Static websites offer incredible speed, security, and reliability, but choosing the right tool to build one can be daunting. The market is filled with static site generators (SSGs) of varying complexity, making it difficult to find one that fits your project without a steep learning curve. The secret isn't finding the most feature-packed tool; it's finding the one with the right features for your specific goal.
This guide cuts through the noise, focusing exclusively on simple static site generators that prioritize efficiency and ease of use. We'll explore 12 powerful options, from established, blog-aware tools like Jekyll and Hugo to modern, component-based frameworks like Astro and Eleventy. You'll get a direct comparison of their strengths, ideal use cases, and honest limitations. We provide screenshots, direct links, and actionable setup advice to help you get started quickly.
Our goal is to help you select a generator that enables a productive workflow, whether you're a technical blogger, part of a documentation team, or a freelancer building client sites. We will also show how a visual editor like JekyllPad can simplify the content process for these tools, making it easy to manage and publish directly to GitHub. For a wider perspective on empowering your digital presence, exploring the 12 Best Tools for Content Creators can offer valuable insights beyond static site generators.
1. Jekyll: The Reliable Original, Perfected for GitHub
As one of the earliest and most established simple static site generators, Jekyll’s main strength lies in its maturity and seamless integration with GitHub Pages. Written in Ruby, it powers countless blogs and documentation sites, offering a stable and predictable development experience. Its blog-first architecture provides built-in support for posts, categories, and permalinks, making it an excellent choice for content-focused projects.
What truly sets Jekyll apart is its native support by GitHub. This direct integration removes a significant layer of complexity; you can push your Markdown files to a repository, and GitHub Pages will build and deploy your site automatically without needing a separate CI/CD pipeline. This makes it an incredibly low-friction option for developers who already live in a Git-based workflow. For a deeper dive into how it fits into the broader ecosystem, you can learn more about static site generators and their core concepts. While its Ruby dependency can be a hurdle on some systems and build times lag behind newer tools, its extensive theme library and community support are hard to match.
- Ideal Audience: Bloggers, documentation writers, and developers who prioritize stability and deep GitHub integration.
- Ease of Use: 4/5 (for those comfortable with Ruby and Git).
- Website: https://jekyllrb.com
2. Hugo: The Speed Demon with Zero Dependencies
Hugo stands out among simple static site generators for one primary reason: astonishing speed. Written in Go and distributed as a single binary, it eliminates the need for language runtimes like Ruby or Node.js, making setup consistent across any operating system. This self-contained approach delivers near-instantaneous build times, even for sites with tens of thousands of pages, making it a powerful choice for large-scale content projects where every second counts. Its built-in asset pipeline for images, Sass, and JavaScript further simplifies the development workflow by handling common optimizations without external tools.
Its biggest advantage is its pure performance and minimal setup friction. Once you download the binary, you're ready to go. While its Go-based templating syntax has a distinct feel that requires some initial learning, the robust documentation and active community provide excellent support. This makes it a great fit for developers who want a high-performance engine without managing complex dependencies. For those integrating it into a Git-based workflow, understanding how to sync your project with GitHub is key to a smooth deployment process. Hugo proves that a static generator can be both incredibly powerful and refreshingly simple.
- Ideal Audience: Content-heavy sites, developers who value build speed, and anyone wanting a dependency-free setup.
- Ease of Use: 4/5 (for those comfortable with the command line and learning a new templating system).
- Website: https://gohugo.io
3. Eleventy (11ty): The Flexible JavaScript Alternative
Eleventy, often abbreviated as 11ty, stands out among simple static site generators for its flexibility and minimal configuration approach. Written in JavaScript, it makes very few assumptions about your project structure, giving you complete control. Its defining feature is its support for over ten different templating languages, including Markdown, Liquid, and Nunjucks, often within the same project. This allows developers to work with familiar tools without being locked into a single ecosystem.
