Eleventy
Hacker ApprovedRanked 4 of 10 static site generators by recommenders
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.
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.
25 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 22
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 3 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 22 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 7.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simple, minimal, unopinionated approach
“This was the beauty of 11ty. It just puts together HTML files from templates, and maybe handles sitemap and RSS if you need.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy” “Eleventy's strength was always its simplicity and respect for the developer's choices”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy” “11ty really was so much simpler if all you need is to put together some templates”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy” - Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Astro Joining Cloudflare”
- Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy”
- Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy”
Easy setup and hosting
“I quickly realized I could set up an Eleventy site, customize it and host it way faster.”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Sites in ChatGPT” “I tried Eleventy for building a simple product website and really liked it.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Removing Next.js Got My Blog to 100 on Every Lighthouse Category” “it’s easy to deploy the resulting bundle on various hosting services”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “Publish (On Your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere” Reliable long-term use
“has been working well for our marketing team for the past 3+ years”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy” “You can keep using the final version for years to come.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy” “I use Eleventy for nearly all of my static sites.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Confusing, messy documentation
“Disliked the templating solutions, the messy documentation, the loss in momentum”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Astro Joining Cloudflare” “the documentation for eleventy was always confusing to me”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “The End of Eleventy”
Other static site generators people recommend
The four most recommended other static site generators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astro | 174 | 36 | 83% | 13 | 2 yrs9 owners | Approved |
| Hugo static site generator | 85 | 40 | 68% | 12 | 3.5 yrs9 owners | Approved |
| Jekyll | 29 | 14 | 67% | 7 | 10 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| EleventyThis page | 22 | 3 | 88% | 6 | 3 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Zensical | 17 | 4 | 81% | 4 | — | Approved |
What people said
24 of the 29 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I tried Eleventy for building a simple product website and really liked it.”
“I quickly realized I could set up an Eleventy site, customize it and host it way faster.”
“has been working well for our marketing team for the past 3+ years”
“Migrated my website away from 11ty to my own code today, after reading this.”
“11ty lets you do (almost) whatever the hell you please.”
“That's why its important tools like 11ty and pandoc remain.”
“11ty is lovely and bare-bones and un-opinionated.”
“You can keep using the final version for years to come.”
“11ty really was so much simpler if all you need is to put together some templates”
“It's sad to see 11ty co-opted like this especially after building a complex project on it with several thousand pages”
“This was the beauty of 11ty. It just puts together HTML files from templates, and maybe handles sitemap and RSS if you need.”
“I abhore the npm ecosystem.”
“I found that I don’t need a SSG anymore, I can just use a local LLM to generate HTML out of markdown files”
“believer in what 11ty stands for”
“the documentation for eleventy was always confusing to me”
“Eleventy's strength was always its simplicity and respect for the developer's choices”
“I use Eleventy for nearly all of my static sites.”
“11ty is going in correct direction, dropping significant chunk of various dependencies”
“They are extremely simple, without the bells and whistles of Astro.”
“Disliked the templating solutions, the messy documentation, the loss in momentum”
“I finally settled for Eleventy with Nunjucks”
“Eleventy is great, and in some ways I prefer it to Hugo if build time isn't an issue.”
“I really don't enjoy writing Liquid templates”
“it’s easy to deploy the resulting bundle on various hosting services”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.