Jekyll vs Payload CMS

Compare Jekyll and Payload CMS for your content needs. Find out what actual users are saying about each product and which one is best suited for you!

Jekyll
Jekyll
Jekyll is the ideal Headless CMS for Jekyll websites and applications. Add components to your Jekyll apps in minutes and enable your website's content to be managed from a powerful CMS.
Payload CMS
Payload CMS
Payload is an open-source headless CMS and application framework that emphasizes flexibility, customization, and a developer-friendly environment. Provides powerful APIs, a clean UI, and robust support for various integrations.

What Users Say

See what users who have used Jekyll and Payload CMS have to say about their overall experience with the product.

Jekyll's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Jekyll.

Payload CMS's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Payload CMS.

Jekyll's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Jekyll.

Payload CMS's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Payload CMS.

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What Marketers & Content Creators Say

Hear from the users who uses Jekyll and Payload CMS daily about their experience with the editors.

Jekyll's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Jekyll's editor.

Payload CMS's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Payload CMS's editor.

Jekyll's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Jekyll's editor.

Payload CMS's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Payload CMS's editor.

Mobile Editing

Find out how the platforms handle the mobile-first experience for the new generation of workforce on the move.

Jekyll:
Limited Mobile Experience

Jekyll has limited mobile content creation options through third-party tools like JekyllEx and JekyllPad.

"Jekyll supports basic mobile content creation through integration with tools like JekyllPad."
Source
"JekyllPad offers a mobile-friendly online markdown editor for Jekyll."
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"JekyllEx allows creating and editing Jekyll posts directly from Android."
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Payload CMS:
Mobile-First Experience

Payload CMS supports mobile-first experiences, allowing content creation on mobile devices seamlessly.

"It works seamlessly on desktop and mobile (still can't believe most headless CMS admin panels aren't responsive in 2022)."
Source
"Payload will give you backend superpowers... even non-technical users can independently make use of its Admin Panel to manage whatever they need to without having to know code."
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"Users in the Admin Panel have the ability to choose between light mode and dark mode for their editing experience."
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Automatic Content Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic linking of related content to help user discover more content without additional manual effort from the marketer. This automatically create topical clusters of content and is essential for SEO.

Jekyll:
Manual Content Linking

Jekyll has limited support for automatic related blog posts using plugins like classifier-reborn, but performance may vary.

"Jekyll's related posts module uses classifier-reborn to create relationships, is limited to the posts collection, and is slow."
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"Both Hugo and Jekyll have built-in methods for accessing related content automatically."
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Payload CMS:
No Automatic Content Linking

Payload CMS requires manual linking using the Relationship field; automated linking for SEO is not available.

"One of the most straightforward ways to manage related content in Payload CMS is through the Relationship field. This feature allows you to link different documents together."
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"By leveraging these relationship types, Payload CMS enables users to build complex content architectures that cater to a wide range of applications, from e-commerce sites to blogs with related posts."
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"The Rich Text field features a Link element which allows for users to automatically reference related documents within their rich text."
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Automatic CTA Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic display of Call-to-Actions using AI to help users take actions that are relevant to the content they are reading.

Jekyll:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Jekyll doesn't support automatic linking of CTAs directly; requires manual implementation via Liquid templates.

"Transform your plain text into static websites and blogs."
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"Settings that affect your entire site can be changed in Jekyll’s configuration file."
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"A call to action (CTA) is a prompt on a website that tells the user to take some specified action."
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"Jekyll made it possible for me to realize the following goals: familiarize myself with the basics of HTML5 and CSS3 transitions."
Source
Payload CMS:
Manual CTA Linking

Supports custom components but lacks dedicated automatic CTA linking functionality.

"All Custom Components in Payload are React Server Components by default. This enables the use of the Local API directly on the front-end."
Source
"You can design and build your own Slate elements and leaves to extend the editor with your own functionality."
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"You can use Relationships to link to existing documents within the Rich Text field."
Source

Comments

Find out if the platform supports comments from your users to improve user engagement. This is often a great way to collect feedback and user emails.

Jekyll:
No Comments Supported

Jekyll does not have built-in comments; it relies on external plugins like GitHub Discussions or Giscus for comments.

"Jekyll has no built-in commenting system, relying on external services."
Source
"Using GitHub Discussions for comments introduces a commenting system, though not built-in."
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"Giscus provides a comment system powered by GitHub Discussions."
Source
Payload CMS:
Comments Supported

Payload CMS supports commenting via a dedicated plugin with features like comment approval and email alerts.

"A fully-customizable plugin for Payload CMS to create a collection for comments, reviews, or other user-submitted feedback."
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"Implement a comment functionality where everyone can comment without logging in."
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"The community discusses challenges and features of Payload, including the need for custom implementations."
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Multi-tenancy

Find out if the platform supports managing multiple clients or projects within a single account. This is useful for agencies, multi-client or multi-project scenarios.

Jekyll:
No Multi-tenancy

Jekyll does not natively support multi-tenancy features, limiting centralized account management for agencies.

"Jekyll does not provide built-in support for multi-tenancy, making it challenging for agencies to manage multiple client accounts."
Source
Payload CMS:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Payload CMS offers multi-tenancy via a plugin that enables hierarchical tenant management, domain mapping, and isolation.

