10 Static Site Generators to Watch in 2020

Using a Headless CMS to generate and handle static sites has gained popularity, especially because many of the constraints that made it difficult to develop a static site don’t exist anymore.

A static website generator can help you create fast, visually appealing websites without suffering the restraints that plagued marketers and developers in the past.

Websites are separated into two different categories: static and dynamic.

Static websites are fixed and display the same content for every user. They’re usually written exclusively in HTML.

On the other hand, a dynamic website can display different content and provide more layers of user interaction. In essence, although not always, static websites are easier to create than dynamic sites.

They both have their advantages and their drawbacks, and serve different purposes. And you wouldn’t imagine the debate behind whether or not you should use a static or dynamic site.In this article, we’ll only focus on static site generators, so if you want to build leaner, faster sites, you can’t miss this list of the best static sites you need to watch in 2020, with a bit of context. 

Static site generators enable you to create a static, HTML-based website that doesn’t rely on databases or external data sources, avoiding server-side processing when accessing your website.

Static websites are becoming increasingly popular because they’re faster and more flexible than dynamic websites. Also, static website generators are often easier to deploy and host, as your hosting provider doesn’t need to cover special requirements.

While dynamic sites are used more often than their static counterparts, the alternative of using a headless CMS to generate and handle static sites has gained popularity, especially because many of the constraints that made it difficult to develop a static site don’t exist anymore. That’s where the static site generator comes in.

A static website generator can help you create fast, visually appealing websites without suffering the restraints that plagued marketers and developers in the past. Here are some of the reasons why you need to consider static site generators in 2020.

Unlike their dynamic counterparts, static sites don’t have to pull information from a database on every page because they serve pre-compiled files that cut load times significantly, something your SEO team will love. 

Dynamic sites are often less secure than static sites. That means that if you’re developing a site, you might benefit from a static site with a smaller server-side infrastructure, closing any potential gap that would result in a security breach.  

Dynamic sites are often limited in how customizable your themes are, and that’s great if you want something simple. Static sites offer you more freedom if you want something that’s more specific than most sites.

Many brands are looking to leverage a JAMstack approach to content management and delivery for faster, more easily modifiable, and more easily scalable digital experiences. A JavaScript-based static site generator slots into a JAMstack quite nicely. 

Here are some of the websites we think you should watch this year, as they represent the best, most flexible options currently available.

One of the things marketers like the most about Gatsby is that it’s optimized for speed. It loads the parts of the website you need at that moment and prefetches resources for other pages quickly. That makes Gatsby a solid choice if you want to access data quickly and consistently. Another point for Gatsby is that you can use it to pull data from different sources, such as CMS, which enables you to customize your static website further. Similarly, Gatsby comes with a plugin that allows you to manipulate images and customize your robots .txt site.  

Hugo is one of the most popular open-source static site generators. It has thousands of ratings on GitHub and a strong community backing it.Hugo is based on the Go programming language, which makes it super quick in comparison with other static site generators. Another thing that makes Hugo stand out is the number of themes it has on its library, with more than a hundred themes to choose from.

One of the best things about NUXT.JS is that it’s an open-source, progressive VUE.js framework, which makes it easier to tweak in case you have specific requirements in mind and want to fine-tune your website.The reason behind NUXT.js’s customizability is that it has a modular architecture that enables marketers to choose from more than 50 modules to make your development faster.

While it can be said that Jekyll has lagged behind some of the site generators on this list, it’s still one of the most popular and hosts a large user base and a solid directory of plugins. One of Jekyll’s main selling points is that it enables marketers to import and migrate an existing site to Jekyll easily, so for instance, if your site is on WordPress, switching to Jekyll is simple, enabling you to focus on the content without having to worry about the rest while preserving your links and layouts.  

Sometimes you just want to get some dynamic content into some static HTML files.If you have a static, hardcoded website that's already built, you don't need to completely rebuild it in order to get dynamic content into it from a Headless CMS.Eleventy is a great tool to do this work - even if you only need to work on one file at a time.

Create React App is the easiest way to get started with React JS. It's popularity, simplicity, and ease of use make it an ideal candidate for building modern web apps.Since Create is tightly connected to React, it offers a great deal of support for all the related React libraries and tools.It also simplifies the web development experience, enabling marketers to build websites quickly due to its simplicity. Also, the fact that the site generator is documented in GitHub-based documents makes it really appealing.

Hexo is a fast, simple blog framework that’s powered by Node.js. One of the features that makes Hexo a popular choice is that it’s easy to implement it if you’re already using JavaScript and are familiar with the language. This site generator is often used for general purposes and supports the use of templates from different engines, which makes it a flexible choice for JS developers. 

Next is another React Framework tool that allows you to do Static Site Generation, but also has the Zeit / Now hosting framework. A very recent update allows you optionally use Server Rendering for some routes in your site if necessary and includes the ability to easily to Preview, something that only Gatsby was offering before.Looks like we’ve got a real feature race going on here with the top 2 Static Site Generators!Agility CMS has a great starter all set for you in GitHub that demonstrates a lot of what Next has to offer.

Nift is a cross-platform open source framework for managing and generating websites created by Nick Ham from Australia .It's lightning fast (evidence), developed from the ground up in C++, and released for free under the MIT license. You can use it for any of your personal or commercial projects – just be sure to preserve copyright and license notices!

Bridgetown is the new player, literally just launced in April 2020. It modernizes Jekyll in a number of ways…most obvious is it comes with support for Webpack out-of-the-box, which means you can easily add Javascript frameworks like React, Vue, Stimulus as well as CSS frameworks like Bulma or Tailwind. It improves a lot of the default configuration settings. Plus it also directly supports pagination and prototype pages (aka you can auto-generate archives for categories, tags, and other search terms) - previously in Jekyll that required setting up third-party plugins.

What’s really interesting is that JAMStack developers are using Static Site Generators build on top of JavaScript frameworks. If JAMstack is on your mind (and it should be!), it’s worth understanding how a static site generator can work with an API-first, headless CMS. Here’s why, and how, you can migrate to JAMstack.