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11ty vs Hugo

11ty and Hugo both land on Depends.

11ty

11ty.dev

Depends
Confidence: Medium

Buy if you are a developer (or have one) building a fast content site and want zero licence cost.

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Hugo

gohugo.io

Depends
Confidence: Medium

Use Hugo if you have a developer comfortable with the command line and want a free, blazing-fast static site.

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11ty versus Hugo
Compare11tyHugo
VerdictDependsDepends
Best forDeveloper-built marketing sitesDeveloper-run blogs and docs sites
Who it's not forNon-technical teams wanting a drag-and-drop builderNon-technical marketers needing WYSIWYG editing
PrivacyCore project maintains a security policy and hardened npm publishing; no core breaches found, but one malicious third-party plugin and dependency audit warnings exist.12Active project with fast patching; one HIGH (CVSS 8.6) CVE and one moderate advisory found . no breaches reported.
Support qualityCommunity-only help; no vendor SLA evidence.Community forum and GitHub only, no vendor SLA
Public sentimentDeveloper sentiment is strongly positive on speed and simplicity, with recurring caveats that it demands coding skills and its project direction has sparked debate.⁷Community discussion centers on Hugo's build speed and flexibility, with a consistent learning-curve caveat around templates and self-managed deploys.
Biggest gotchaNo paid support or SLA exists; help is docs, forums, and community goodwill.⁵CVE-2026-75926 (CVSS 8.6) hit versions 0.162.0-0.164.x . update promptly.

Pick 11ty when

  • Developer-built marketing sites
  • Blogs and documentation
  • Headless CMS front ends
  • Performance-critical static sites

When 11ty is not a fit

  • Non-technical teams wanting a drag-and-drop builder
  • Buyers who need vendor support or an SLA . none exists
  • Apps with user accounts and server-side data
  • Teams unwilling to maintain Node tooling

Pick Hugo when

  • Developer-run blogs and docs sites
  • Large content sites needing fast builds
  • Teams wanting free static hosting
  • CI/CD-savvy engineering orgs

When Hugo is not a fit

  • Non-technical marketers needing WYSIWYG editing
  • Small teams wanting a hosted, zero-setup site
  • Anyone requiring vendor support or SLAs
  • Dynamic apps needing a backend or database

Sources

  1. Eleventy is a simpler static site generator11ty.dev
    official
  2. Template Languages - Eleventy11ty.dev
    official
  3. Help 11ty become sustainable in 202411ty.dev
    official
  4. Securely Publishing our Packages to npm - Eleventy11ty.dev
    official
  5. Eleventy on Open Collectiveopencollective.com
    official
  6. Full Time Open Source Development for Eleventy, sponsored11ty.dev
    official
  7. I used 11ty and... It's awesome - James Hilljameshill.dev
    review
  8. 11ty: The Good, the Bad, and the... Possum?aleksandrhovhannisyan.com
    review
  9. Should I move from react to Eleventy? : r/webdevreddit.com
    review
  10. The End of Eleventy : r/webdevreddit.com
    review
  11. Revamped my entire wordpress portfolio as an 11ty site!reddit.com
    review
  12. Malicious Package in 11ty-simple-page-post-creatorsecurity.snyk.io
    security
  13. NPM Audit: Prototype pollution in async · Issue #2327github.com
    security
  14. Static Sites Do Scale: Eleventy vs. Next.js at 11ty Eventthenewstack.io
    news
  15. Hugo official sitegohugo.io
    official
  16. gohugoio/hugo on GitHubgithub.com
    official