If you’ve researched static site generators lately, you’ve seen the verdict: Astro “won” the modern segment, Hugo owns the speed crown, and Jekyll gets filed under “legacy” and “GitHub Pages.” So is Jekyll a mistake in 2026? For a content blog or business site you want to last — honestly, no. Here’s the case, without the hype.
Why Jekyll looks “old”
The criticism is fair on its own terms. Jekyll is Ruby-based, its builds are slower than Hugo’s, and it doesn’t do the component-driven, partial-hydration tricks that make Astro exciting for app-like sites. In developer circles chasing the newest model, that reads as dated.
Why “boring” is a feature for a content site
But a blog or brochure site has very different needs from a developer’s portfolio of experiments:
- Stability over churn. Jekyll barely changes. There’s no Node dependency tree to update, no framework migration every year. A Jekyll site you set up today will still build untouched in three years — which is exactly what you want for something you don’t babysit.
- GitHub-native. It’s the one generator GitHub Pages runs directly, and it deploys cleanly to Cloudflare Pages. Your content lives in plain Markdown in Git: portable, backed up, and yours.
- A deep theme ecosystem. Years of mature, ready-made themes mean you don’t need a developer to get a polished site.
- Clean, fast HTML. For a content site, Jekyll’s output is already excellent on Core Web Vitals — no JavaScript framework required. (More on Core Web Vitals.)
When you should pick Astro or Hugo instead
Being honest about the trade-off:
- Choose Astro if your site is genuinely app-like, mixes frameworks, or needs lots of interactive components.
- Choose Hugo if you have tens of thousands of pages and build time is a real bottleneck.
- Choose Jekyll for a content blog, portfolio, docs, or business site you want simple, stable, and low-maintenance. (How they compare for a non-developer.)
For most people leaving WordPress, it’s the third case.
The catch — and how ZeroPress removes it
Jekyll’s one real downside for a non-developer is the same as every SSG: someone has to migrate your content, theme it, and wire up an editor. That’s the work — not the generator. ZeroPress does exactly that: it migrates your WordPress site to Jekyll, sets up a visual editor, and hands you a site you own and host free — so you get Jekyll’s stability without touching Ruby or the command line. (How the migration works; pricing.)
Not sure it’s the right move for your site? If maintenance is your main worry, see the best setup for a blog you don’t want to maintain, or run the free migration checker to see if your site can go static at all — no login required.