Hugo vs Metalsmith

Hugo is a free, open-source static site generator that builds sites from Markdown. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, supports multilingual content, and includes a local preview server for development. Its taxonomy system organizes site content, while asset tools cover image processing, JavaScript bundling, and Sass; TailwindCSS is also supported. Hugo is written in Go and distributed under the Apache 2.0 License. The project lists documentation, corporate, government, nonprofit, education, news, event, and project sites among its uses. Large sites often render in seconds. Hugo is actively maintained and has a fast release cycle. The listed supported languages are Go, Ruby, and Python. Hugo is free to use, and its pricing model is listed as free; no price is listed for the Hugo Open Source plan. The listed pricing page returns a page-not-found response.

Metalsmith is a free, pluggable static-site generator for NodeJS that works more like a library than a framework. It transforms a directory tree into plain JavaScript objects that plugins can manipulate, without requiring a predefined project structure. Developers can use configuration over code or code over configuration, and access the package through either its JavaScript API or command-line interface. It works with npm, Markdown, JSON, YAML, and a templating language of choice. Example uses include static sites, scaffolding, backups, command-line and deployment tools, and eBooks made from Markdown for PDF, ePUB, or MOBI output. Starter repositories cover blog, company, resume, and clean-blog projects. Builds create static folders for deployment to CDNs, Netlify, GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, SFTP hosts, or custom servers. Metalsmith requires NodeJS; the listed platforms include Linux, macOS, and Windows. The documentation says partial rebuilds are not available and suggests using a file watcher and browser synchronization package for automatic rebuilds. No billing terms or prices are stated on the supplied pages.