10+ The Best Static Site Generators In 2024
Looking to create a Static site for your next project, and you’re not sure which Static site Generator you should opt for? Don’t worry, we have gathered up some of the best static site generators which can deliver the best Responsive Static Sites for your project.
As a developer, creating a Static site brings out a lot of advantages. First, it is cheaper, faster, and easy to maintain compared to dynamic websites. Moreover, Static site generators always come to the rescue if you want to create Informational websites, showcasing your content, portfolio websites, Documentation, tutorials, and many more.
Now, the popularity of static site generators among developers has been immensely increasing over the last couple of years. There are many reasons involved in the spike in the usage of static site generators.
Hence, before we directly jump onto the list of static site generators let’s understand what is a static site and what are the advantages of using a static site generator.
What is a Static Site Generator?
In simple words, a Static Site generator is a tool that creates HTML pages from templates, components, and a given content source. It makes it easier for developers to use those pre-built HTML pages instead of coding each individual page.
Therefore, these HTML pages are quicker to develop and load faster in the user’s browser. SSGs are an alternative to a Content Management System (CMS) that manages your web content, generates webpages, and implements templates.
A static website generator can help you create fast, visually appealing websites without suffering the restraints that plagued marketers and developers in the past.
Advantages of using a Static Site Generators:
- Greater Performance
- Customization Option
- Lighter Backend
- Less Server-dependencies
- Version Control and Testing
- Data Protection, and many more…
What is a Static Site?
A Static Site is a website that is made up of pre-built HTML, JavaScript, or CSS code having pages with static content. These web pages are already pre-rendered on the server side and then served to the browser when requested. Hence, it leads to loading the pages faster and more quickly.
It serves the content that is already pre-rendered on the server side, and the content does not change as per the user’s actions. Therefore, static sites are not dependent on a particular user whereas dynamic sites, on the other hand, render the pages every time it is requested by the user.
The static site enables your front-end interface to be more flexible and optimizes your overall website performance. You can consider using simple static sites when the sites are simple, and when the content of your site is stable. It is cost-efficient, lightweight, and fast as well.
Advantages of having a Static Site
- Easy to Develop
- Ideal for Small Websites
- Cheaper to Host
- Cost Effective
- SEO Friendly
- Fast Loading Time
- Secure
- Easy to Optimize
- Flexibility, and many more…
By No means, do we claim that these are the only Static Site Generators, there can be some other SSGs as well that we have missed to mentioned. Suggest to us if you have any other recommendations in the comment so that we can add them to the list😇.
Static Site Generators
From above, clearly justifies how beneficial it is when you’re using a static site generator. Now, without wasting any time let’s directly head on to the list of Best Static Site Generators.
Source: Gifer
Astro Build
Astro is an all-in-one web framework and a Static Site generator that is designed to create fast and content-focused websites. For instance, it is suitable for websites like marketing sites, publishing sites, documentation sites, blogs, portfolios, and some eCommerce sites.
Now, it uses server-side rendering over client-side rendering at its peak. Now, the same rule applies to all the traditional server-side frameworks -PHP, WordPress, Laravel, etc.
Apart from this, the static site generator is so easy to use that you do not have to learn any other second server-side language.
Astro is Fast by default providing good performance specifically to content-focused websites.
Features
- Component Islands:
- Server-first API design
- Zero JS, by default
- Edge-ready
- Customizable
- UI-agnostic
- Markdown & MDX, and many more…
Next.js
Next.js has been one of the most popular and emerging Web Development frameworks. It is an Open Source Static Site generator and a React framework that enables you to create a fast web application using the building blocks of a Web application.
Next.js gives you the best developer experience providing features that are most needed in development like hybrid static & server rendering, TypeScript support, smart bundling, route pre-fetching, and many more.
It supports pre-rendering by default. This means that Next.js generates HTML for each page in advance, instead of having it all done by client-side JavaScript. Therefore, it can result in better performance and SEO.
Furthermore, Next.js provides an integrated TypeScript experience, including zero-configuration setup and built-in types for Pages, APIs, and more.
