StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Static Site Generators
  5. Ghost vs Jekyll

Ghost vs Jekyll

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Jekyll
Jekyll
Stacks2.0K
Followers1.4K
Votes230
GitHub Stars51.0K
Forks10.2K
Ghost
Ghost
Stacks518
Followers506
Votes219
GitHub Stars51.1K
Forks11.1K

Ghost vs Jekyll: What are the differences?

  1. Template Engine: One key difference between Ghost and Jekyll is the template engine they use. Ghost utilizes Handlebars, a popular templating language that allows for dynamic content rendering and easy layout creation. On the other hand, Jekyll uses Liquid, a flexible templating language that enables customization of page layouts, variable usage, and conditional logic.
  2. Content Management: Ghost provides a built-in content management system, offering a user-friendly interface for creating and publishing content. Jekyll, on the other hand, does not have a native CMS and relies on a folder-based structure where content is added in Markdown or HTML files. Users must manually edit and organize files to manage their content effectively.
  3. Hosting: Ghost offers a hosted solution, allowing users to create and run their websites on the Ghost platform seamlessly. Conversely, Jekyll is a static site generator that requires users to host their websites on external servers or use platforms like GitHub Pages to publish their sites.
  4. Dynamic Content: Ghost allows for the integration of dynamic content, making it suitable for websites that require real-time updates or user interaction, such as blogs or news sites. Jekyll generates static sites, meaning that it pre-builds all pages, making it less suitable for dynamic content and more suitable for simple websites or blogs without frequent updates or user-generated content.
  5. Themes and Plugins: Ghost provides a wide range of themes and plugins that can be easily installed and customized for website personalization. In contrast, Jekyll offers a more limited range of themes and plugins, requiring users to manually create or modify themes to fit their website's design and functionality requirements.
  6. Ease of Use: Ghost emphasizes a user-friendly and intuitive interface, making it easier for non-technical users to create and manage their websites. Jekyll, while offering more control and flexibility, has a steeper learning curve and is better suited for users with coding or development experience.

In Summary, Ghost and Jekyll differ in their template engines, content management systems, hosting options, dynamic content capabilities, availability of themes and plugins, and ease of use.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Jekyll, Ghost

Xander
Xander

Founder at Rate My Meeting

Mar 30, 2020

Decided

So many choices for CMSs these days. So then what do you choose if speed, security and customization are key? Headless for one. Consuming your own APIs for content is absolute key. It makes designing pages in the front-end a breeze. Leaving Ghost and Cockpit. If I then looked at the footprint and impact on server load, Cockpit definitely wins that battle.

243k views243k
Comments
Manuel
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.

178k views178k
Comments
Kazim
Kazim

Founder & Developer at Devkind

May 13, 2020

Needs advice

Fastest and quickest way to do static HTML site which is extremely fast? Do you consider above tools or is there anything more quicker or better? This is just a one time one pager site for now, no backend required. I might have such projects in future, having something to get familiar with which can immediately come into action to develop would be great advise!

53.5k views53.5k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Jekyll
Jekyll
Ghost
Ghost

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 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.

Simple - No more databases, comment moderation, or pesky updates to install—just your content.;Static - Markdown (or Textile), Liquid, HTML & CSS go in. Static sites come out ready for deployment.;Blog-aware - Permalinks, categories, pages, posts, and custom layouts are all first-class citizens here.
An intuitive, minimal editor; Ultra-fast content management; All SEO features built-in natively; Native desktop & mobile apps; Publish once, distribute everywhere; Headless CMS with Node.js REST APIs; Over 19x faster than WordPress; Secure & independently audited; Custom theme or any JAMstack front-end
Statistics
GitHub Stars
51.0K
GitHub Stars
51.1K
GitHub Forks
10.2K
GitHub Forks
11.1K
Stacks
2.0K
Stacks
518
Followers
1.4K
Followers
506
Votes
230
Votes
219
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 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
Cons
  • 4
    Build time increases exponentially as site grows
  • 2
    Lack of developments lately
  • 1
    Og doesn't work with postings dynamically
Pros
  • 45
    Beautiful
  • 35
    Fast
  • 29
    Quick/simple post styling
  • 20
    Live Post Preview
  • 20
    Open source

What are some alternatives to Jekyll, Ghost?

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.

Drupal

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Strapi

Strapi

Strapi is100% JavaScript, extensible, and fully customizable. It enables developers to build projects faster by providing a customizable API out of the box and giving them the freedom to use the their favorite tools.

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.

Wagtail

Wagtail

Wagtail is a Django content management system built originally for the Royal College of Art and focused on flexibility and user experience.

Gatsby

Gatsby

Gatsby lets you build blazing fast sites with your data, whatever the source. Liberate your sites from legacy CMSs and fly into the future.

OctoberCMS

OctoberCMS

It is a Laravel-based CMS engineered for simplicity. It has a simple and intuitive interface. It provides a consistent structure with an emphasis on reusability so you can focus on building something unique while we handle the boring bits.

Twill

Twill

Twill is an open source CMS toolkit for Laravel that helps developers rapidly create a custom admin console that is intuitive, powerful and flexible.

Hexo

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

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

Related Comparisons

Postman
Swagger UI

Postman vs Swagger UI

Mapbox
Google Maps

Google Maps vs Mapbox

Mapbox
Leaflet

Leaflet vs Mapbox vs OpenLayers

Twilio SendGrid
Mailgun

Mailgun vs Mandrill vs SendGrid

Runscope
Postman

Paw vs Postman vs Runscope