What are the best static site generators?

Template Engine:Liquid

Markup Languages:HTML, Markdown

Top Pro

Can use HTML to set up your page templates, and markdown for your blog posts

Top Con

Little Windows support

Windows is not an officially supported platform and setting it up on Windows requires a lot more tinkering than Linux or OSX. See More

Top Pro

Has a built in server

You can spin up a static server at localhost:4000 by running jekyll serve See More

Top Pro

Code highlighting with pygments

Jekyll has Pygments code highlighting built in so you can create syntax highlighted code blocks on your blog. See More

Top Pro

Excels at blogging

Jekyll pages are structured by posts, which makes it easier to build a blog. See More

Top Pro

Decent documentation

Link to docs See More

Top Pro

Import your existing blog from many sources

Jekyll supports importing from many dynamic blog engines: CSV Drupal 6 Drupal 7 Enki Google Reader Joomla Jrnl Marley Mephisto Movable Type Posterous RSS S9Y Textpattern Tumblr Typo WordPress WordPress.com See More

Top Pro

Has built in watch mode

Watch mode will reconstruct the site as pages are updated which is great for testing. See More

Top Pro

Large, active and helpful community

Thanks to it's popularity, Jekyll has a large and active community of users. This means there is plenty of learning material available for Jekyll and it's easy to find help from other users when needed. See More

Top Pro

Customisable with data and collections

Can make sites very different from blogs but with a lot of pages by making templates using data and collections. See More

For new users it is hard to understand what is going on and why. See More

Middleman

Top Con

Too much magic happens

Top Pro

Built in minification, compression, and cache busting

Minification and compression are as easy as setting a few configuration options, and unique asset hashes are available to allow you to invalidate the cache of files that change regularly. See More

Specs

Middleman is a big piece of software, it's not simply a static blog generator. Because of all the functionality and flexibility it offers it can be a little more complex than other static site generators and a little harder to learn all of its bells and whistles. See More

Top Con

A little more complicated than other static site generators

Top Pro

Support for a variety of templating languages and preprocessors

Middleman supports lots of compiled languages, such as Less, Markdown, Textile, CoffeeScript, Stylus and more. See More

Top Pro

Extensible and flexible

Middleman has a resources page full of official and community extensions. See More

Top Pro

External pipeline management with Webpack

Replace your Gulp, Grunt, Bower configs See More

Top Pro

Embraces Rails conventions

Middleman follows established conventions so if you know rails, you can easily pick up middleman. See More

Top Pro

Easy deployment options

The documentation for Wintersmith is lacking examples and clear explanations. It's also quite disorganized, making it difficult to find what you're looking for. See More

Wintersmith

Top Con

Thin and disorganized documentation

Top Pro

Markdown support

Wintersmith has an extensive Markdown support. Default, it is rendered by Marked. However there are plugins available for others (such as Markdown-it). See More

Specs

Language:JavaScript

Top Pro

Templates

Templating engine comes with Jade plugin and many third-party plugins. See More

Top Pro

Very flexible

Wintersmith only has a predefined directory structure, everything else can built any way you want. See More

Top Pro

Built on node.js

Node.js is a software platform for scalable server-side and networking applications. See More

You'll maybe have to tweak some JSX if you want something that's not covered by available themes. See More

Gatsby JS

Top Pro

No page reload when navigating

Top Con

A bit raw

Darren Dub's Experience

You have a lot of power when you have React and GraphQL at your disposal. Not only do you have the growing Gatsby plugin ecosystem, but you also can use the enormous selection React libraries available. By using the GraphQL Data Layer, you can easily pull in data from other pages or data sources. See More

Specs

Scripting language:JavaScript

Top Pro

Based on React.js

Editing markup is phenomenally easy when you have components. See More

Top Pro

Live reload

Every change you make can be almost immediately seen in a browser. See More

Top Pro

A lot of plugins

Gatsby offers a lot of plugins to integrate tools like SASS, typescript, styled components, etc. See More

