Why Zola Might Be Your Next Static Site Generator

If you're in the market for a static site generator, you've probably encountered the usual suspects: Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby, Astro. But there's a compelling alternative that deserves your attention: Zola.

What Makes Zola Different

Zola is a static site generator built in Rust, which immediately gives it two advantages: blazing speed and zero dependencies. Unlike Jekyll (which requires Ruby) or Hugo (which needs Go), Zola is distributed as a single binary. Download it, and you're ready to build.

This simplicity extends to the entire development experience. While other generators require you to manage plugin ecosystems and dependency chains, Zola ships with everything built-in: Sass compilation, syntax highlighting, image processing, and a powerful templating engine called Tera.

Built for Developers Who Value Speed

The performance is noticeable. Zola rebuilds sites almost instantaneously, making the local development experience smooth and interruption-free. The live reload is fast enough that you can see changes as you type.

But speed isn't just about build times. Zola's approach to content organization is straightforward: sections, pages, and taxonomies. There's no complex abstraction layer to learn. If you understand how your content should be structured, you can map it directly to Zola's concepts.

Where Zola Shines

Multilingual support is first-class in Zola, not an afterthought. You can create content in multiple languages without wrestling with plugins or custom configurations. The documentation is clear, and the patterns are consistent.

The templating system, Tera, strikes a good balance between power and simplicity. It's Jinja2-inspired, so if you've worked with Python or Ansible, you'll feel at home. Macros, filters, and template inheritance work as you'd expect.

The Trade-offs

Zola's ecosystem is smaller than Hugo's or Gatsby's. You won't find thousands of themes or plugins. This is both a constraint and a feature—it pushes you to build exactly what you need rather than cobbling together plugins that might conflict.

The documentation is generally solid, though some advanced use cases require digging into GitHub issues or the community forum. The project is actively maintained, but it's a smaller team compared to other generators.

Is Zola Right for You?

If you value simplicity, speed, and a single-binary distribution over a massive ecosystem, Zola is worth trying. It's particularly well-suited for blogs, documentation sites, and portfolios where you want full control without complexity.

The learning curve is gentle, the builds are fast, and you'll spend more time writing content than configuring your build pipeline. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.