Static Site Generator reviews from Reddit
Summary
We analyzed 204 Reddit reviews across 23 subreddits and 45 posts to rank the best Static Site Generator brands recommended by redditors, including communities like r/webdev, r/Python, r/web_design, r/nim, r/PHP. Top-rated brands include Hugo (4.4/5), Astro (4.6/5), Jekyll (4.0/5).
Stats
Reviews204
Subreddits23
Posts45
Brands69
Products19
204 reviews from
and
By Brand
/By Product
#1
Hugo
4.4
(25)
"I highly recommend Hugo. It's native, fast as fuck, and is really, really complete."
"I prefer Hugo. Hugo builds the site and generates the thumbs in under 3min which is impressive."
"Hugo is great, they have plenty of free themes that you can use - some of the free ones are great for a photography portfolio."
"A free and simple stack for publishing content."
"I use Hugo for my personal site/blog and like it."
"Hugo works very well and can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be."
"Hugo is great, fast, stable, not so difficult to learn, you don't need to learn Go to use it."
"Hugo Generate it in 700ms. Use hugo if you want speed and if you want many function than use jekyll."
"Hugo has a watch feature, any changes to the content and new html is generated instantly."
"Hugo fits my criteria of a easy to maintain system. Just a binary, easy to use, easy to upgrade, no fuss."
#2
Astro
4.6
(21)
"I've started using Astro half a year ago for my business and it's great."
"+1 for Astro. Its template syntax is very much inspired by React, but it is much simpler, as there is no client side stuff, no hooks."
"Just use Astro."
"If you are still looking for an SSG, I would go with Astro."
"I love it."
"Personally, I would use Astro"
"It's easy to set up, has a VS Code extension, good docs. I love it."
"They have great documentation, and great support for deployment to whatever you want."
"Astro is phenomenal!"
"Astro"
#3
Jekyll
4.0
(20)
"Thanks everyone I am going with Jekyll!"
"Jekyll is the way to go. Grab a theme from jekyllthemes.org, for the repo, and rename it and you have a site up and running in no time."
"For me the answer is Jekyll, because I work with Ruby and think it has lots of themes."
"I have used Jekyll sites hosted on CloudCannon for several sites and it's worked really well."
"I second Jekyll, it is my favourite CMS by far and very customizable."
"I'd suggest just using Jekyll. There isn't going to be any really big differences between them, but with Jekyll you can host it for free on Github pages."
"It does it's purpose."
"Jekyll is natively supported by GitHub pages, which is nice."
"I'm most familar with Jekyll. Hugo for large sites. Starting to dabble with 11ty."
"I personally prefer Jekyll, it doesn't try to be clever, like Hugo and allows me to build sites pretty quickly."
#4
Gatsby
3.5
(16)
"It's a static site framework for React that offers easy set up and config, plus you can host for free on Netlify."
"I bite the bullet and went for Gatsby"
"I started my SSG journey with Gatsby"
"Gatsby and Gridsome"
"Personally I’m doing next for my main site and building Gatsby (which is SSG) for a headless cms platform to contain my posts."
"The ecosystem is far better with Gatsby and Next."
"Github, Gatsb(SSG), Sanity.io (CMS), Netlify (Hosting)"
"I have been playing with Gatsby, Middleman, Hugo but I settled on eleventy now."
"Gatsby seems like the best option right now, based on what your design needs."
"You can't go wrong with Gatsby."
#5
11ty
4.2
(9)
"I find is a great SSG, easy to set up."
"11ty is pretty awesome for coding with HTML and CSS."
"It’s the best system"
"It is entirely static and pretty easy to get setup with just using HTML, CSS, and MD."
"You can use 11ty or Hugo"
"I have used and liked 11ty."
"11ty is feature-rich but requires you to write JavaScript."
"Highly recommended for its openness."
"Starting to dabble with 11ty."
#6
Next.js
4.3
(8)
"Next.js has very cool features including SSG and is incredibly flexible."
"I just created a simple marketing site in NextJS and it was a breeze. Really easy to work with and well documented."
"Next is dead simple, if you know react you can spin something up in an afternoon."
"NextJS SSG is pretty good."
"NextJS seems to be the leader for now IMHO"
"Both are well documented and explained."
"I got my choices down to Gatsby vs Next.js"
"Next isn’t a SSG, it is a server side render. It’s also a pain to set up compared to just plain React."
#7
Pelican
3.8
(8)
"Pelican is a fine choice if you must have python."
"I like Pelican also. It has themes, plugins, import from wordpress, and lots of other goodies."
"I use Pelican (though with HTML instead of markdown or rst as the source) and it works fine."
"I like Pelican."
"Pelican could also be an option if you prefer to use Python, which supports both rst and md markup language."
"As a python dev I started out with Pelican but later switched to Hugo."
