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Hexo vs Hugo: What are the differences?

Introduction

Hexo and Hugo are two popular static site generators used to build websites. While both have similar goals, there are key differences between the two that set them apart. In this article, we will explore the main differences between Hexo and Hugo.

  1. Ease of use: Hexo and Hugo differ in terms of ease of use. Hexo is known for its simplicity and user-friendly interface, making it a great choice for beginners. On the other hand, Hugo has a steeper learning curve and requires some knowledge of the command line, making it more suitable for developers with a technical background.

  2. Performance: One significant difference between Hexo and Hugo is their performance. Hugo is known for its exceptional speed and can generate websites incredibly fast, thanks to its static website generation process. Hexo, while still efficient, may not be as fast as Hugo when it comes to building larger websites or handling high levels of traffic.

  3. Customization options: Hexo and Hugo offer different levels of customization. Hexo provides a range of themes and plugins that users can easily integrate into their websites, allowing for more flexibility in design and functionality. Hugo, on the other hand, is known for its powerful templating system, which gives users more control over the layout and structure of their websites, making it a better choice for those who require more complex customization options.

  4. Language dependency: Another notable difference between Hexo and Hugo is their language dependency. Hexo is built with JavaScript, making it ideal for developers who are comfortable working with this programming language. In contrast, Hugo is built with Go, making it a suitable choice for developers who prefer working with Go or want to explore this language.

  5. Community and support: Hexo and Hugo have active communities, but their support and community size differ. Hexo has a large and supportive community with plenty of resources, plugins, and themes available. Hugo, on the other hand, also has a strong community but is relatively smaller compared to Hexo, resulting in a slightly more limited range of available resources and a slightly longer learning curve.

  6. Hosting options: Hexo and Hugo offer different hosting options. Hexo is often hosted on GitHub Pages, which is a free and easy-to-use hosting platform that integrates well with Hexo. While Hugo can also be hosted on GitHub Pages, it offers more hosting options due to its static site nature, allowing users to deploy their websites to various hosting platforms.

In summary, Hexo is known for its simplicity and ease of use, has extensive community support, and provides a wide range of themes and plugins. Hugo, on the other hand, offers exceptional performance and customization options, making it a great choice for developers who prefer more control over their website's layout and structure. Ultimately, the choice between Hexo and Hugo depends on the user's technical background, specific requirements, and preferences.

Advice on Hexo and Hugo
Needs advice
on
GatsbyGatsbyHexoHexo
and
WordPressWordPress

I have been building a website with Gatsby (for a small group of volunteers). I track it in GitHub and push it to Amazon S3.

I am satisfied with it as a single user; however, I would like to get non-technical teammates to be able to post Markdown blog posts. I tried to teach them to add mdx files, git push, gastby build, and publish with gatsby-plugin-s3, but I am getting a fair amount of resistance :).

So I wonder if there are tools, preferably using Node.js, that allow multi-user blog authors a la wordpress, i.e. with an interface for non technical bloggers, but producing static/pre-rendered web pages.

(PS: I am considering having a node/express.js server where they could upload their mdx file and the server would re-build push and publish for them, without having them install anything, but I'd like to know if something already exists before jumping into this endeavor)

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
GatsbyGatsbyNetlify CMSNetlify CMS

If you're after Markdown I would look at https://www.netlifycms.org. I've used it on several projects to allow clients to use Markdown to publish and it integrates really well with Gatsby. You can create your own content structures using it then implement them into your templates. These are all the widgets you can use: https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/widgets/

This keeps it strictly static file driven with no database or need for express etc.

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Needs advice
on
GatsbyGatsbyHugoHugo
and
Next.jsNext.js
in

Hi everyone, I'm trying to decide which front-end tool, that will likely use server-side rendering (SSR), in hopes it'll be faster. The end-user will upload a document and they see text output on their screen (like SaaS or microservice). I read that Gatsby can also do SSR. Also want to add a headless CMS that is easy to use.

Backend is in Go. Open to ideas. Thank you.

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Replies (2)
Vishal Gupta
Senior Architect at Mindtree Ltd · | 3 upvotes · 26.5K views
Recommends
on
GatsbyGatsbyNext.jsNext.js

If your purpose is plain simply to upload a file which can handle by backend service than Gatsby is good enough assuming you have other content pages which will benefit from faster page loads for those Headless CMS driven pages. But if you have more logical/functional aspects like deciding content/personalization at server side of web application than choose NextJS.

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Leonard Daume
CTO - Doing the right things right at QYRAGY GmbH · | 2 upvotes · 5K views
Recommends
on
AstroAstroNext.jsNext.js

I have experience with Hugo and Next.js, but not with Gatsby. I would go with Next.js. However, I used Astro for my last project, so I would recommend Astro. Astro is much faster and you can use almost any frontend framework if you need to.

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Decisions about Hexo and Hugo
Manuel Feller
Frontend Engineer at BI X · | 4 upvotes · 161.1K views

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.

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Pros of Hexo
Pros of Hugo
  • 18
    Ease of deployment
  • 13
    Uses NodeJS and npm
  • 12
    Easy GitHub Pages publishing
  • 10
    Powerful templating
  • 7
    Useful tools and plugins
  • 4
    Easy intergrating with js
  • 3
    Open source
  • 3
    Blazing Fast
  • 47
    Lightning fast
  • 29
    Single Executable
  • 26
    Easy setup
  • 24
    Great development community
  • 23
    Open source
  • 13
    Write in golang
  • 8
    Not HTML only - JSON, RSS
  • 8
    Hacker mindset
  • 7
    LiveReload built in
  • 4
    Gitlab pages integration
  • 4
    Easy to customize themes
  • 4
    Very fast builds
  • 3
    Well documented
  • 3
    Fast builds
  • 3
    Easy to learn

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Hexo
Cons of Hugo
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 4
      No Plugins/Extensions
    • 2
      Template syntax not friendly
    • 1
      Quick builds

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is 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.

    What is 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.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Hexo?
    What companies use Hugo?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Hexo or Hugo.
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    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with Hexo?
    What tools integrate with Hugo?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    Blog Posts

    What are some alternatives to Hexo and Hugo?
    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.
    Ghost
    Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customisable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even fun to do.
    Apache Aurora
    Apache Aurora is a service scheduler that runs on top of Mesos, enabling you to run long-running services that take advantage of Mesos' scalability, fault-tolerance, and resource isolation.
    WordPress
    The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.
    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.
    See all alternatives