Nine of the ten most popular platforms in this category do not run a server at all. Hugo, Astro, Gatsby, Jekyll, Hexo, Eleventy, VitePress, Zola, and Pelican are static site generators — they build plain HTML you can host on any web server or free static host — and only Halo, a Java server application, works the classic way. So "choosing a blogging platform" today mostly means choosing a build toolchain, and that reframing makes the decision much simpler.

How to choose a static site generator

Start with the toolchain you are willing to live with. Hugo (89,545 stars) and Zola install as a single binary — download, run, done, with no runtime to maintain. Astro, Eleventy, Hexo, and Gatsby all require Node tooling; Jekyll needs Ruby; Pelican needs Python. If those ecosystems are already on your machine for other reasons, fine; if not, a binary you cannot break with a package upgrade is worth a lot. Second, be honest about wanting an admin interface, because the generators uniformly lack one — the catalogue lists "no admin UI" against nearly every entry. Writing means editing Markdown and running a build, which delights some people and quietly kills other people's blogs. If you want browser-based editing, that is Halo (39,607 stars, 1 GB of RAM, docs strongest in Chinese) or a proper server platform from the CMS category. Third, themes and speed: Hugo's build speed and theme library are the largest here, and it stays fast on sites with thousands of pages, where Jekyll's own entry concedes slower builds at scale.

Where to start

Hugo is the default: one binary, thousands of themes, and build times measured in milliseconds per page. Its real cost is the templating language, which the catalogue politely calls a learning curve — budget a weekend of squinting at examples. Astro (62,054 stars, first released 2021) is the modern alternative for anyone from the JavaScript world: zero client-side JavaScript by default, components from React, Vue, or Svelte when you want them, and content collections built for blogs. The Astro vs Hugo comparison covers the head-to-head. Zola (17,375 stars) is the quiet third option: Rust, one dependency-free binary, Sass and search built in, with a smaller theme selection as the honest trade-off.

For a first blog, take Hugo with an established theme, write in Markdown, and deploy the output anywhere static files are served. It costs nothing to run, has no server to patch or database to back up, and the only thing that can go down is your host.

Curated picks

Easiest Blogging Platforms to self-host Best API Blogging Platforms Best Beginner-Friendly Blogging Platforms Best Cross-Platform Blogging Platforms Best Docker Blogging Platforms Best Free Blogging Platforms Best Lightweight Blogging Platforms Best Multi-User Blogging Platforms Best No-Database Blogging Platforms Best Offline-First Blogging Platforms Best Plugins Blogging Platforms Best Single-User Blogging Platforms Best SQLite Blogging Platforms

Blogging Platforms comparisons

585 head-to-head comparisons in this category.

See all comparisons →