Alternatives to Hexo logo

Alternatives to Hexo

Jekyll, Ghost, Hugo, Apache Aurora, and WordPress are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Hexo.
353
386
+ 1
70

What is Hexo and what are its top alternatives?

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.
Hexo is a tool in the Static Site Generators category of a tech stack.
Hexo is an open source tool with 40.1K GitHub stars and 4.9K GitHub forks. Here’s a link to Hexo's open source repository on GitHub

Top Alternatives to Hexo

  • Jekyll
    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. ...

  • Ghost
    Ghost

    Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customisable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even fun to do. ...

  • Hugo
    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. ...

  • Apache Aurora
    Apache Aurora

    Apache Aurora is a service scheduler that runs on top of Mesos, enabling you to run long-running services that take advantage of Mesos' scalability, fault-tolerance, and resource isolation. ...

  • WordPress
    WordPress

    The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family. ...

  • 11ty
    11ty

    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. ...

  • Postman
    Postman

    It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide. ...

  • Postman
    Postman

    It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide. ...

Hexo alternatives & related posts

Jekyll logo

Jekyll

1.9K
230
Blog-aware, static site generator in Ruby
1.9K
230
PROS OF JEKYLL
  • 74
    Github pages integration
  • 54
    Open source
  • 37
    It's slick, customisable and hackerish
  • 24
    Easy to deploy
  • 23
    Straightforward cms for the hacker mindset
  • 7
    Gitlab pages integration
  • 5
    Best for blogging
  • 2
    Low maintenance
  • 2
    Easy to integrate localization
  • 1
    Huge plugins ecosystem
  • 1
    Authoring freedom and simplicity
CONS OF JEKYLL
  • 4
    Build time increases exponentially as site grows
  • 2
    Lack of developments lately
  • 1
    Og doesn't work with postings dynamically

related Jekyll posts

Dale Ross
Independent Contractor at Self Employed · | 22 upvotes · 1.7M views

I've heard that I have the ability to write well, at times. When it flows, it flows. I decided to start blogging in 2013 on Blogger. I started a company and joined BizPark with the Microsoft Azure allotment. I created a WordPress blog and did a migration at some point. A lot happened in the time after that migration but I stopped coding and changed cities during tumultuous times that taught me many lessons concerning mental health and productivity. I eventually graduated from BizSpark and outgrew the credit allotment. That killed the WordPress blog.

I blogged about writing again on the existing Blogger blog but it didn't feel right. I looked at a few options where I wouldn't have to worry about hosting cost indefinitely and Jekyll stood out with GitHub Pages. The Importer was fairly straightforward for the existing blog posts.

Todo * Set up redirects for all posts on blogger. The URI format is different so a complete redirect wouldn't work. Although, there may be something in Jekyll that could manage the redirects. I did notice the old URLs were stored in the front matter. I'm working on a command-line Ruby gem for the current plan. * I did find some of the lost WordPress posts on archive.org that I downloaded with the waybackmachinedownloader. I think I might write an importer for that. * I still have a few Disqus comment threads to map

See more
Jan Vlnas
Senior Software Engineer at Mews · | 6 upvotes · 66K views

Depends on what options and technologies you have available, and how do you deploy your website.

There are CMSs which update existing static pages through FTP: You provide access credentials, mark editable parts of your HTML in a markup, and then edit the content through the hosted CMS. I know two systems which work like that: Cushy CMS and Surreal CMS.

If the source of your site is versioned through Git (and hosted on GitHub), you have other options, like Netlify CMS, Spinal CMS, Siteleaf, Forestry, or CloudCannon. Some of these also need you to use static site generator (like 11ty, Jekyll, or Hugo).

If you have some server-side scripting support available (typically PHP) you can also consider some flat-file based, server-side systems, like Kirby CMS or Lektor, which are usually simpler to retrofit into an existing template than “traditional” CMSs (WordPress, Drupal).

