Cecil vs Eleventy

Cecil is a free command-line PHP application that generates static websites from Markdown pages, media, and Twig templates. It stores content in Markdown files with front matter and supports themes for changing site design. The generator can create pagination, sitemaps, redirects, robots.txt, taxonomies, RSS, and SEO metadata such as Open Graph tags, Twitter cards, and structured data. It can also produce responsive WebP and AVIF images and compress them. Multilingual content and template translation are supported, as is a local preview server. Cecil generates static HTML; its maker says site visits do not require a database or server-side script execution. Installation is documented for macOS, Windows, and Linux, but PHP 8.2 or later is required. Deployment recipes cover services including Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, and GitLab Pages. The project is distributed under the EUPL-1.2 license and maintained by Arnaud Ligny. Cecil is free software at free, with no cost or usage limits stated.

Eleventy is a free static site generator that compiles templates into HTML. It starts with zero configuration and also allows flexible configuration as project needs change. Content can come from Markdown, and templates can use HTML, JavaScript, WebC, Liquid, Nunjucks, Handlebars, Mustache, EJS, Haml, Pug, TypeScript, JSX, MDX, Sass, and custom formats. Eleventy does not require a JavaScript framework and produces zero client-side JavaScript by default. It can fit into an existing directory structure, letting teams convert selected templates rather than an entire site. The tool includes a local preview server, CMS integration, and multilingual support. It requires JavaScript and recommends Node.js version 18 or newer; quick-start commands are provided for macOS, Linux, and Windows, and for npm, pnpm, and Yarn. Its documentation says it probably is not the right tool for single-page applications, given its defaults and full-page navigation. Eleventy supports self-hosted use and is marked MIT licensed. The homepage reports a build time of 1.93 seconds for 4,000 Markdown files.