Features
- Image Optimization
- Automatic Routing
- TypeScript Support
- Better Data Fetching
- Builtin CSS
- Automatic Font Optimization
- Automatic Static Optimization, and many more…
It is advisable to use the Next js Dashboard Template, as it comes with premade components that you can use directly without any additional effort. For instance, you must check out Sneat MUI React Next js Admin Template. It is the most developer-friendly and highly customizable admin template available in both TypeScript and JavaScript versions.
Gatsby
Gatsby is an Open-source web development framework that combines the functionality of React, GraphQL, and Webpack to create static websites and web apps. It uses React JS for developing the site’s UI and GarphQL to power its Data layer.
Moreover, it combines static-site generation, deferred static generation, and intelligent page rendering to load the only content that is important to your web page. That means you will get a super fast website that feels incredibly fast and performant.
With the help of React js, you can complete the User interface in a simple, straightforward way, and with GraphQL it can easily pull data into your website from sources like WordPress, Drupal, a simple markdown file, a CSV, or any other CMSs.
It also enables you to use its wide range of plugins to extend its functionalities.
Features
- Speed & Performance
- Data Handling
- Seo and accessibility
- Easy to understand Documentation
- Discord Community support in the free version
- CMS Integration
- 2500+ Plugins, and many more…
VuePress
VuePress is a minimalistic Vue-based static site generator that is optimized for writing technical documentation. In addition, the open-source Static Site generator was designed to be created to support the documentation needs of Vue’s own sub-projects.
Each page generated by Vue Press has its own pre-rendered static HTML, providing great loading performance and is SEO-friendly. Yet, once the page is loaded, Vue takes over the static content and turns it into a full Single-Page Application (SPA).
It comes with Built-in Markdown extensions like Table of Contents, Custom Containers, Line Highlighting, Import Code Snippets, and many more which are very useful in static documentation.
We at ThemeSelection always believed that documentation plays a very crucial role in developers’ understanding of the code. Therefore, the documentation that is used in all our Admin Dashboard Templates is built using VuePress.
Features
- Markdown Extensions
- Theming option
- Built-in Text Search Feature
- Google Analytics Intergration
- Multi-language support
- Automatic Service Worker generation, and many more…
VitePress
VitePress is basically a little brother of VuePress but the only difference is it is built on top of Vite. Although, it is a simple, powerful, and excellent Static Site generator that you may be looking for.
It is an open-source static site generator that uses the latest Vue 3. Furthermore, it has Vue 3’s improved template static analysis to stringify static content as much as possible.
VitePress comes with built-in markdown extensions in which you can take care of many useful functionalities. For instance, Header anchors, Links, GitHub-style tables, Emojis, Tables of contents, custom containers, and much more.
Apart from this, it also comes with a default theme providing many features out of the box which makes VitePress one of the best Static Site Generators.
Features
- Asset Handling
- Easy-to-understand Documentation
- Vite under the hood.
- Lighter Page weights
- Powerful Themeing
- Easy to Deploy, and many more…
Talking about Vue, it is advisable to use a Vue js Admin Template to create modern, eye-catching, and responsive web apps.
HUGO
Hugo is a fast and modern Open-source static site generator written in Go, built to create fast websites. It is SSG that dynamically builds a page only when a user creates or updates the content. Hugo is designed to provide an optimal viewing experience for your website’s end users and an ideal writing experience for website authors.
Using Hugo you can build extremely fast and secure websites, which can be hosted anywhere you want. Moreover, it also works well with CDNs too. In addition, Hugo sites run without the need for a database or dependencies on expensive runtimes like Ruby, Python, or PHP.
If you’re looking to build a blog, a company site, a portfolio site, documentation, a single landing page, or a website with thousands of pages then Hugo is the best Open Source Static Site generator.
