is the version history to read rather than a tag list.

Editorial conclusion

This repository is useful for one narrow thing, which is tracking Mobirise versions, what changed and where the installers are, and for the GitHub Pages publishing steps, which are the part people usually need written down. It is not a source repository, so it does not belong in a catalogue of open source software, and anyone who needs to audit the editor, extend it or host it themselves should look at a project whose code they can read. Before you adopt Mobirise, work out which of the paid parts you will hit, since the free tier covers the app, one theme and three AI generations a month, and code export from the browser version is not free.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. Mobirise/Mobirise on GitHub
3. Project website
4. README