As Buffer has continued to support the individuals, creators, and small and medium businesses who use us, we’ve had to balance being a relatively small team with making tough decisions.We’ve had to make one of these recently. After careful deliberation as a team, we’ve decided to retire Start Page.
If you’ve built a Start Page with us, thank you.Creators, small businesses, and nonprofits have used it as a front door to their work since 2021.Many of our customers were just getting started with their online journey, and a full website can be expensive and fiddly to maintain. Start Page provided a simple, flexible page anyone could build in minutes and share across their social profiles.
We don’t take ending that lightly, which is why we’re giving several months’ notice, firm dates, and multiple options to make the transition as hassle-free as possible
Here’s the timeline:
November 4, 2026: We’ve stopped allowing the creation of new Start PagesNovember 30, 2026: You’ll have tools to move your page somewhere else.February 2, 2027: We’ll begin taking down Start Pages that haven’t been migrated somewhere else.
I’d like to elaborate on why we’re doing this, the plan moving forward, and what options we plan to have available.
Why we’re doing this
Having one link that holds everything (also referred to as a link-in-bio tool) is still useful in today’s social space. So why are we moving away from it? For us at Buffer, three things have become hard to ignore.
We’ve focused Buffer on our core strengths outside of Start Page. Buffer is a social media toolkit: we help you plan, publish, and learn from your content, and engage with your community across the social channels you use. While Start Page lives in your bio, it sits off to the side of all that. We’ve wanted to work on Start Page, but it takes away from Buffer’s strengths and focus.
From a capabilities perspective, Start Page has fallen behind, and catching up would cost us the things you rely on. Link-in-bio and microsite tools have come a long way since 2021, and Start Page hasn’t kept pace. Making it best-in-class would mean pulling several teammates away from other key, much-requested improvements to other core Buffer features. We don’t think that’s the right trade for most of our customers.
It’s challenging to run well as a small, nimble team. Hosting public pages at scale comes with real costs: infrastructure, traffic spikes when a page goes viral, and a constant effort to keep spam and malicious pages off our domains.
We looked at other options, like making Start Page a free standalone tool, or freezing it in place with no further development. Each one left us running a product we couldn’t properly invest in, slowly getting worse for the people using it. We’d rather make the clear decision to move ahead with sunsetting Start Page instead.
How we’ll help you move
If you’ve put time into your Start Page, you shouldn’t need to start over. By November 30, you’ll find a migration tool in Buffer with these options:
Download your whole page. Export your Start Page as a complete set of files, images, and all, ready to upload to a free host like Netlify, Vercel, or Cloudflare Pages. We’ll include step-by-step instructions, plus a readme written so an AI assistant can walk you through setup if you’d like a hand.Move your page to Lnk.bio, a leading link-in-bio service. If you’d prefer a simple, visual interface for managing your Start Page moving forward, we’ve partnered with Lnk.bio, an independent link-in-bio tool, to offer a simple migration flow. Lnk.bio is free to use in the way you used Start Page before, and has additional features on their affordable paid plans.Keep your link working. When you move, give us your new page’s address, and we’ll redirect your start.page link to it. The links already in your bios, posts, and printed materials keep working.
Not every block translates perfectly everywhere. The updates feed, for example, only exists in Buffer. We’ll show you what carries over before you move anything.
If you pay for Start Page as a channel
Starting November 30, 2026, once migration tools are available and Start Page editing ends, Start Page will no longer count toward your channel slots. You won’t lose the slot you’ve been paying for — consider a new social channel to use in its place. If you’ve been growing your online presence, or are curious about Bluesky, Threads, or Substack, this is a good excuse to try one.
If you’d rather not, you can lower your channel count at any time in your billing settings, and the change will appear on your next bill. Our Advocacy team is happy to help with that too.
Questions you might have
Is my Start Page going away today? No. It stays live until February 2, 2027, and you can keep editing it until November 30, 2026.
Can I still create a new Start Page? No. New Start Pages can’t be created as of November 4, 2026.
What happens to my link after February 2? If you set up a redirect through the migration tool, your start.page link keeps sending visitors to your new page. Without a redirect, the link stops working once your page is removed.
How long will redirects last? Redirects stay up after Start Page shuts down. If that ever changes, we’ll give you plenty of notice first.
I pay for a Start Page channel. Do I keep paying for it? From November 30, 2026, Start Page stops counting as a channel, so that slot is free for another channel. If you don’t need it, lower your channel count, and you’ll see the change on your next bill.
Why not just leave Start Page running as it is? We considered it. Keeping public pages online means ongoing hosting costs and moderation, and a product nobody is improving slowly gets worse for its users. A clear end date with good exit options felt more honest.
Thank you
Nobody enjoys a post announcing a product going away — myself included. But we’d rather tell you plainly, early, and with a plan than let Start Page quietly gather dust. Thank you for building with it, and for trusting us with your social media presence.
If you have questions about your page, your plan, or the move, reach out to our Advocacy team at hello@buffer.com. We’ll be sharing reminders by email as each date gets closer.