Finally, you could also use a desktop-based static site generator which provides a user-friendly GUI, and then locally generates and uploads the website. For example Publii, YouDoCMS, Agit CMS.

See more
Ghost logo

Ghost

511
219
Just a blogging platform
511
219
PROS OF GHOST
  • 45
    Beautiful
  • 35
    Fast
  • 29
    Quick/simple post styling
  • 20
    Live Post Preview
  • 20
    Open source
  • 19
    Non-profit
  • 16
    Seamless writing
  • 6
    Node.js
  • 5
    Fast and Performatic
  • 5
    Javascript
  • 4
    Simplest
  • 3
    Wonderful UI
  • 3
    Handlebars
  • 3
    Full Control
  • 2
    Magic
  • 2
    Clean
  • 1
    Headless CMS
  • 1
    Self-hostable
CONS OF GHOST
    Be the first to leave a con

    related Ghost posts

    Hugo logo

    Hugo

    1.3K
    206
    A Fast and Flexible Static Site Generator written in Go
    1.3K
    206
    PROS OF HUGO
    • 47
      Lightning fast
    • 29
      Single Executable
    • 26
      Easy setup
    • 24
      Great development community
    • 23
      Open source
    • 13
      Write in golang
    • 8
      Not HTML only - JSON, RSS
    • 8
      Hacker mindset
    • 7
      LiveReload built in
    • 4
      Gitlab pages integration
    • 4
      Easy to customize themes
    • 4
      Very fast builds
    • 3
      Well documented
    • 3
      Fast builds
    • 3
      Easy to learn
    CONS OF HUGO
    • 4
      No Plugins/Extensions
    • 2
      Template syntax not friendly
    • 1
      Quick builds

    related Hugo posts

    John-Daniel Trask
    Co-founder & CEO at Raygun · | 19 upvotes · 344.9K views
    Shared insights
    on
    .NET.NETWordPressWordPressHugoHugo
    at

    There’s no doubt WordPress is a great CMS, which is very user friendly. When we started the company, our blog wasn’t really our top priority, and it ended up being hosted on a fairly obscure server within our setup, which didn’t really change much until recently when things become harder to manage and make significant updates.

    As our marketing team increased, the amount of traffic that found us through our content marketing increased. We found ourselves struggling to maintain our Wordpress install given the amount of theme updates, plugins and security patches needing to be applied. Our biggest driver to find an alternative solution however was just how slow Wordpress is at serving content to the end user. I know there will be die hard fans out there with ways to set things up that mean WordPress sites can load quickly, but we needed something a lot more streamlined.

    We could see in our own Real User Monitoring tool that many users were experiencing page load speeds of over five seconds, even longer in worst case scenarios. Hugo is an open source static site generator that has enabled us to reduce load times by over 500% and make our blog far more maintainable across the whole team.

    The Raygun marketing site runs on a .NET CMS called N2 but we plan to swap that out with Hugo as well in future.

    #StaticSiteGenerators #SelfHostedBloggingCms #SupportSalesAndMarketing

    See more
    Jan Vlnas
    Senior Software Engineer at Mews · | 6 upvotes · 66K views

    Depends on what options and technologies you have available, and how do you deploy your website.

    There are CMSs which update existing static pages through FTP: You provide access credentials, mark editable parts of your HTML in a markup, and then edit the content through the hosted CMS. I know two systems which work like that: Cushy CMS and Surreal CMS.

    If the source of your site is versioned through Git (and hosted on GitHub), you have other options, like Netlify CMS, Spinal CMS, Siteleaf, Forestry, or CloudCannon. Some of these also need you to use static site generator (like 11ty, Jekyll, or Hugo).

    If you have some server-side scripting support available (typically PHP) you can also consider some flat-file based, server-side systems, like Kirby CMS or Lektor, which are usually simpler to retrofit into an existing template than “traditional” CMSs (WordPress, Drupal).

    Finally, you could also use a desktop-based static site generator which provides a user-friendly GUI, and then locally generates and uploads the website. For example Publii, YouDoCMS, Agit CMS.