What makes Eleventy particularly compelling is its commitment to being a zero-configuration tool that outputs production-ready sites with no client-side JavaScript by default. This philosophy results in extremely fast and lightweight websites, perfect for content-driven projects where performance is key. While it isn't a batteries-included framework and often requires you to compose your own solutions with plugins for more advanced features, its gentle learning curve and strong documentation make it a powerful choice for those who want to build custom, performant static sites from the ground up.
- Ideal Audience: Developers wanting full control over their toolchain and templating choices, and those building content-heavy sites where performance is critical.
- Ease of Use: 4/5 (for those comfortable with JavaScript and Node.js).
- Website: https://www.11ty.dev
4. Astro: The Modern Framework for Content-First Performance
Astro positions itself as a modern, content-focused framework that delivers exceptional performance by shipping zero client-side JavaScript by default. It excels at building fast, content-heavy websites like blogs, marketing sites, and e-commerce stores. Its unique "islands architecture" allows developers to add interactive components using their favorite UI frameworks (like React, Vue, or Svelte) only where needed, a concept known as partial hydration. This approach keeps the base experience incredibly lightweight and fast to load.
Unlike many simpler static site generators, Astro feels more like a complete web framework, offering features like file-based routing, content collections with type safety, and built-in image optimization. While this introduces a slightly steeper learning curve compared to single-binary generators, the payoff is a highly organized and scalable development environment. The documentation is excellent, and its adapter system makes deploying to platforms like Netlify, Vercel, or Cloudflare Pages straightforward. For those building complex static sites that require isolated pockets of interactivity, Astro presents a compelling, performance-oriented solution.
- Ideal Audience: Developers building content-rich sites who want top-tier performance and the flexibility to use modern UI frameworks for interactive elements.
- Ease of Use: 3/5 (Requires familiarity with Node.js, npm, and modern frontend concepts).
- Website: https://astro.build
5. Zola: The All-in-One Rust Powerhouse
For those who value speed and simplicity in a single package, Zola stands out as a formidable contender. Written in Rust, it ships as one executable with zero external dependencies, making installation and updates incredibly straightforward. This design philosophy extends to its feature set; Zola comes with built-in Sass compilation, syntax highlighting, and a powerful templating engine called Tera, which will feel immediately familiar to anyone who has used Jinja2 or Liquid. This "batteries-included" approach makes it one of the most ergonomic simple static site generators available.
What makes Zola particularly compelling is its performance without sacrificing features. It handles everything from taxonomies and shortcodes to table of contents generation right out of the box, all while delivering build times that rival the fastest tools on the market. While its ecosystem of themes and plugins is smaller than that of giants like Jekyll or Hugo, its sensible defaults and clear documentation make building from scratch a pleasant experience. It hits a sweet spot for developers who want a fast, no-fuss tool that just works.
- Ideal Audience: Developers who appreciate Rust's performance, anyone seeking a dependency-free setup, and users familiar with Jinja-style templating.
- Ease of Use: 4/5 (Extremely easy to install, with a slight learning curve for its specific conventions).
- Website: https://www.getzola.org
6. MkDocs: Documentation Made Simple with Python
MkDocs is a fast, simple static site generator that is geared specifically towards building project documentation. Written in Python, its core philosophy is to let you write documentation in plain Markdown files and then generate a professional-looking static site with a single command. The entire site configuration lives in one YAML file, making setup and maintenance remarkably straightforward, especially for teams that prefer a Python-based toolchain.
What makes MkDocs stand out is its laser focus on the documentation use case. It doesn’t try to be a general-purpose site builder for blogs or complex marketing pages. Instead, it excels at organizing technical content with features like a built-in dev server for live previews and a powerful plugin system. Popular themes, most notably Material for MkDocs, provide production-ready designs with search, versioning, and navigation out of the box. This makes it one of the most efficient simple static site generators for creating polished, searchable documentation without the overhead of a more complex system.
- Ideal Audience: Technical writers, open-source maintainers, and development teams needing to build clean, organized documentation with minimal setup.
- Ease of Use: 4/5 (for those comfortable with Python and Markdown).