Top Pro

Very active development

Gatsby is very actively developed and the maintainers are very helpful. See More

Top Pro

Built-in code and data splitting

Top Pro

Open Source

Top Pro

Take content from any source

Gatsby can generate the pages with content from any sources like Drupal, Wordpress, Contentful, etc. If the source plugin is not coded for your solution, you can create it. See More

Top Pro

A static site and a React app in one

The static pages are generated by Server Site Rendering of the React app. So you have all benefits of a static site, and all benefits of a React app, which is very powerful. See More

Top Pro

GraphQL Data Layer

Top Pro

A lot of examples

Gatsby have a lot of examples sites in his github repository. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful out-of-the-box blog starters

Last commit is Feb 22, 2016, Social media hasn't been updated. Dead project? See More

Octopress

Top Con

Not Actively Developed

Top Pro

Very easy to use

Octopress is designed to remove all the time-consuming and frustrating tasks you usually have to deal with when using Jekyll. You don't have to write your own HTML templates or do any configuration to get started. The default template also takes care of any basic CSS/JS you need to write to get going. See More

Specs

Adding a new post, for example, causes the entire blog to be regenerated. See More

Top Con

Inefficient

Top Pro

Lots of plugins (from Jekyll + 3rd party)

Another advantage of being based on Jekyll is default access to the extensive plugin system for Jekyll. There are also plugins developed specifically for Octopress. See More

Top Con

Some plugins have hard-coded values

Top Pro

Based on Jekyll

As Octopress is simply a framework on top of Jekyll, it benefits from being based on one of the most popular site generators available. The primary benefit is that it is backed by git and is built in such a way that the site can be easily re-generated if the content changes. See More

Top Con

Complex

Top Pro

Uses Markdown for writing

Uses the Markdown syntax for writing blogs. See More

Top Con

Not as flexible as Jekyll

Top Con

Code and data are intertwined

Code can be viewed on GitHub. See More

Hugo

Top Pro

Open-source and free

Top Con

No tutorial on how to create a theme from scratch

ConsiderateNinurta's Experience

Hugo is a lightweight install compared to others. At about 38mb it's just one file: hugo.exe. You can put it anywhere then just add this to your path to use from anywhere. no dependencies. It's very fast which is great if when learning since you can quickly set up multiple sites to experiment with. It's well documented though I don't think the docs are as precise as Jekyll. Adding themes can be tricky, certainly at first. I found the blank theme for developers pretty good though. Just add some content: hugo new posts/first-blog-post.md and launch in draft mode hugo server -D to view your site. I like the speed and generally found it a joy to use. See More

Specs

Language:Go

Template Engine:Go html/template

Markup Languages:HTML, Markdown, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, Org-Mode

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

Top Pro

Fast

Top Pro

Single Binary - Cross Platform

Top Pro

No dependencies

All other SSGs expect you to have a full toolchain setup for their language. Hugo is written in Go and distributed as an executable for unix, linux, windows and mac. Just download and run. See More

Top Pro

Clean workflow

Create your new site, run the Hugo server, edit. Lather, rinse, repeat. Hugo stays out of the way. See More

Top Pro

Flexible

Top Pro

Good documentation

Top Pro

Many themes available

Top Pro

Draft mode

Allows you to see changes in real time. See More

Top Pro

Very active community

Top Pro

Easy to add new content types, data files, and taxonomies

DocPad is published as an NPM module which makes it easy to integrate with an existing Node.js deployment. See More

DocPad

Top Pro

Built on Node

Top Con

Support for Handlebars templates is not mature - integration is awkward

Handlebars' philosophy of "no logic in templates" makes some things difficult: DocPad built-in template helpers aren't available by default - they have to be manually added/exposed DocPad's example template code often includes logic, which makes it impossible to use within Handlebars templates -- it has to be abstracted into custom helper functions. Can't pass objects to function calls from within HB templates. See More

