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. Middleman vs Nanoc

Middleman vs Nanoc

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Middleman
Middleman
Stacks170
Followers192
Votes66
GitHub Stars7.1K
Forks757
Nanoc
Nanoc
Stacks4
Followers3
Votes0
GitHub Stars2.1K
Forks249

Middleman vs Nanoc: What are the differences?

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.

What is Nanoc? A flexible static-site generator written in Ruby. Nanoc is a static-site generator, fit for building anything from a small personal blog to a large corporate website.

Middleman and Nanoc can be categorized as "Static Site Generators" tools.

Some of the features offered by Middleman are:

  • Sass for DRY stylesheets
  • CoffeeScript for safer and less verbose javascript
  • Multiple asset management solutions, including Sprockets

On the other hand, Nanoc provides the following key features:

  • Support for free-form metadata
  • Support for various markup languages (Markdown, AsciiDoc, Textile, …)
  • Support for various templating languages (eRuby, Haml, Mustache, …)

Middleman and Nanoc are both open source tools. It seems that Middleman with 6.51K GitHub stars and 698 forks on GitHub has more adoption than Nanoc with 1.75K GitHub stars and 236 GitHub forks.

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

Detailed Comparison

Middleman
Middleman
Nanoc
Nanoc

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

It is a static-site generator, fit for building anything from a small personal blog to a large corporate website.

Sass for DRY stylesheets;CoffeeScript for safer and less verbose javascript;Multiple asset management solutions, including Sprockets;ERb & Haml for dynamic pages and simplified HTML syntax
Support for free-form metadata; Support for various markup languages (Markdown, AsciiDoc, Textile, …); Support for various templating languages (eRuby, Haml, Mustache, …); Ability to write custom filters and helpers; Ability to pull in data from other sources (databases, web APIs, …); Integration with various deployment mechanisms; Ability to run pre-deployment checks
Statistics
GitHub Stars
7.1K
GitHub Stars
2.1K
GitHub Forks
757
GitHub Forks
249
Stacks
170
Stacks
4
Followers
192
Followers
3
Votes
66
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 20
    Rails for static sites
  • 18
    Erb, haml, slim
  • 17
    Live reload
  • 7
    Easy setup
  • 3
    Emacs org-mode integration by middleman-org
No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available
Buddy
Buddy
Markdown
Markdown
GitLab Pages
GitLab Pages

What are some alternatives to Middleman, Nanoc?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gridsome

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

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

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

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.

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.

MkDocs

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.

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