Features
- Robust Content Management
- Extremely Fast Build times
- Completely Cross Platform
- Powerful Theming
- Integrated Google Analytics support
- Dynamic menu creation
- Permalink pattern support, and many more…
Nuxt.js
If you’re a Vue.js Developer then, this Static Site Generator is for you. Nuxt.js is an open-source Server-Side Rendering framework built on Vue.js. It combines the power of Vue.js and server-side rendering making it the most intuitive Vue Framework.
Using Nuxt Static Site generation you can render your application during the build phase and deploy it to any static hosting services such as Netlify, GitHub pages, Vercel, etc. This means that no server is needed in order to deploy your application.
Nuxt.js doesn’t need a server as it pre-renders all the pages including HTML, and helps develop responsive & SEO-friendly websites. Furthermore, by using Nuxt.js you do not have to rely on plugins or any other CMS system for a better user experience. Nuxt.js allows you to customize your web app as per your needs and the creativity you want.
Furthermore, it comes with a few important components as well which can be very useful while building your applications. These components are globally available, which means that you don’t need to import them in order to use them.
Features
- Server Side Rendering
- Zero Configuration
- File-system Routing
- Data Fetching
- Strong Conventions
- SEO Friendly
- Components Auto-import
- Modules Ecosystem, many more…
Eleventy
Eleventy is a simple static site generator written completely Node-based. It is an Open source framework that transforms templates (of varying types) into HTML. It is designed to build speedy websites in the browser as well as while you’re building it.
It works with multiple template languages therefore, you can use HTML, Markdown, JavaScript, and WebC in a single project as per your needs and requirements.
Unlike other SSGs it does come with some plugins but, it is not necessary as it does not offer essential functionality.
Features
- Filters & Shortcodes
- Supports Debug Mode
- Zero Congif by default
- Pre-rendered Templates
- Progressive Enhancement
- Easy to Understand Documentation and many more…
Jekyll
Jekyll is a free and open-source static site generator that is built on Ruby. It enables you to build websites that are rich and easy to navigate and use. Jekyll can generate all the content at once like Drupal and WordPress so that you do not have to wait for users’ actions.
It takes text written in your favorite markup language and uses layouts to create a static website. You can tweak the site’s look and feel, URLs, the data displayed on the page, and more. There are some prerequisites that Jekyll requires i.e. Rubby version 2.5+, RubyGems, GCC, and Make.
It supports the .md
extension in which you can also write a page in Markdown which converts to HTML on the build. If you have a lot of pages, you can organize them into subfolders. The same subfolders that are used to group your pages in your project’s source will then exist in the _site
folder when your site is built.
Jekyll has a plugin system with hooks that allow you to create custom-generated content specific to your site.
Features
- Step-by-Step Tutorial Guide
- Flexibility in Customization
- Sass/SCSS Options
- Liquid Templating
- Permalinks
- Extensive Theme System, and many more..
Docusaurus
Docusaurus is another static site generator that is useful for creating beautiful documentation sites in no time. It is useful for building single-page applications with fast side client navigation and interactive as well as using the power of React framework.
Furthermore, it provides enormous features of documentation required in documentation of any web app. It can also be used to create any kind of site like a personal website, product, blogs, marketing landing pages, and many more.
Docusaurus supports writing and using TypeScript theme components. If the init template provides a TypeScript variant, you can directly initialize a site with full TypeScript support by using the --typescript
flag.
If you’re working on React Projects, then we highly recommend you to choose React Admin Dashboard Template to boost your React projects.
Features
- Built with React
- Pluggable
- Route-based Code and Data Splitting
- SEO-Friendly
- Powered by MDX
- Document Versioning
- Internationalization (i18n), and many more…
Gridsome
Gridsome is JamStack Framework powered by Vue.js, designed to create static generated websites & apps. If you’re not aware of JamStack, it is a Framework that lets you build fast and secure sites that are delivered by pre-rendering files and serving them directly from a CDN.
Now, Girdsome generates static HTML that hydrates into a Vue SPA once loaded in the browser. Therefore, it is suitable for generating both static and dynamic sites. It generates static Progressive Web Applications in which only critical HTML, CSS, and JavaScript get loaded first.