    See more
    Apache Aurora logo

    Apache Aurora

    70
    0
    An Apcahe Mesos framework for scheduling jobs, originally developed by Twitter
    70
    0
    PROS OF APACHE AURORA
      Be the first to leave a pro
      CONS OF APACHE AURORA
        Be the first to leave a con

        related Apache Aurora posts

        Docker containers on Mesos run their microservices with consistent configurations at scale, along with Aurora for long-running services and cron jobs.

        See more
        WordPress logo

        WordPress

        98.2K
        2.1K
        A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
        98.2K
        2.1K
        PROS OF WORDPRESS
        • 416
          Customizable
        • 367
          Easy to manage
        • 354
          Plugins & themes
        • 259
          Non-tech colleagues can update website content
        • 247
          Really powerful
        • 145
          Rapid website development
        • 78
          Best documentation
        • 51
          Codex
        • 44
          Product feature set
        • 35
          Custom/internal social network
        • 18
          Open source
        • 8
          Great for all types of websites
        • 7
          Huge install and user base
        • 5
          I like it like I like a kick in the groin
        • 5
          It's simple and easy to use by any novice
        • 5
          Perfect example of user collaboration
        • 5
          Open Source Community
        • 5
          Most websites make use of it
        • 5
          Best
        • 4
          API-based CMS
        • 4
          Community
        • 3
          Easy To use
        • 2
          <a href="https://secure.wphackedhel">Easy Beginner</a>
        CONS OF WORDPRESS
        • 13
          Hard to keep up-to-date if you customize things
        • 13
          Plugins are of mixed quality
        • 10
          Not best backend UI
        • 2
          Complex Organization
        • 1
          Do not cover all the basics in the core
        • 1
          Great Security

        related WordPress posts

        Shared insights
        on
        ElementorElementorWordPressWordPress

        hello guys, I need your help. I created a website, I've been using Elementor forever, but yesterday I bought a template after I made the purchase I knew I made a mistake, cause the template was in HTML, can anyone please show me how to put this HTML template in my WordPress so it will be the face of my website, thank you in advance.

        See more
        Dale Ross
        Independent Contractor at Self Employed · | 22 upvotes · 1.7M views

        I've heard that I have the ability to write well, at times. When it flows, it flows. I decided to start blogging in 2013 on Blogger. I started a company and joined BizPark with the Microsoft Azure allotment. I created a WordPress blog and did a migration at some point. A lot happened in the time after that migration but I stopped coding and changed cities during tumultuous times that taught me many lessons concerning mental health and productivity. I eventually graduated from BizSpark and outgrew the credit allotment. That killed the WordPress blog.

        I blogged about writing again on the existing Blogger blog but it didn't feel right. I looked at a few options where I wouldn't have to worry about hosting cost indefinitely and Jekyll stood out with GitHub Pages. The Importer was fairly straightforward for the existing blog posts.

        Todo * Set up redirects for all posts on blogger. The URI format is different so a complete redirect wouldn't work. Although, there may be something in Jekyll that could manage the redirects. I did notice the old URLs were stored in the front matter. I'm working on a command-line Ruby gem for the current plan. * I did find some of the lost WordPress posts on archive.org that I downloaded with the waybackmachinedownloader. I think I might write an importer for that. * I still have a few Disqus comment threads to map

        See more
        11ty logo

        11ty

        102
        15
        A simpler static site generator
        102
        15
        PROS OF 11TY
        • 4
          Flexibility on choosing template
        • 3
          Great use of data files/sources
        • 3
          Flexible, allows progressive conversion of templates
        • 3
          Content decoupled as much as possible from Eleventy
        • 2
          Zero boilerplate client-side JavaScript
        CONS OF 11TY
          Be the first to leave a con

          related 11ty posts

          Jan Vlnas
          Senior Software Engineer at Mews · | 6 upvotes · 66K views

          Depends on what options and technologies you have available, and how do you deploy your website.