"Pelican doesn't appear to have any screenshots or example implementations on their website and the themes I could find looked basic."
"Nicola, pelican."
#8
Nuxt
4.3
(6)
"Nuxt is excellent. It would require you to learn Vue, but at a certain level, Vue is so much easier to use than React, it's almost a joke."
"Powerful functions include static site generation and server-side rendering."
"I have used and liked Nuxt."
"Nuxt is really pleasant to use overall, I would recommend giving it a go."
"Nuxt has static site generation. Is based in Vue if you prefer that framework"
"Nuxt is great"
#9
GitHub
5.0
(4)
"This setup has proven to work very well for us last year."
"It's dead simple to get started, just fork the repo and have a static site running on GitHub Pages without downloading anything."
"If you want to go super simple you could try this: https://github.com/jp-fosterson/pandocblog. Almost all the work is done with Pandoc and GNU Make, with just a two short Python scripts."
"They’ve got free hosting, themes, and it uses Jekyll as a backend, which makes setting up a static site much easier."
#10
MkDocs
4.5
(4)
"I like MkDocs."
"I really like Mkdocs for writing project wikis"
"Mkdocs-material"
"Mkdocs"
#11
Sphinx
3.8
(4)
"I've been using Sphinx with the Myst/Markdown parser and theme from the Executable Book Project."
"Sphinx is great, lektor is amazing."
"I like Sphinx"
"Sphinx"
#12
Jigsaw
4.3
(3)
"Second jigsaw. Used to be on sculpin, but pace of development slowed. And I really appreciate blade frontend in jigsaw."
"We use Jigsaw and that works like a charm."
"Sculpin or Jigsaw, one of those for me."
#13
Eleventy
4.3
(3)
"Eleventy offers flexibility with many templating languages and plugins."
"Yo try eleventy (11ty) - it's prob the easiest ssg if you already know html/css/js."
"11ty is my favorite right now."
#14
Lektor
4.3
(3)
"I use and really like Lektor."
"Lektor er undoubtful the best. Having a CMS despite being a static site generator is a killer feature IMO."
"Lektor might work"
#15
Netlify
4.3
(3)
"Netlify allows you to submit 100 forms each month for free that can be forwarded via email."
"Put the site to Netlify / Cloudflare Workers or VPS."
"Hosting i use netlify as i had a prblm with github pgs, but im prbly the minority here"
#16
Nikola
4.0
(3)
"I've been using Nikola and am happy with it."
"Https://github.com/getnikola/nikola"
"Use Nikola! It's a pretty awesome one that's pretty easy to work with."
#17
Kirby
4.0
(3)
"I'd say either Kirby or Statamic."
"I tried a lot of them and chose Kirby, it was a good mix of Twig and Yaml."
"I've been liking Kirby lately. It's flat-file and php based. Incredibly flexible and has a panel for editing or you can hand edit in YAML and Markdown."
#18
Sculpin
3.7
(3)
"I've used Sculpin in the past but eventually stopped using it because of compatibility issues with PHP7. It is a great tool, otherwise!"
"I used Sculpin not too long ago and it worked pretty well."
"Sculpin or Jigsaw, one of those for me."
#19
Ghost
4.5
(2)
"[Buttondown](https://buttondown.email/), [Ghost](https://ghost.org/docs/publishing/), and [Mailchimp](https://mailchimp.com/) all have these APIs available."
"I moved from SquareSpace to self-hosted Ghost a few years ago. Maybe Ghost or Jekyll?"
#20
Gridsome
4.5
(2)
"I don't think there's anything better than gridsome."
"I've really enjoyed Gridsome and have done my personal site in it. Fast, little configuration required, has a decent amount of plugins when you need them."
#21
HastySite
4.5
(2)
"HastySite is simple yet flexible, suitable for various needs."
"[HastySite](https://hastysite.h3rald.com/) is written in Nim."
#22
React
4.5
(2)
"I personally go with Next/Nuxt depending on whether you want to use React or Vue."
"I actually find React to be a more enjoyable language."
#23
Publii
4.0
(2)
"From three months I'm using Publii, it works like dynamic CMS but generates a static output; comes with GUI and themes."
"Just use Publii. It's the most visual of all SSGs out there, which comes with it's limitations."
#24
Statiq
4.0
(2)
"Statiq offers a great addon/template specifically for docs."
"The documentation can be a little hard to follow"
#25
Vue
4.0
(2)
"I really like Vue and am using Nuxt on a project at work. It organizes data/functions/lifecycle/styles/templates nicely for newcomers."
"Vue isn't necessarily simpler, it's just slightly less verbose."
#26
Elder.js
5.0
(1)
"I use elder.js and love it!"
#27
Bulma
5.0
(1)
"Just use bulma.io"
#28
Vercel
5.0
(1)
"I really like Next.js."