- Website: https://www.mkdocs.org
7. Docusaurus: The Documentation Specialist with React Power
Built and maintained by Meta, Docusaurus is a specialized static site generator created to build beautiful, content-rich documentation websites with exceptional speed. It uses React to power its theming and customization, allowing developers to embed interactive components directly into Markdown files using MDX. This turns static help pages into rich, application-like experiences, setting it apart from more generalized simple static site generators. Its architecture is purpose-built for the needs of software projects.
What makes Docusaurus stand out is its laser focus on the documentation workflow. Features like document versioning, internationalization (i18n), and first-class Algolia search integration are included out of the box, addressing common pain points for product and open-source teams. While its Node.js and React foundation makes it heavier than a generator like Hugo, the trade-off provides a modern development experience and a polished final product. For projects needing a robust docs platform, it’s one of the best open-source documentation tools available. Its structured approach may feel restrictive for a standard blog, but for its intended use case, it is exceptionally effective.
- Ideal Audience: Open-source projects, product teams, and companies needing versioned, multi-language documentation sites.
- Ease of Use: 3/5 (Requires comfort with React, Node.js, and a more structured project setup).
- Website: https://docusaurus.io
8. VitePress: The Blazing-Fast Vue-Powered Engine
Born from the Vite ecosystem, VitePress is a minimal static site generator designed with speed and simplicity at its core. It leverages Vite’s instant server start and lightning-fast Hot Module Replacement (HMR) to create an exceptionally responsive development experience. Built for documentation and small blogs, it strikes a balance between convention and customization, offering a "docs-first" default theme that just works out of the box.
Its main advantage is its deep integration with Vue. You can embed interactive Vue components directly within your Markdown files, allowing you to create rich, dynamic content with minimal effort. This makes it an outstanding choice among simple static site generators for teams already comfortable with the Vue framework. While its plugin ecosystem is smaller compared to more established tools, its performance and developer-friendly setup for Vue-centric projects are difficult to beat. The final output is static HTML with a lightweight client-side router, ensuring fast initial page loads.
- Ideal Audience: Documentation teams, Vue developers, and creators of small blogs who want an extremely fast development server.
- Ease of Use: 4/5 (for those familiar with Vue and modern JavaScript tooling).
- Website: https://vitepress.dev
9. Hexo: The Blazing-Fast Blogging Engine
Built on Node.js, Hexo has earned its place among simple static site generators as a powerful and rapid framework specifically for blogging. It boasts impressive generation speeds and a straightforward architecture that allows users to get a content-heavy site running in minutes. The core strength of Hexo is its extensive ecosystem of themes and plugins, which makes it incredibly accessible for those who want a great-looking blog without designing it from scratch.
Its one-command deployment feature is a significant advantage, simplifying the process of pushing a site live to platforms like GitHub Pages, Netlify, or Vercel. While the quality of third-party plugins can sometimes be inconsistent, its active maintenance and strong community support ensure it remains a reliable choice. For developers already in the Node.js environment, Hexo offers a familiar and efficient path to launching a feature-rich, high-performance blog with minimal configuration headaches.
- Ideal Audience: Node.js developers, bloggers needing a quick setup, and users who prioritize a vast selection of ready-made themes.
- Ease of Use: 4/5 (for those comfortable with Node.js and npm).
- Website: https://hexo.io
10. Pelican: The Python-Powered Content Engine
For development teams rooted in the Python ecosystem, Pelican offers a familiar and powerful alternative to Node or Ruby-based tools. As a mature project, it provides a robust, no-nonsense approach to generating static sites, specializing in blogs and documentation. Its native support for both Markdown and reStructuredText gives authors flexibility, while its use of the well-regarded Jinja2 templating engine makes customization straightforward for Python developers. Pelican is one of the more battle-tested simple static site generators for those outside the JavaScript world.
