Lume vs Zola

Lume is a free static site generator for Deno, suited to projects that keep their content in files and publish static websites. It handles Markdown and supports formats including YAML, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, Vento, and Nunjucks, with room to add more formats. Site data can come from JSON or YAML files, or from a database or API through JavaScript or TypeScript. Processors can alter HTML, CSS, and JavaScript assets, while plugins add options for areas such as image processing, SEO, internationalization, and template engines. Lume says its output does not add client-side JavaScript. It uses Deno and HTTPS imports to obtain project dependencies, and Deno must be installed before setup. Generated sites can be deployed through services including GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, Codeberg Pages, Deno Deploy, Netlify, Vercel, and Cloudflare Pages. Since it generates static sites only, interactive features such as forms, comments, and search need separate approaches or integrations. Content remains in repository files that can be edited, exported, or moved.

Zola is a static site generator that turns Markdown content into static HTML for blogs, knowledge bases and landing pages. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and can also be self-hosted. Distributed as a single executable, it includes Sass compilation and syntax highlighting. Its maker says an average site generates in less than a second, including those steps. Because the output is static files, a published site does not need a database or server to manage. Zola uses CommonMark with added support for footnotes, GitHub-flavored tables, task lists and strikethrough. It uses the Tera template engine and can create multilingual sites with language-specific configuration and content. Users can define taxonomies and generate pages for their terms, such as categories, genres or tags. Search can run without servers or third parties, and indexing is configurable. Deployment guides cover Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Pages. The plan is free. Windows installation documentation says Zola does not work in PowerShell ISE. Code introduced after version 0.22 is licensed under EUPL-1.2; earlier code remains under MIT.