Astro or Jekyll ?

Static site generators (SSGs) are a brilliant way to build fast, secure, and easily maintainable websites. They work by transforming content, often in the form of Markdown, into pre-built HTML files at build time. This means when a user visits your site, there's no server-side rendering delay, significantly boosting performance.

Two popular SSGs are Astro and Jekyll. While both are excellent options, their approaches to building websites differ. Let's dive into their key contrasts to help you decide which one aligns better with your project.

Jekyll: The Ruby-Based Veteran

Jekyll has been around for a long time. It is a ruby based static site generator and it just generates static sites made up of plain old HTML, CSS and Javascript. It has all the basic building blocks, thousands of free templates and ability to add more complex functionality through plugins.

However, you can not use it for anything more than static site generation. There is no point using it for some site where you want to use React, fetch underlying data through GraphQL etc.

Jekyll was primarily designed for independent bloggers to have a simple way to write blogs. Occasionally some used it to generate developer documentation. It is not really meant for cases beyond that. If you have thousands of pages it might take a while for it to generate all of those.

But simplicity is without a doubt Jekyll's superpower. If you have lots of files to generate then I recommend Eleventy.

Astro : The shiny new static site generator.

Astro is new kid on the block. However it has gained rapid popularity because it seems to have hit a sweet spot of simplicity and flexibility. Astro has the best parts of Gatsby where it can fetch content from different sources and then generate static pages. It also lets you use any popular UI library like React, Svelte, Vue etc.

In default mode Astro is just like Jekyll, a static site generator that spits out static pages.

It also focuses on improving the page load performance, minification etc. etc.

Astro is a good choice for simple sites as well as large scale deployment of static web pages.

You can opt for SSR in Astro on a per-page basis. In SSR mode, the HTML is generated on the server with each request, allowing you to fetch dynamic data and create personalized content.

Conclusion

Both Jekyll and Astro are excellent static site generators. The right choice depends on your specific needs and preferences. If you're seeking simplicity, familiarity with Ruby, and a strong focus on blogging, Jekyll is a solid option. On the other hand, if you prioritize blazing performance, modern JavaScript experience, and the flexibility to integrate diverse UI components, Astro is likely the better fit.