          There are CMSs which update existing static pages through FTP: You provide access credentials, mark editable parts of your HTML in a markup, and then edit the content through the hosted CMS. I know two systems which work like that: Cushy CMS and Surreal CMS.

          If the source of your site is versioned through Git (and hosted on GitHub), you have other options, like Netlify CMS, Spinal CMS, Siteleaf, Forestry, or CloudCannon. Some of these also need you to use static site generator (like 11ty, Jekyll, or Hugo).

          If you have some server-side scripting support available (typically PHP) you can also consider some flat-file based, server-side systems, like Kirby CMS or Lektor, which are usually simpler to retrofit into an existing template than “traditional” CMSs (WordPress, Drupal).

          Finally, you could also use a desktop-based static site generator which provides a user-friendly GUI, and then locally generates and uploads the website. For example Publii, YouDoCMS, Agit CMS.

          See more
          Postman logo

          Postman

          95.2K
          1.8K
          Only complete API development environment
          95.2K
          1.8K
          PROS OF POSTMAN
          • 490
            Easy to use
          • 369
            Great tool
          • 276
            Makes developing rest api's easy peasy
          • 156
            Easy setup, looks good
          • 144
            The best api workflow out there
          • 53
            It's the best
          • 53
            History feature
          • 44
            Adds real value to my workflow
          • 43
            Great interface that magically predicts your needs
          • 35
            The best in class app
          • 12
            Can save and share script
          • 10
            Fully featured without looking cluttered
          • 8
            Collections
          • 8
            Option to run scrips
          • 8
            Global/Environment Variables
          • 7
            Shareable Collections
          • 7
            Dead simple and useful. Excellent
          • 7
            Dark theme easy on the eyes
          • 6
            Awesome customer support
          • 6
            Great integration with newman
          • 5
            Documentation
          • 5
            Simple
          • 5
            The test script is useful
          • 4
            Saves responses
          • 4
            This has simplified my testing significantly
          • 4
            Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,3
          • 4
            Easy as pie
          • 3
            API-network
          • 3
            I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis
          • 3
            Mocking API calls with predefined response
          • 2
            Now supports GraphQL
          • 2
            Postman Runner CI Integration
          • 2
            Easy to setup, test and provides test storage
          • 2
            Continuous integration using newman
          • 2
            Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable
          • 2
            Runner
          • 2
            Graph
          • 1
            <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>
          CONS OF POSTMAN
          • 10
            Stores credentials in HTTP
          • 9
            Bloated features and UI
          • 8
            Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens
          • 7
            Poor GraphQL support
          • 5
            Expensive
          • 3
            Not free after 5 users
          • 3
            Can't prompt for per-request variables
          • 1
            Import swagger
          • 1
            Support websocket
          • 1
            Import curl

          related Postman posts

          Noah Zoschke
          Engineering Manager at Segment · | 30 upvotes · 3.1M views

          We just launched the Segment Config API (try it out for yourself here) — a set of public REST APIs that enable you to manage your Segment configuration. A public API is only as good as its #documentation. For the API reference doc we are using Postman.

          Postman is an “API development environment”. You download the desktop app, and build API requests by URL and payload. Over time you can build up a set of requests and organize them into a “Postman Collection”. You can generalize a collection with “collection variables”. This allows you to parameterize things like username, password and workspace_name so a user can fill their own values in before making an API call. This makes it possible to use Postman for one-off API tasks instead of writing code.

          Then you can add Markdown content to the entire collection, a folder of related methods, and/or every API method to explain how the APIs work. You can publish a collection and easily share it with a URL.

          This turns Postman from a personal #API utility to full-blown public interactive API documentation. The result is a great looking web page with all the API calls, docs and sample requests and responses in one place. Check out the results here.

          Postman’s powers don’t end here. You can automate Postman with “test scripts” and have it periodically run a collection scripts as “monitors”. We now have #QA around all the APIs in public docs to make sure they are always correct

          Along the way we tried other techniques for documenting APIs like ReadMe.io or Swagger UI. These required a lot of effort to customize.

