Pencil vs Poole
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted blogging platforms options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Pencil | Poole |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 62 · Good | 0 · At risk |
| Status | Actively maintained | Archived |
| Category | Blogging Platforms | Blogging Platforms |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Language | Haskell | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | source, binary | source, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5 | ★ 31 |
| First released | 2017 | 2009 |
| Replaces | Jekyll | Jekyll |
What are Pencil and Poole?
Pencil
Pencil is a static site generator library and tool written in Haskell that compiles Markdown and templates into a static website. It gives developers a programmatic way to define site structure and content transformations.
- Haskell library API
- Markdown rendering
- Template inheritance
- Static output
Poole
Poole is a markup-agnostic, single-file static website generator written in Python that keeps the build process deliberately tiny. It is suited for small personal sites and blogs where minimalism is preferred.
- Single-file generator
- Markup-agnostic
- Embedded Python in pages
- Tiny footprint
Pencil vs Poole: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Poole's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Pencil is actively maintained. Pencil is written in Haskell, while Poole is built with Python. Licensing differs — BSD-3-Clause for Pencil versus MIT for Poole. Poole is the more established project (first released 2009), while Pencil arrived in 2017. Poole has the considerably larger community, at 31 GitHub stars versus 5.
Why pick each one
Choose Pencil if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- Written in Haskell
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Choose Poole if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Written in Python
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Pencil or Poole better?
Poole is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Poole if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Pencil and Poole free and open-source?
Yes. Pencil is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Poole under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Pencil and Poole with Docker?
Pencil: check the project docs for container support. Poole: check the project docs for container support.