Cecil vs Hakyll
Cecil
cecil.appHakyll
jaspervdj.beSide by side
| Figure | Cecil | Hakyll |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.8 (#3) | 7.5 (#24) |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Incremental builds | Yes | The FAQ says a normal build is incremental, while changes to site.hs require recompiling the configuration and rebuilding. |
| License | Cecil is free software distributed under the EUPL-1.2 license. | Hakyll is available under a BSD license; the maker notes that using Pandoc means site code must use a GPL-compatible license. |
| Local preview server | Yes | The installation guide describes a watch command that builds and previews the site locally at localhost:8000 when the preview server is included. |
| Security | The maker says generated static HTML has no database or server-side script execution during visits, avoiding vulnerabilities related to dynamic PHP on the final site. | The project describes static sites as fast, secure, easy to deploy, and manageable using version control. |
| Supported languages | PHP | Haskell |
| Templates | Cecil uses the Twig template engine and supports themes. | Templates support metadata and context fields, conditionals, partials, and loops over lists. |
Plans
In their own words
Cecil
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.