          Writing and maintaining a Postman collection takes some work, but the resulting documentation site, interactivity and API testing tools are well worth it.

          See more
          Simon Reymann
          Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 27 upvotes · 5.4M views

          Our whole Node.js backend stack consists of the following tools:

          • Lerna as a tool for multi package and multi repository management
          • npm as package manager
          • NestJS as Node.js framework
          • TypeScript as programming language
          • ExpressJS as web server
          • Swagger UI for visualizing and interacting with the API’s resources
          • Postman as a tool for API development
          • TypeORM as object relational mapping layer
          • JSON Web Token for access token management

          The main reason we have chosen Node.js over PHP is related to the following artifacts:

          • Made for the web and widely in use: Node.js is a software platform for developing server-side network services. Well-known projects that rely on Node.js include the blogging software Ghost, the project management tool Trello and the operating system WebOS. Node.js requires the JavaScript runtime environment V8, which was specially developed by Google for the popular Chrome browser. This guarantees a very resource-saving architecture, which qualifies Node.js especially for the operation of a web server. Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, released the first stable version on May 27, 2009. He developed Node.js out of dissatisfaction with the possibilities that JavaScript offered at the time. The basic functionality of Node.js has been mapped with JavaScript since the first version, which can be expanded with a large number of different modules. The current package managers (npm or Yarn) for Node.js know more than 1,000,000 of these modules.
          • Fast server-side solutions: Node.js adopts the JavaScript "event-loop" to create non-blocking I/O applications that conveniently serve simultaneous events. With the standard available asynchronous processing within JavaScript/TypeScript, highly scalable, server-side solutions can be realized. The efficient use of the CPU and the RAM is maximized and more simultaneous requests can be processed than with conventional multi-thread servers.
          • A language along the entire stack: Widely used frameworks such as React or AngularJS or Vue.js, which we prefer, are written in JavaScript/TypeScript. If Node.js is now used on the server side, you can use all the advantages of a uniform script language throughout the entire application development. The same language in the back- and frontend simplifies the maintenance of the application and also the coordination within the development team.
          • Flexibility: Node.js sets very few strict dependencies, rules and guidelines and thus grants a high degree of flexibility in application development. There are no strict conventions so that the appropriate architecture, design structures, modules and features can be freely selected for the development.
          See more
          Postman logo

          Postman

          95.2K
          1.8K
          Only complete API development environment
          95.2K
          1.8K
          PROS OF POSTMAN
          • 490
            Easy to use
          • 369
            Great tool
          • 276
            Makes developing rest api's easy peasy
          • 156
            Easy setup, looks good
          • 144
            The best api workflow out there
          • 53
            It's the best
          • 53
            History feature
          • 44
            Adds real value to my workflow
          • 43
            Great interface that magically predicts your needs
          • 35
            The best in class app
          • 12
            Can save and share script
          • 10
            Fully featured without looking cluttered
          • 8
            Collections
          • 8
            Option to run scrips
          • 8
            Global/Environment Variables
          • 7
            Shareable Collections
          • 7
            Dead simple and useful. Excellent
          • 7
            Dark theme easy on the eyes
          • 6
            Awesome customer support
          • 6
            Great integration with newman
          • 5
            Documentation
          • 5
            Simple
          • 5
            The test script is useful
          • 4
            Saves responses
          • 4
            This has simplified my testing significantly
          • 4
            Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,3
          • 4
            Easy as pie
          • 3
            API-network
          • 3
            I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis
          • 3
            Mocking API calls with predefined response
          • 2
            Now supports GraphQL
          • 2
            Postman Runner CI Integration
          • 2
            Easy to setup, test and provides test storage
          • 2
            Continuous integration using newman
          • 2
            Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable
          • 2
            Runner
          • 2
            Graph
          • 1
            <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>
          CONS OF POSTMAN
          • 10
            Stores credentials in HTTP
          • 9
            Bloated features and UI
          • 8
            Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens
          • 7
            Poor GraphQL support
          • 5
            Expensive
          • 3
            Not free after 5 users
          • 3
            Can't prompt for per-request variables
          • 1
            Import swagger
          • 1
            Support websocket
          • 1
            Import curl

          related Postman posts

          Noah Zoschke
          Engineering Manager at Segment · | 30 upvotes · 3.1M views