What makes Pelican a strong contender is its "batteries-included" philosophy. Features that often require plugins in other systems, like multilingual content support, article translation, Atom/RSS feeds, and content caching for faster rebuilds, are built-in. It also includes helpful tools for importing content from sources like WordPress, making migrations less painful. While its theme library is smaller than that of its larger counterparts and managing a Python environment can add an initial setup step, its stability and direct approach are a significant advantage for teams wanting to keep their entire stack in Python.
- Ideal Audience: Python developers, technical writers, and teams building documentation or blogs within a Python-centric workflow.
- Ease of Use: 3/5 (Requires comfort with Python environment management).
- Website: https://getpelican.com
11. Lume: A Modern Generator for the Deno Ecosystem
For developers who have embraced Deno’s secure, TypeScript-first runtime, Lume presents itself as one of the most natural and simple static site generators available. As a Deno-native tool, it completely sidesteps the node_modules folder and complex dependency management common in the JavaScript world. Lume is exceptionally flexible, offering out-of-the-box support for a wide array of template engines like Nunjucks, Liquid, and even JSX, making it adaptable to different team preferences.
What truly defines Lume is its modern, secure-by-default architecture inherited from Deno. Setup is minimal, and configuration feels clean, especially for those comfortable with TypeScript. It provides a robust plugin system and built-in processors for assets like CSS and images, allowing you to build a sophisticated pipeline without leaving its ecosystem. While the community and starter templates are smaller than those for titans like Jekyll or Hugo, its excellent ergonomics for Deno enthusiasts make it a compelling choice for projects prioritizing security and a modern development workflow.
- Ideal Audience: Developers and teams standardized on Deno, TypeScript users, and those seeking a minimal, secure build process.
- Ease of Use: 3/5 (Requires familiarity with the Deno runtime).
- Website: https://lume.deno.dev
12. Bridgetown: The Modern Ruby Successor to Jekyll
For developers comfortable in the Ruby ecosystem but seeking more modern tooling, Bridgetown presents itself as the spiritual successor to Jekyll. It retains a familiar architecture with Markdown, front matter, and collections, but modernizes the entire stack with an integrated esbuild and PostCSS asset pipeline right out of the box. This provides a significantly improved development experience for handling JavaScript and CSS without complex configuration.
What makes Bridgetown a standout among simple static site generators is its "batteries-included" philosophy combined with flexibility. It supports multiple templating languages like ERB, Serbea, and Liquid, giving developers more expressive power. While it excels as a static generator, it can also be extended into a full-stack Roda application, offering a clear growth path for projects that may need dynamic capabilities later. This dual nature makes it an excellent choice for those who want a simple start with the option to scale.
- Ideal Audience: Ruby developers, Jekyll users looking for an upgrade, and teams needing a modern asset pipeline.
- Ease of Use: 3/5 (best for those with some Ruby knowledge).
- Website: https://www.bridgetownrb.com
Comparison of 12 Simple Static Site Generators
| Project | Key features ✨ | Standout 🏆 | Experience ★ | Best for 👥 | Cost/Setup 💰 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jekyll | Markdown + Liquid, blog primitives, GitHub Pages-ready | Official GitHub Pages integration | ★★★★☆ | GitHub-centric bloggers & simple sites | 💰 Free — Ruby toolchain |
| Hugo | Single binary, blazing builds, image/CSS/JS pipelines | Lightning-fast builds at scale | ★★★★★ | Large sites & performance-focused teams | 💰 Free — no runtime deps |
| Eleventy (11ty) | Multi-template support, Markdown-first, flexible collections | Minimal assumptions, composable tooling | ★★★★☆ | Content-driven devs who want control | 💰 Free — small footprint |
| Astro | Islands architecture, MDX/typed front matter, adapters | Zero-JS-by-default + selective interactivity | ★★★★☆ | Content sites needing modern interactivity | 💰 Free — modern toolchain |
| Zola | Single executable, Tera templates, Sass & shortcodes | Rust speed with ergonomic UX | ★★★★★ | Fast-build seekers & tiny-footprint sites | 💰 Free — no deps |