Specs

Language:CoffeeScript

Top Pro

Has an active plug-in ecosystem

DocPad's has a large amount of plug-ins available to extend its functionality and compatibility with other language preprocessors and markup languages. Javascript preprocessors include: Coffescript, TypeScript, and LiveScript. CSS preprocessors include: LESS, SASS, Stylus, and Roole HTML markups include: Markdown, and Textile Templating engines include: Eco, Handlebars, Moustache, HAML, CoffeeKup, Jade, and Teacup JSON converters include: YAML and CSON See More

Top Con

More up-front investment to learn/use well

DocPad provides a LOT of extensibility and dynamic capability, which means there's more up-front investment to learn DocPad well -- and deviating from the defaults while maintaining project robustness may be difficult. See More

Top Pro

Has Live Reload

DocPad has a Live Reload plug-in that leverages websockets to automatically update the blog content for users live on the site. See More

Top Con

Written in CoffeeScript (which could be a Pro depending on your preference)

Top Pro

Built on top of the Express framework

Although DocPad is a static site generator, if you find the need to, you can extend the site with the Express framework for dynamic content as well. See More

Top Con

Code samples in Documentation and any online Q&As are in CoffeeScript only (no JavaScript samples available)

Top Pro

Has graphical admin interfaces for managing your blog

There are multiple custom interfaces, including miniCMS available to DocPad which provide WYSIWYG editing and article management. See More

Top Con

The default template engine (Eco) only supports CoffeeScript, not JavaScript

Top Pro

Easy to deploy

Deployment plug-ins make deploying to hosting providers even easier, with plug-ins for GitHub Pages, AWS, and Google Storage. See More

Top Con

The default template engine (Eco) does not support multi-line code tags

Top Pro

MIT-licensed

Top Pro

Prebuilt Skeletons

Skeletons are boilerplate setups to provide a baseline structure for you to fill content into. See More

Top Pro

Document and file querying with Query Engine

DocPad leverages Query Engine to provide a query API for querying files. See More

Nanoc is a good choice if you need to support a site with a more complex structure than a simple blog. Nanoc is more agnostic to the types of pages you have, and allows you to do finer tuned refinements like customizing the URL structure. See More

Nanoc

Top Pro

Flexibly built

Specs

Nanoc has a modular architecture which makes it easier to incorporate plugins and functionality from other projects as well as extend functionality. See More

Top Pro

Extensibile

Top Pro

Helps you create multilingual sites

Nanoc takes multilingual sites into consideration and has features to make translations easier to implement. See More

Top Pro

Unit testing integration

Nanoc has a check command to run tests against your site and make sure it meets requirements you define. There are built in checks to validate HTML and CSS, as well as validating internal and external links. See More

Top Pro

Works well with compile to languages

Nanoc is friendly with different CSS and HTML preprocessors, so you can easily use SASS, LESS, HAML, Markdown and more. See More

It's free to use because it's an open-source software under the MIT license. See More

Nikola

Top Pro

You can use it for free

ToughMengPo's Experience

Nikola supports publishing ipython documents out of the box. No need to convert them to markdown like other static site generators. See More

Specs

Language:Python 3

Markup Languages:reStructuredText, Markdown, IPython (Jupyter) Notebooks, Org-mode, HTML

Multi Language Support:Yes

See All Specs

Top Pro

Host on any web server

Nikloa sites are static files, and thus may be hosted on any web server that allows you to upload your own files. This lets you use simple and inexpensive hosting providers and still have a reliable site. See More

David Siller's Experience

Simple, a lot of options and knows Markdown and Jupyter notebooks as well. Templating can be done with Jinja2 (or Mako). See More

Top Pro

Write in reStructuredText and Markdown

You have better choices for markup than raw HTML. See More

Top Pro

Supports several formats

Supports input formats for reStructuredText, Markdown, IPython (Jupyter) Notebooks, Org and HTML. See More

Top Pro

You can write posts using up to 40 languages

Top Pro

Free open-source software (MIT license)