          We just launched the Segment Config API (try it out for yourself here) — a set of public REST APIs that enable you to manage your Segment configuration. A public API is only as good as its #documentation. For the API reference doc we are using Postman.

          Postman is an “API development environment”. You download the desktop app, and build API requests by URL and payload. Over time you can build up a set of requests and organize them into a “Postman Collection”. You can generalize a collection with “collection variables”. This allows you to parameterize things like username, password and workspace_name so a user can fill their own values in before making an API call. This makes it possible to use Postman for one-off API tasks instead of writing code.

          Then you can add Markdown content to the entire collection, a folder of related methods, and/or every API method to explain how the APIs work. You can publish a collection and easily share it with a URL.

          This turns Postman from a personal #API utility to full-blown public interactive API documentation. The result is a great looking web page with all the API calls, docs and sample requests and responses in one place. Check out the results here.

          Postman’s powers don’t end here. You can automate Postman with “test scripts” and have it periodically run a collection scripts as “monitors”. We now have #QA around all the APIs in public docs to make sure they are always correct

          Along the way we tried other techniques for documenting APIs like ReadMe.io or Swagger UI. These required a lot of effort to customize.

          Writing and maintaining a Postman collection takes some work, but the resulting documentation site, interactivity and API testing tools are well worth it.

          See more
          Simon Reymann
          Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 27 upvotes · 5.4M views

          Our whole Node.js backend stack consists of the following tools:

          • Lerna as a tool for multi package and multi repository management
          • npm as package manager
          • NestJS as Node.js framework
          • TypeScript as programming language
          • ExpressJS as web server
          • Swagger UI for visualizing and interacting with the API’s resources
          • Postman as a tool for API development
          • TypeORM as object relational mapping layer
          • JSON Web Token for access token management

          The main reason we have chosen Node.js over PHP is related to the following artifacts:

          • Made for the web and widely in use: Node.js is a software platform for developing server-side network services. Well-known projects that rely on Node.js include the blogging software Ghost, the project management tool Trello and the operating system WebOS. Node.js requires the JavaScript runtime environment V8, which was specially developed by Google for the popular Chrome browser. This guarantees a very resource-saving architecture, which qualifies Node.js especially for the operation of a web server. Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, released the first stable version on May 27, 2009. He developed Node.js out of dissatisfaction with the possibilities that JavaScript offered at the time. The basic functionality of Node.js has been mapped with JavaScript since the first version, which can be expanded with a large number of different modules. The current package managers (npm or Yarn) for Node.js know more than 1,000,000 of these modules.
          • Fast server-side solutions: Node.js adopts the JavaScript "event-loop" to create non-blocking I/O applications that conveniently serve simultaneous events. With the standard available asynchronous processing within JavaScript/TypeScript, highly scalable, server-side solutions can be realized. The efficient use of the CPU and the RAM is maximized and more simultaneous requests can be processed than with conventional multi-thread servers.
          • A language along the entire stack: Widely used frameworks such as React or AngularJS or Vue.js, which we prefer, are written in JavaScript/TypeScript. If Node.js is now used on the server side, you can use all the advantages of a uniform script language throughout the entire application development. The same language in the back- and frontend simplifies the maintenance of the application and also the coordination within the development team.
          • Flexibility: Node.js sets very few strict dependencies, rules and guidelines and thus grants a high degree of flexibility in application development. There are no strict conventions so that the appropriate architecture, design structures, modules and features can be freely selected for the development.
          See more