| MkDocs | Single YAML config, live dev server, docs themes | Docs-first simplicity (Material ecosystem) | ★★★★☆ | Documentation teams & non-JS users | 💰 Free — Python env |
| Docusaurus | MDX, versioning, i18n, Algolia search | Best for multi-version / multi-language docs | ★★★★☆ | Product docs & OSS projects (React) | 💰 Free — Node/React toolchain |
| VitePress | Vite dev server, Markdown + inline Vue comps | Instant dev experience, minimal overhead | ★★★★☆ | Vue/Vite teams, small docs/blogs | 💰 Free — Vue/Vite required |
| Hexo | Node blog focus, fast generation, many themes | Very quick blog setup & large theme library | ★★★★☆ | Bloggers who want fast starts & themes | 💰 Free — Node env |
| Pelican | Markdown/reST, Jinja2 templates, feeds, i18n | Great fit for Python-centric teams | ★★★★☆ | Python teams building blogs/docs | 💰 Free — Python env |
| Lume | Deno-native, supports many templates, TS-friendly | Secure Deno tooling with flexible processors | ★★★★☆ | Deno/TypeScript teams | 💰 Free — Deno required |
| Bridgetown | Ruby-based, collections, esbuild/PostCSS pipeline | Modern Ruby SSG; smooth Jekyll upgrade path | ★★★★☆ | Ruby/Jekyll users wanting modern defaults | 💰 Free — Ruby env |
Making Your Choice: From Generator to Published Site
We've explored a dozen of the best simple static site generators, each with a distinct philosophy and ideal use case. The path to selecting the right one becomes clearer when you pinpoint your primary objective and technical preferences. Your decision hinges on a balance of performance, flexibility, community support, and the specific needs of your project.
Distilling Your Options
The tools we've covered can be grouped by their core strengths, giving you a straightforward way to narrow the field:
- For Raw Speed and Simplicity: If your goal is lightning-fast build times with a single binary installation, Hugo and Zola are unmatched. They are perfect for large-scale blogs or content-heavy sites where every second of build time counts.
- For JavaScript Ecosystem Flexibility: Developers comfortable in the Node.js environment will find Eleventy (11ty) and Astro incredibly powerful. Eleventy offers unparalleled control over templating and data sources, while Astro excels at building content-focused sites with its island architecture.
- For Purpose-Built Documentation: When creating technical docs, knowledge bases, or project sites, purpose-built tools are often the best choice. MkDocs, Docusaurus, and VitePress provide features like versioning, search, and structured navigation out of the box, saving significant development effort.
- For Stability and Proven Workflows: As the original pioneer in this space, Jekyll remains a reliable and stable choice, especially for those already integrated with the GitHub Pages ecosystem. Its maturity means extensive documentation and a large community to draw upon.
The Final Step: Overcoming the Workflow Hurdle
Regardless of which of these simple static site generators you select, the core process remains consistent: write content in a text editor, commit changes using Git, and let a build process deploy the final HTML. For developers, this is a familiar and efficient workflow. However, it often presents a significant barrier for non-technical content creators, marketers, and editors who are unfamiliar with Git commands and code editors.
This is precisely where the modern static site workflow can falter. The technical requirements can isolate the content team from the publishing process, creating bottlenecks and friction. The solution isn't to abandon these powerful generators but to add a user-friendly layer on top of them. A tool like JekyllPad bridges this gap by connecting directly to your GitHub repository and providing a simple, visual editing interface. It allows anyone on your team, regardless of their technical skill, to write, edit, and publish content with the click of a button. This approach preserves the speed and security of a static site while introducing the collaborative ease of a traditional CMS. Your powerful static site generator becomes a truly accessible platform for your entire organization.
Ready to remove the Git barrier and empower your whole team to contribute content? JekyllPad provides a simple visual editor that works with any of the static site generators mentioned here. Connect your GitHub repository in seconds and start publishing effortlessly with JekyllPad.
