Nikola vs Publii
Nikola
getnikola.com
Publii
getpublii.comSide by side
| Figure | Nikola | Publii |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.8 (#4) | 8.6 (#8) |
| Spec score · Blogging Platforms | 8.5 (#33) | 8.6 (#23) |
| Built-in memberships | No | No |
| Custom domain | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Product | Nikola is a static site generator that turns content into a website ready to deploy. | Publii is a free, open-source desktop CMS that builds static websites locally on your computer. |
| Post scheduling | Yes | No |
| Security model | The handbook says Nikola-generated sites do not run code on the server and describes their server stack as smaller, which it says implies less security risk. | Published Publii sites do not require a publicly accessible database, PHP, or a public Publii admin panel. |
| Support | The project directs users to GitHub Discussions, a Libera.Chat IRC channel, and GitHub Issues for bug reports; indexed plugins and themes are not officially supported. | Publii offers user and developer documentation, a community forum, and dedicated premium support for paid products. |
| Theme customization | custom code | custom code |
Plans
In their own words
Nikola
Nikola is a static site and blog generator that turns written content into HTML files and assets for a web server. It can build blogs, company and personal sites, software project sites, and book sites. Built-in inputs include reStructuredText, Markdown, IPython notebooks, and HTML, with plugins available for additional formats. Blog components include comments, tags, categories, archives, and RSS/Atom feeds; image galleries and code listings are also included. Nikola supports almost 40 languages out of the box, including posts in multiple languages. Sites can be hosted on any web server that serves HTML files, and the handbook lists GitHub Pages deployment. The software is written in Python 3, with Python 3.8 or later listed on the homepage, and is free under the MIT license. Users can extend it with Python plugins and make themes using Mako or Jinja2. Incremental builds use doit. Because generated sites do not run code on the server, they cannot process form input except for comments. Indexed plugins and themes are not officially supported.