# Eleventy

22 Hacker News commenters recommended Eleventy and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for simple, unopinionated static sites: people like its minimal approach, flexibility and easy hosting. Critics note confusing documentation and some discontent over its direction.

## Why people recommend it

- Simple, minimal, unopinionated approach (6 comments): "This was the beauty of 11ty. It just puts together HTML files from templates, and maybe handles sitemap and RSS if you need." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736678)) "Eleventy's strength was always its simplicity and respect for the developer's choices" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47735794)) "11ty really was so much simpler if all you need is to put together some templates" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736724))
- Easy setup and hosting (3 comments): "I quickly realized I could set up an Eleventy site, customize it and host it way faster." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49938225)) "I tried Eleventy for building a simple product website and really liked it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50242928)) "it’s easy to deploy the resulting bundle on various hosting services" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473391))
- Reliable long-term use (3 comments): "has been working well for our marketing team for the past 3+ years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47748001)) "You can keep using the final version for years to come." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736841)) "I use Eleventy for nearly all of my static sites." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47735660))

## What people warn about

- Confusing, messy documentation (2 comments): "Disliked the templating solutions, the messy documentation, the loss in momentum" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46647295)) "the documentation for eleventy was always confusing to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47735815))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Astro](https://hackerapproved.com/p/astro.md): 174 recommend
- [Hugo static site generator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hugo.md): 85 recommend
- [Jekyll](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jekyll.md): 29 recommend
- [Zensical](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zensical.md): 17 recommend
- [Zola](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zola.md): 15 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Eleventy", https://hackerapproved.com/p/eleventy/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).