11ty vs Gatsby

Overview

Gatsby

Stacks3.3K

Followers2.4K

Votes121

GitHub Stars55.9K

Forks10.3K

11ty

Stacks107

Followers120

Votes15

GitHub Stars19.0K

Forks556

11ty vs Gatsby: What are the differences?

Comparison between 11ty and Gatsby

1. Configurability: 11ty provides a more flexible and customizable setup due to its minimal configuration approach. It allows developers to choose their preferred templating language, such as HTML, Markdown, or Nunjucks, giving them greater control over their project's architecture and design. On the other hand, Gatsby follows a more opinionated approach with a predefined folder structure and uses React as the default templating language, which limits the flexibility in the configuration options.

2. Build Time: Gatsby performs extremely well in terms of build time. It adopts a pre-rendering process, where most of the content is built during the build stage. This helps in reducing the loading time when the website is accessed. In contrast, 11ty follows an incremental build process, meaning it only rebuilds the necessary files that have changed. While this approach improves development efficiency, it may increase the build time for larger projects.

3. Plugin Ecosystem: Gatsby boasts a rich plugin ecosystem that offers a wide range of functionalities, including image optimization, SEO, and responsive design. These plugins can be easily integrated into the project and provide advanced features without the need for additional coding. On the other hand, while 11ty does have plugins, its ecosystem is not as extensive or mature as Gatsby's, which may limit the availability of certain features or require more manual implementation.

4. Learning Curve: Gatsby leans heavily on React, requiring developers to have a good understanding of React concepts and JSX syntax. This can result in a steeper learning curve for developers who are unfamiliar with React or prefer working with other templating languages. In contrast, 11ty is more approachable for developers who are comfortable with HTML or other template engines, as it does not rely on a specific framework or library.

5. SEO Optimization: Gatsby excels in SEO optimization with built-in support for generating static HTML files, enabling search engines to easily crawl and index the website's content. Additionally, Gatsby offers plugins specifically designed for SEO purposes, making it easier to implement SEO best practices. 11ty, while it can generate static HTML files, does not offer the same level of built-in SEO optimization features, requiring more manual implementation and configuration.

6. Data Handling: Gatsby provides a powerful GraphQL layer that allows for seamless data sourcing from multiple APIs, databases, and file systems. This makes it easier to query and manipulate data, providing a streamlined development experience. In contrast, 11ty does not have a built-in data layer like GraphQL. Developers need to manually handle data sourcing and manipulation, which can be more time-consuming and complex for projects requiring dynamic data integration.

In summary, Gatsby offers a more opinionated and efficient build process, a rich plugin ecosystem, better SEO optimization, and a powerful GraphQL data layer. On the other hand, 11ty provides more configurability, a lower learning curve, and better compatibility with developers familiar with HTML and other template engines. The choice between the two depends on the specific needs of the project and the developer's preferences and skills.

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Advice on Gatsby, 11ty

Manuel

Frontend Engineer at BI X

Jul 22, 2020

Decided

As a Frontend Developer I wanted something simple to generate static websites with technology I am familiar with. GatsbyJS was in the stack I am familiar with, does not need any other languages / package managers and allows quick content deployment in pure HTML or Markdown (what you prefer for a project). It also does not require you to understand a theming engine if you need a custom design.

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Detailed Comparison

Gatsby	11ty
Gatsby lets you build blazing fast sites with your data, whatever the source. Liberate your sites from legacy CMSs and fly into the future.	A simpler static site generator. An alternative to Jekyll. Written in JavaScript. Transforms a directory of templates (of varying types) into HTML. Works with HTML, Markdown, Liquid, Nunjucks, Handlebars, Mustache, EJS, Haml, Pug, and JavaScript Template Literals.
-	Uses independent template engines;Works with your project’s existing directory structure;Works with multiple template languages; Zero-config by default but has flexible configuration options;JavaScript alternative to Jekyll
Statistics
GitHub Stars 55.9K	GitHub Stars 19.0K
GitHub Forks 10.3K	GitHub Forks 556
Stacks 3.3K	Stacks 107
Followers 2.4K	Followers 120
Votes 121	Votes 15
Pros & Cons
Pros 28 Generated websites are super fast 16 Fast 15 GraphQL 10 Progressive Web Apps generation 9 Easy to connect with lots of CMS via official plugins Cons 7 No ssr 4 Documentation isn't complete. 3 Very slow builds 2 For-profit 2 Flash of unstyled content issues	Pros 4 Flexibility on choosing template 3 Great use of data files/sources 3 Content decoupled as much as possible from Eleventy 3 Flexible, allows progressive conversion of templates 2 Zero boilerplate client-side JavaScript
Integrations
WordPress TypeScript GraphCMS Babel prismic.io AWS Amplify Glamorous Prisma styled-components Emotion	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Gatsby, 11ty?

Jekyll

Think of Jekyll as a file-based CMS, without all the complexity. Jekyll takes your content, renders Markdown and Liquid templates, and spits out a complete, static website ready to be served by Apache, Nginx or another web server. Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which you can use to host sites right from your GitHub repositories.

Hugo

Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. It is optimized for speed, easy use and configurability. Hugo takes a directory with content and templates and renders them into a full html website. Hugo makes use of markdown files with front matter for meta data.

Hexo

Hexo is a fast, simple and powerful blog framework. It parses your posts with Markdown or other render engine and generates static files with the beautiful theme. All of these just take seconds.

Middleman

Middleman is a command-line tool for creating static websites using all the shortcuts and tools of the modern web development environment.

Gridsome

Build websites using latest web tech tools that developers love - Vue.js, GraphQL and Webpack. Get hot-reloading and all the power of Node.js. Gridsome makes building websites fun again.

Pelican

Pelican is a static site generator that supports Markdown and reST syntax. Write your weblog entries directly with your editor of choice (vim!) in reStructuredText or Markdown.

DocPad

Empower your website frontends with layouts, meta-data, pre-processors (markdown, jade, coffeescript, etc.), partials, skeletons, file watching, querying, and an amazing plugin system. DocPad will streamline your web development process allowing you to craft full-featured websites quicker than ever before.

Metalsmith

In Metalsmith, all of the logic is handled by plugins. You simply chain them together. Since everything is a plugin, the core library is actually just an abstraction for manipulating a directory of files.

MkDocs

It builds completely static HTML sites that you can host on GitHub pages, Amazon S3, or anywhere else you choose. There's a stack of good looking themes available. The built-in dev-server allows you to preview your documentation as you're writing it. It will even auto-reload and refresh your browser whenever you save your changes.

VuePress

A minimalistic static site generator with a Vue-powered theming system, and a default theme optimized for writing technical documentation. It was created to support the documentation needs of Vue's own sub projects.

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11ty vs Gatsby: What are the differences?

Comparison between 11ty and Gatsby

11ty vs Gatsby

Overview

11ty vs Gatsby: What are the differences?