Top Pro

HTML input

Nikola posts may be written in a variety of formats. You can write posts in HTML, with all the expressive power of HTML and CSS, and still have the benefits of a site-wide theme and navigation structure. See More

Hexo has a relatively large following and community, especially in China. While this is certainly a positive, many developers who do not know chinese would be unable to follow all the guides and tutorials out there written by their chineses counterparts. See More

Hexo

Top Pro

Fast and easy to use

Top Con

Relatively large community but the majority is non-english speakers

Specs

Language:JavaScript

Template Engine:Swig, EJS, Haml, Pug

Markup Languages:HTML, Markdown, AsciiDoc, Org-Mode

Top Pro

Deployment is easy and fast

Hexo built sites can be easily deployed to Github pages, Heroku, Openshift (custom cartridge needs to be setup) or any other custom solution (just copy over thepublic folder). Any deployment is as simple as editing the _config.yml file and running the hexo deploycommand See More

Top Pro

Generating a blog is pretty fast

Generating a new blog with Hexo is generally really fast. Hexo truly lives up to it's name as a simple and fast static website generator. See More

Top Pro

Constantly updated and actively maintained

Hexo's repository in GitHub is very active and it's actively being maintained. Updates are released every two or three months. See More

Top Pro

Complete and helpful documentation

Hexo's documentation is very thorough and helpful, especially for people who are just starting with it. See More

Since Grav is built with PHP, it can be hosted on almost all web hosting providers. If the provider supports Wordpress, they also support Grav. See More

Grav

Top Pro

Can be hosted with any provider

TallDiJun's Experience

Active community, comprehensive set of plugins available See More

Specs

Template Engine:Twig

Markup Languages:Markdown

Multi Language Support:Yes

See All Specs

Top Pro

Easy creation of templates and content

Supports Twig for templating with Parsedown for fast Markdown and Markdown Extra support. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use admin panel

Well designed, easily usable and modern admin panel is a boost as it lets Clients edit the content easily. See More

Top Pro

Custom fields for content

YAML-based page headers allow you easily add custom dynamic fields to your content. See More

Top Pro

Open-source and free

Top Pro

Extensive Documentation

Documentation is not an afterthought! Grav has a dedicated documentation site plus loads of tutorials and guides. See More

Top Pro

Extensive documentation

Documentation is not an afterthought. Grav has a dedicated documentation site plus loads of tutorials and guides. See More

Top Pro

Built-in package manager

Top Pro

CLI Tools

Command line tools such as dependency installation, cache clearing, user creation, and backups. See More

Because metalsmith is at its core focused on transforming directories of files, it can be used for more than just static site generation, and could be used as a build tool, a documentation generator, or any use that requires file transformations. See More

Metalsmith

Top Pro

Flexible beyond a static site generator

Top Con

Small community

The Metalsmith community is still fairly small compared to the more popular options. This results in a lack of learning resources and difficulty finding support from experienced users. However, a slack group has recently been started. See More

Specs

Language:JavaScript

Template Engine:Handlebars, Jade/Pug,...

Everything in metalsmith is a plugin, and it is designed to make it easy to write new ones. See More

Top Pro

Designed around plugins

Top Con

Not client enabled API chaining

According to the spec on API chaining, the API request/response need to associate an API object to an corresponding controller/action/uri to be able to validate and handle the request/response and the datasets. Without that, the consuming client service cannot properly validate or relate the datasets from one to the other. Links have no relational value and the api object creates the relationship between the datasets while maintaining an api/dataset relationship with the corresponding controller/action/uri As such, the current methodology supported would not be able to be called by the client not supported by the client in a RESTFUL manner See More

Top Pro

Chaining API

Metalsmith uses a chaining API that's consistent and simple to use: Metalsmith(__dirname) .use(markdown) .use(templates('handlebars')) .build(); See More

Especially for someone new to Assemble, it can be difficult to find what you're looking for in the documentation. See More

