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Jekyll vs Middleman: What are the differences?
What is Jekyll? Blog-aware, static site generator in Ruby. 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.
What is Middleman? A static site generator using all the shortcuts and tools in modern web development. Middleman is a command-line tool for creating static websites using all the shortcuts and tools of the modern web development environment.
Jekyll and Middleman belong to "Static Site Generators" category of the tech stack.
Some of the features offered by Jekyll are:
- 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.
On the other hand, Middleman provides the following key features:
- Sass for DRY stylesheets
- CoffeeScript for safer and less verbose javascript
- Multiple asset management solutions, including Sprockets
"Github pages integration" is the top reason why over 65 developers like Jekyll, while over 17 developers mention "Rails for static sites" as the leading cause for choosing Middleman.
Jekyll and Middleman are both open source tools. It seems that Jekyll with 38.1K GitHub stars and 8.31K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Middleman with 6.49K GitHub stars and 696 GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, Jekyll has a broader approval, being mentioned in 111 company stacks & 125 developers stacks; compared to Middleman, which is listed in 32 company stacks and 17 developer stacks.
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.
Pros of Jekyll
- Github pages integration74
- Open source54
- It's slick, customisable and hackerish37
- Easy to deploy24
- Straightforward cms for the hacker mindset23
- Gitlab pages integration7
- Best for blogging5
- Low maintenance2
- Easy to integrate localization2
- Huge plugins ecosystem1
- Authoring freedom and simplicity1
Pros of Middleman
- Rails for static sites20
- Erb, haml, slim18
- Live reload17
- Easy setup7
- Emacs org-mode integration by middleman-org3
- Make front-end easy and rock solid again1
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Cons of Jekyll
- Build time increases exponentially as site grows4
- Lack of developments lately2
- Og doesn't work with postings dynamically1
Cons of Middleman
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