Moreover, the rest pages are then prefetched so users can click around incredibly fast without page reloads, even when offline. Gridsome uses Vue Single File Components. Therefore, you can add HTML, JavaScript, and CSS in the same file to make your projects easier to maintain and test and your components more reusable.
Features
- Easy, local development.
- Fast by default
- PWA-ready
- Build on the Jamstack
- Simple, safe deployment
- SEO-friendly
- Connect the modern web and many more…
Harp.js
Harp is an Open-source static web server that also serves Jade, Markdown, EJS, Less, Stylus, Sass, and CoffeeScript as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript without any configuration. It supports layout/partial paradigm and flexible metadata and easily inserts your custom data into templates.
If you are using preprocessors to write HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, Harp will make your project dramatically easier. Harp supports Markdown, EJS, Jade, LESS, Sass, Stylus, and CoffeeScript.
Features
- Easy to install and Use
- Fast and Lightweight
- Robust (Clean URLs, Intelligent Path Redirects)
- Built-in LRU caching in production mode
- Can export assets to HTML/CSS/JS
- First-class layout and partial support, and many more…
React Static
React Static is a progressive static site generator for React. It is a fast, lightweight, static site generator based on React and its ecosystem. It gives out an ultimate developer-friendly environment that you’re used to in tools like Create React App.
Furthermore, React static is designed to create performance-based flexible web apps with developer/user-friendly experience. As we said, it supports 100% of the React ecosystem which includes CSS-in-JS libraries, custom Query layers like GraphQL, and even Redux.
It also supports Hot Reloadable out-of-the-box. Edit React components, styles, and even data in real-time.
Features
- Automatic code and data splitting!
- Instant navigation and page views
- Progressively Enhanced and mobile-ready
- SEO Friendly
- React-centric developer experience
- Easy project setup & migration, and many more…
Now, if you’re working on React projects it is highly advisable to use a NextJS Dashboard template. As it comes with premade components that you can use directly without any additional effort.
JigSaw
JigSaw is an Open-Source static site generator to creates simple static sites using Laravel’s Blade. It supports Laravek Mix so, you can compile your CSS and Javascript assets the same way you’re used to in Laravel.
It includes 2 Started templates i.e one for blog and another for open source documentation which you can customize with your content as per your need. Jigsaw provides powerful features that work with groups of related pages or collections.
Sites that are built using Jigsaw are just static HTML and Javascript, and they are simple and cheap enough to deploy and host. You will find the full guide in their detailed documentation on how to deploy your sites on hosts like GitHub Pages, Netlify, Amazon S3, and Manually.
Features
- Building and Previewing
- Support for Laravel Mix
- Laravel’s Blade Templating Language
- Supports Markdown and
.md
extension, - Custom 404 Page, and many more…
Wrap Up
So, here are the best 10+ Static Site generators we have mentioned above in this post. Of course, there may be other static generators as well, but according to us, these static site generators are worth trying in 2024.
There is no doubt that static site generators always come to the rescue when you’re looking for speed and reliability for your website. These static site generators will surely help you to create a static site without any problem. Now, it will totally depend upon the individual on which SSG they are choosing.
As a developer, keeping the learning curve in mind, we’d suggest choosing SSG which suits your core language. Now, when you’re choosing an SSG that does not suit your core language then, it will waste your time in learning the SSG.
Therefore, while picking up the best Static Site Generator always select on the basis of Ease of use, Speed, Documentation, Project needs, and the programming language.
Please let us know in the comment section, if you have any suggestions, and do share this blog with your friends if you find it helpful.
Happy Coding and Cheers!
About us
We, at ThemeSelection, provide selected high-quality, modern design, professional, and easy-to-use premium, and free VueJS Admin Templates, Asp.NET Admin Templates, Nuxt JS Dashboard, Django Admin Dashboard, NextJS Admin Templates, Laravel Admin Templates, & Free UI Kits.
Originally published at https://dev.to on December 6, 2022.