Hugo

You write content in markdown, pick a theme, run one command, and get a folder of HTML files you can host anywhere for pennies.

Apache 2.0, written in Go. Hugo's defining feature is speed: it builds thousands of pages in seconds. A 10,000-page site builds in under 10 seconds. Jekyll (the Ruby alternative) takes minutes for the same job. That speed matters when you're iterating on content.

Everything is free. No paid tier, no premium themes marketplace from Hugo itself, no cloud edition. You install a single binary and run it. Host the output on Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, or GitHub Pages, all have free tiers for static sites.

The catch: Hugo's templating language is, not great. It uses Go's text/template which is powerful but cryptic. If you need to customize a theme beyond basic config, you'll be reading docs extensively. The learning curve for template logic is steeper than competitors like Astro or 11ty. And if you need dynamic features (comments, search, user accounts), you're bolting on JavaScript and third-party services.