Eleventy
A simpler site generator
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Mar 2026
Write your content in Markdown, Nunjucks, Liquid, or basically any template language, and Eleventy turns it into plain HTML files. No client-side JavaScript by default. Pages load instantly.
The philosophy is zero-config simplicity with maximum flexibility. Unlike Next.js or Astro, there's no opinion about how you structure your project, what CSS framework you use, or what your build pipeline looks like. It processes your files and outputs HTML. That's it.
Completely free under MIT. No paid tier, no cloud service, no premium features. Eleventy is for people who believe the web is fundamentally documents, not applications. If that's you, nothing else feels this clean.
The catch: that flexibility means more decisions upfront. There's no built-in component system, no image optimization pipeline out of the box, and no interactive islands without additional setup. If you need dynamic content, client-side interactivity, or a component-based architecture, you'll be bolting things on. Astro does the "mostly static with some interactive parts" thing better. Hugo is faster at build time for very large sites (10,000+ pages). Next.js or Remix make more sense if your site has significant dynamic behavior.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freePricing Breakdown
Free tier: Everything. MIT licensed. No premium features, no paid plugins, no hosting lock-in.
Self-hosted: Eleventy generates static HTML files. Host them anywhere: Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, S3, or your own nginx. Most static hosting is free for personal/small projects.
Hosting cost comparison:
- Vercel: Free (100GB bandwidth/mo)
- Netlify: Free (100GB bandwidth/mo)
- Cloudflare Pages: Free (unlimited bandwidth)
- GitHub Pages: Free (100GB bandwidth/mo)
- AWS S3 + CloudFront: ~$1-5/mo for most sites
Comparison to alternatives:
- Astro: Free (MIT). Modern, supports interactive islands, better image optimization. More features but more complexity
- Hugo: Free (Apache 2.0). Fastest build times (~1ms/page). Go-based, stricter templating
- Next.js: Free (MIT). Overkill for static sites but great if you need SSR or API routes
- Jekyll: Free (MIT). The original GitHub Pages generator. Slower, Ruby dependency
- Gatsby: Free core. Once popular, now declining. Heavy build process
The math: Static site generators are all free. The total cost is hosting ($0-5/mo) + your time. Eleventy's zero-config approach means less time fighting the framework, more time writing content. Hugo builds faster. Astro has more features. Eleventy is the middle ground.
Completely free. Host the output for $0 on any static hosting platform.
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