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Jekyll vs Wix: What are the differences?
Developers describe Jekyll as "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. On the other hand, Wix is detailed as "Wix.com is a web development platform enabling anyone to build a stunning online presence using simple cloud-based creation and management tools". Creating your stunning website for free is easier than ever. No tech skills needed. Just pick a template, change anything you want, add your images, videos, text and more to get online instantly.
Jekyll and Wix are primarily classified as "Static Site Generators" and "Website Builder" tools respectively.
"Github pages integration" is the top reason why over 65 developers like Jekyll, while over 2 developers mention "WYSIWYG" as the leading cause for choosing Wix.
Jekyll is an open source tool with 38.1K GitHub stars and 8.31K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Jekyll's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, Jekyll has a broader approval, being mentioned in 111 company stacks & 125 developers stacks; compared to Wix, which is listed in 17 company stacks and 9 developer stacks.
I usually take a slightly different tack because the technical level of people I usually am dealing with is lower. I tend to be pitching to decision makers and not tech people. A bit of my standard answer is below.
Wix and Squarespace are proprietary systems meant for unsophisticated users who want to build their own websites quickly and easily. While they are good for that specific use case, they do not offer any way to move beyond that if your needs arise. Since they are proprietary closed systems if you need something more advanced at some point your only option is to start over.
WordPress is an Open Source CMS that allows much more freedom. It is not quite as simple to setup and create a new site but if you are talking to me then you are not looking to build it yourself so that is really a non-issue. The main benefit of WordPress is freedom. You can host it on virtually any decent web hosting service and since it uses PHP and MySQL you can have virtually any developer take over a project without problem.
I believe in open source because of that freedom. It is good for me as a developer and it is good for my clients. If something were to happen to me or my company you would have no problem finding another qualified WordPress developer to take over the site in a totally seamless fashion. There would be no need to start from scratch.
Additionally the extensible nature of WordPress means that no matter what your future needs, WordPress can handle it. Adding things like e-commerce and custom quoting systems are just two examples of advanced solution's that I have added to WordPress sites years after they were first built.
WordPress is used by tiny one person businesses all the way up to major websites like the NY Times and I think it is right for this project as well.
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 integration75
- 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 Wix
- WYSIWYG10
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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 Wix
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