Hexo Alternatives for Self-Hosted

Gatsby is a free and open source framework and site generator that helps developers to build blazing fast websites and apps. The framework is based on React and include a plugin ecosystem that can be used to extend the capabilities of Gatsby. With Gatsby you can pull data from headless CMSs, SaaS services, APIs, databases, even your file system with the help of GraphQL. If you are looking to build a fast website that scales with time, Gatsby might your best pick.

Hugo is one of the most popular open-source static site generators. With its amazing speed and flexibility, Hugo makes building websites fun again. Hugo is the fastest tool of its kind, it generates pages at <1 ms per page, the average site builds in less than a second. Hugo also supports unlimited content types, taxonomies, menus, dynamic API-driven content, and more, all without plugins. Hugo is written in Go and released fully free and open-source under the Apache-2.0 License.

Grav is a modern free and open source flat-file content management system. With Grav, you can publish content and build sites in a fast, flexible and simple manner with the file-based web platform. Grav requires zero installation and is just an zip archive that can be extracted to start using the CMS. Grave also comes with a powerful package management system that allow you to extend the feature set of Grav CMS. With the package management system you can install and upgrade themes and plugins written specifically for Grav. The software is written in PHP and released fully free and open-source under the MIT License.

Jekyll is a static site generator written in Ruby. With Jekyll, you can transform your plain text into static websites or blogs. No more database, and cumbersome updates and install, simply focus on your content. In Jekyll, permalinks categories, pages, posts, and custom layouts are factored into the design, so you can get started writing content, right away. For layouts and template, Jekyll uses the Liquid templating language which allow you to design and structure a site to your liking. In a nutshell Markdown, Liquid, HTML and CSS goes in, and out comes a static site ready for deployment.

Ghost is a free and open-source headless CMS and blogging platform developed by Ghost Foundation. With Ghost you can manage content in style, the user experience provided by the software is intuitive and encourages writing. Ghost is written in JavaScript for the Node.js platform and is released under the MIT license.

WordPress powers roughly 30% of all web pages online. It's a free and open source CMS designed and developed for self-hosted publishing by Automattic, Inc. The software is written in PHP and utilize either MySQL or MariaDB as a database, and is compatible with most web hosts. Wordpress includes a plugin architecture and a templating system that can be used to extend and customize your website. These are commonly known as WordPress plugins and WordPress themes and make up a whole open source and commercial eco-system where anyone is free to create products for the platform. 

Are you tiered of the complexity when it comes to setting up a website? A static site generator like Plenti might be your solution. Plenti is a static site generator written in Go for speed and utilize Svelte for ease of use on the frontend. With Plenti, you can ditch the headaces of maintaing a content management system and SQL databases. Plenti simply connects to your Git backend and be pushed to production using GitHub Action or Gitlab Pipelines.