#29
Docify
5.0
(1)
"Docify is a free and open-source tool for creating user guides with a syntax similar to Jekyll."
#30
Tapestry
5.0
(1)
"A small personal project of mine that ended up growing into something much, much bigger is Tapestry, a static site generator for PHP that uses the plates template system"
#31
PicoCMS
5.0
(1)
"Currently using it on a client's build & it's been super simple to dev for."
#32
Statamic
5.0
(1)
"We did 2 big sites on Statamic this year - it's loosely laravel based and shares some of the same people"
#33
Buttondown
5.0
(1)
"[Buttondown](https://buttondown.email/), [Ghost](https://ghost.org/docs/publishing/), and [Mailchimp](https://mailchimp.com/) all have these APIs available."
#34
Mailchimp
5.0
(1)
"[Buttondown](https://buttondown.email/), [Ghost](https://ghost.org/docs/publishing/), and [Mailchimp](https://mailchimp.com/) all have these APIs available."
#35
Plenti
5.0
(1)
"Https://plenti.co/"
#36
Plasmic
5.0
(1)
"Check out Plasmic:
https://www.plasmic.app/"
#37
WordPress
5.0
(1)
"It will be hosted for free and you won’t need any developer knowledge to customize and write articles for your site."
#38
Blazor
4.0
(1)
"You can use blazor web assembly that can be published to Azure Static Web App."
#39
tsparticles
4.0
(1)
"If you need particles effect https://github.com/matteobruni/tsparticles"
#40
Node.js
4.0
(1)
"I use Node/Remix."
#41
WordPress TT3 Theme
4.0
(1)
"You could try WordPress with TT3 theme and build this in the block editor."
#42
Tinycode
4.0
(1)
"Sounds like you could enjoy my recent side project."
#43
Atas
4.0
(1)
"I built a simple static site generator. Simplest php, no framework, header.php and footer.php with markdown support for pages and posts."
#44
Nimble Directory
4.0
(1)
"There’s a few static site generators written in Nim, have a look at Nimble Directory."
#45
Custom PHP Static Site Generator
4.0
(1)
"I built a simple static site generator. Simple php, no framework, header.php and footer.php with markdown support for pages and posts."
#46
Motif
4.0
(1)
"If your friend is comfortable writing in Markdown, Motif seems pretty cool - https://motif.land"
#47
VuePress
4.0
(1)
"VuePress?"
#48
ButterCMS
4.0
(1)
"Check out ButterCMS which is an API-based or headless CMS with a preconfigured blog engine."
#49
Gerbil
4.0
(1)
"[Gerbil](https://getgerbil.com/), although that does a bit more than just static generation."
#50
Nimwc
4.0
(1)
"Nimwc - [https://nimwc.org/](https://nimwc.org/)"
#51
Sandcastle
4.0
(1)
"[Sandcastle](https://github.com/EWSoftware/SHFB) used to be the gold standard."
#52
GravCMS
4.0
(1)
"I use GravCMS because it has a nice admin GUI"
#53
Middleman
4.0
(1)
"I have been playing with Gatsby, Middleman, Hugo but I settled on eleventy now."
#54
Asciidoc
4.0
(1)
"Probably Asciidoc-Antora, although I haven't tried them all."
#55
DocFX
4.0
(1)
"DocFX can auto-generate API docs directly from your source code and allows for customization."
#56
Grav
4.0
(1)
"Check out Grav. https://getgrav.org."
#57
JBake
4.0
(1)
"Might I suggest looking at JBake? It's 'inspired' by Jekyll and has a bunch of template language (thymeleaf, groovy, etc.) and content markups (html, md, asciidoc) it supports."
#58
Journey
4.0
(1)
"In a post I recently wrote, I took a look at Journey, Assemble, and Metalsmith which each have their own advantages."
#59
Netlify CMS
4.0
(1)
"Check out netlify CMS and netlify hosting."
#60
Netlify Hosting
4.0
(1)
"Check out netlify CMS and netlify hosting."
#61
HTML5 UP
4.0
(1)
"I have built numerous sites using their templates (and pics from unsplash)… with decent results."
#62
Nicola
3.0
(1)
"Nicola, pelican."
#63
MCMS
3.0
(1)
"There's MCMS: https://github.com/olegp/mcms"
#64
DocPad
3.0
(1)
"DocPad should be okay, I guess."
#65
Wintersmith
3.0
(1)
"I've started playing with Wintersmith https://github.com/jnordberg/wintersmith"
#66
Punch
3.0
(1)
"Give Punch a try. I haven't used it (yet), but it looks pretty good."
#67
Simply Static
3.0
(1)
"This plugin lets you generate a static version of your wordpress site."
#68
Complexity
2.0
(1)
"I really dig Complexity but its basically dead :("
#69
Static Site Generators
2.0
(1)
"A static site generator will always require you to understand code to develop and deploy."
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