The Mobifreaks story
HTML, CSS, Mobile templates, Open source
Started and ran a free mobile template site that ranked #1 on Google, then brought its 22 templates back to life in 2026.
- 22 templates
- Free, now open source under MIT
- #1 on Google
- For "Free Mobile Website Templates"
- 2010 to 2012
- Founder, Sep 2010 to Nov 2012
- October 2026
- All 22 live again, with fixes
The problem
In 2010 phones were getting real browsers, and most websites weren’t ready for them. I started Mobifreaks to share free mobile website templates.
What I built
22 templates, all static HTML and CSS with a little jQuery. They were built for iOS, Android, Maemo and Bada, touch friendly, with media queries for different phone sizes. Business Mobi was the most used one, so I made it in ten Flat UI colours like Pomegranate and Belize Hole.
The templates were free. The only rule was a small backlink to Mobifreaks in the footer.
Deep dive 1: Free templates, real demand
Problem People didn’t use the templates as demos. They downloaded them, ran them as their real website and customized them. Then the emails started. Some people wanted custom work on top of a template. Others wanted to buy a license so they could remove the backlink.
Decision I said yes to the custom work and sold backlink-free licenses, on top of keeping every template free.
Result The demand was real, but Mobifreaks made no money. I overdelivered on custom work.
Deep dive 2: Playlist
Problem Someone was running one of my templates with heavy changes and no backlink.
Decision I built Playlist, a new template for their use case.
Result They liked it, and they were happy to keep the backlink. It’s the template I’m proudest of.
Deep dive 3: Bringing the demos back
Problem I relicensed the templates under MIT in 2019. By 2026 the demos had rotted:
- 21 of 25 demos on GitHub Pages loaded placeholder images from lorempixel, which no longer works.
- Several loaded fonts and jQuery over
http://, which browsers block on an https page. - Each demo had three copies that had drifted apart: one from 2014, one from 2019 and one on this site.
- 26 repos linked to the old Mobifreaks domain. I no longer own it, and it’s parked now.
Decision I kept each template as it was then, same markup and same CSS, and only fixed what time broke. Each repo deploys its own demo, and five old duplicate repos are archived.
Result All 22 run again at mobifreaks.munawarahmed.com, with one copy each.
Outcome
In late 2012 I stopped and moved to a full-time role. A few more Business Mobi colours went up in 2013. The templates are still free under MIT, and you can try every one on /mobifreaks.
Looking back
I’d treat it as a business from the start. People already ran real sites on the templates, asked for custom work and paid to remove a backlink. I gave most of it away and overdelivered on the rest. Today I’d make the templates more valuable for the people using them, and make profit a priority.
The approach has aged too:
- Ethan Marcotte published Responsive Web Design in A List Apart on May 25, 2010, the same year Mobifreaks started. He argued against “quarantining our content into disparate, device-specific experiences.” My templates used media queries, but they were mobile-only designs.
- Google now says it “recommends Responsive Web Design because it’s the easiest design pattern to implement and maintain.”
- jQuery is still on 64.4% of all websites, per W3Techs in October 2026, and jQuery 4.0.0 shipped in January 2026.
- Pew Research found that 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 were gone a decade later. My demos survived, but the services they leaned on didn’t.