Assemble

Top Pro

No dependencies on Ruby, Python... just JavaScript

Top Con

Documentation can be hard to navigate

Top Pro

Built on node.js

Top Pro

Powered by a popular template engine Handlebars

Handlebars is the default template engine for Assemble, but you can add any template any you want. See More

Top Pro

Highly customizable

Top Pro

Markdown support

Top Pro

Highly extensible

Assemble can be extended with plugins/middleware, helpers and mixins. See More

Top Pro

Nested layout support

Assemble makes it easy to work with layouts. Layouts are used to "wrap" pages with common page elements, such as a header, footer etc. You can even nest layouts! See More

Top Pro

Use mainstream build tools Grunt or Gulp

Ok, it's beta software, I guess, though it is 2-3 years old? Still less than v1.0.0. But still, they introduce breaking changes in a patch or minor level bump? Not even documented, discussed, or acknowledged in bug reports. See More

Eleventy

Top Con

Introduces breaking changes between major versions.

CharmingNargun's Experience

Easy enough if you use all defaults and expect never to deviate. Things go downhill fast when you try to customize beyond the defaults. Good luck with that. See More

Top Con

Not well documented.

There is some documentation. But the current capabilities are not well documented. Common use cases are not explained. The documentation is self-contradictory. Changes to code functionality not reflected in documentation. See More

There is no i18n support out of the box. And there is only one extension that does i18n compilation with a limited feature set. See More

Next.js

Add Video or Image

Roots

Top Con

No i18n (Internationalization)

Top Pro

Active development

Roots has heavy corporate sponsorship and is worked on very actively as a full time job. That means you can rely on it. See More

ExuberantFuamnach's Experience

it's bullshit See More

Top Pro

Quick deploys

You can deploy to heroku, github pages, s3, etc. with a single command. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic content

Roots supports dynamic content like jekyll for every compiler and language. See More

Top Pro

Currently going through an upgrade

Roots is currently in the process examining how to leverage newer technologies to make Roots even better. You can see the new project on github: https://github.com/carrot/roots-mini Here is the blog post explaining the next phase of Roots: https://medium.com/@jescalan/eaa10c75eb22#.uacjziaej Here is the stack they're experimenting with: - jade - for markup - babel - for JS and JS transforms - postcss - for CSS transforms - webpack - as the core compiler As this is a work in process, it just means the future of Roots continues to look great. See More

Top Pro

Custom compilers

Not only does roots support a huge number of languages and compilers out of the box, it also allows you to insert custom compilers if you want. Fun fact, roots is the only static site generator that supports dogescript See More

Top Pro

Multipass compiles

Roots compiles files once for each extension, which allows for some advanced options if you get to that stage See More

Top Pro

Client-side templates

Roots will precompile your templates into js, which makes it really smooth to work with client-side MV* frameworks. See More

Top Pro

Quick

Since roots is written in node, everything is compiled in parallel rather than in series, making it very quick. See More

I use it for www.codekvast.io. Dead simple, no fuzz. See More

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Pelican

Top Pro

Uses a versatile, powerful and easy to use templating engine

Uses Jinja. See More

Top Con

A little bit slower than some of its competitors

DeterminedBalayang's Experience

Specs

Language:Python

Template Engine:Jinja2

Markup Languages:reStructuredText, Markdown, AsciiDoc

Top Pro

Open source

All code is available on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Active community

Top Pro

Content can be written in multiple formats

Supports reStructuredText, Markdown, or AsciiDoc formats. See More

Top Pro

Code syntax highlighting

Uses Pygments for code highlighting. See More

Top Pro

Multilingual

Easily handles multiple languages, like EN, FR, etc. See More

Top Pro

Import your existing blog from many sources

Top Pro

Support for unique templates per page

Adds flexibility to create variety of websites. See More

Top Pro

Customisable Themes and support for Plugins

Makes it flexible to cater to creation of variety of websites in addition to blogs. See More

Top Pro

Quite fast even for sites with thousands of posts

Can spin up an build sites with thousands of articles in a matter of seconds even on very old computers. See More