"This plugin sets up multi-tenancy for your application from within your Admin Panel. It adds a `tenant` field to all specified collections."
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"This plugin allows multiple tenants to access different resources in the same instance of Payload CMS."
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"Payload's Access Control facilitated a multi-tenant, "subsite"-based system."
Source

What Developers Say

Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Jekyll and Payload CMS about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating Jekyll:
Medium
Integration with Jekyll can be complex due to dependencies on Git and Markdown management, though many plugins are available.
Ease of Integrating Payload CMS:
Medium
Users find Payload CMS has a moderate integration complexity, with some issues noted in documentation and support.

Jekyll's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Jekyll.

Payload CMS's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Payload CMS.

Jekyll's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Jekyll.

Payload CMS's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Payload CMS.

Content Modelling

Find out how developers model and manage their content with the platform with key highlights and limitations.

Jekyll:
Customisable Content Types

Jekyll supports content modeling through collections, allowing custom content types with various fields.

"Collections allow Jekyll to define different types of objects, attributes, and IDs for manageable content modeling."
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"Using Collections is the best way to design multiple post types in Jekyll."
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"Collections extend Jekyll’s post and pages publishing functionality to other content types."
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"TinaCMS uses schemas to define content models that are version-controlled, allowing for flexibility in defining fields."
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Payload CMS:
Customisable Content Types

Payload CMS supports content modeling with various field types including relationships, arrays, and blocks.

"Payload provides a wide variety of built-in Field Types, each with its own unique properties and behaviors."
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"Payload allows parent/child content modelling using a nested docs plugin for hierarchical content."
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"Each Collection can have its own unique Access Control, Hooks, Admin Options, and more."
Source

Custom React Components

Find out if the platform supports custom React components to go beyond the basic HTML components for content.

Jekyll:
Limited Customization

Jekyll supports components through Liquid includes but lacks a native Component API for React.

"Jekyll supports component-based design with Liquid includes, allowing for reusable components."
Source
"Jekyll allows including reusable components with data from the client’s database stored in JSON files."
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"This article explains how to embed React components into Jekyll posts, showing Jekyll's limited ability to support React."
Source
Payload CMS:
Custom React Components Supported

Payload CMS supports custom React components through its admin panel, allowing rich interactive content.

"Payload provides a pattern for you to supply your own React components through your Payload Config."
Source
"You can build completely custom field types in Payload by swapping in your own React components for any field in your app."
Source

Full Text Search

Find out if the platform supports full text search across multiple fields to help users find content quickly.

Jekyll:
Full Text Search Supported

Jekyll supports full text search via various plugins like lunr.js and Tipue Search, allowing multi-field searching.

"Using Whoosh for full text search, allowing complex queries across multiple fields."
Source
"lunr.js enables full-text search across Jekyll pages and posts."
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"Jekyll Tipue Search plugin enables full-text search, compatible with GitHub Pages."
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"Using a database and PHP for full text search implementation in Jekyll."
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"Simple Jekyll Search allows lightweight, client-side full-text search."
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Payload CMS:
Full Text Search Supported

Payload CMS supports full text search through the @payloadcms/plugin-search, enabling advanced search across various fields.

"This plugin generates records of your documents that are extremely fast to search on."
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"I would like to create a fulltext search endpoint for one of my collections."
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"A plugin for Payload to generate records of your documents that are extremely fast to search on."
Source

Starter Kits

Discover starter kits and templates to help you get started with the platform.

Jekyll:
Available

Multiple starter kits and templates for Jekyll are available.

(Expand section to see a list of Jekyll templates and starter kits.)

Payload CMS:
Available

Payload CMS offers several starter kits, including an Ecommerce and a SvelteKit template.

(Expand section to see a list of Payload CMS templates and starter kits.)

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Jekyll and Payload CMS.

Jekyll's Pricing
CloudCannon
$25 / month
- Basic CMS features
- $25 per user/month
- Agency plan at $75/month
- Enterprise plan at $125/month
Siteleaf
$7 / month
- Visual CMS
- Free for developers
- Paid plans start at $7/month
- Unlimited users
Forestry.io
$99 / month
- CMS for Jekyll
- Pricing for 11+ users is $99/month
- Enterprise pricing on request
Stastic
$0 / free
- CMS for Jekyll
- Currently in beta
- Free for early adopters
JekyllPad
$0 / free
- Online content editor for Jekyll and GitHub Pages
- Free to start
Payload CMS's Pricing
Free
$0 / lifetime
- Completely open source
- Self-hosted
Standard
$35 / month
- MongoDB Atlas serverless DB
- 3GB database storage
- 30GB S3 file storage
- 40GB bandwidth /mo
- 512MB RAM, 1 vCPU
- 50 million serverless RPUs /mo
- One custom domain
- On-demand backup
- Payload-branded email service
Pro
$199 / month
- Dedicated M10 Atlas cluster
- 30GB database storage
- 150GB file storage
- 100GB bandwidth /mo
- 1GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 2 instances
- High-availability compute
- Up to 3 custom domains
- Automatic backups
- White-labeled email service
Custom
$0 / custom
- Any size Atlas database
- Unlimited database storage
- Unlimited file storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- RAM and CPU scaled to needs
- High-availability compute
- Unlimited custom domains
- White-labeled email service
- Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Enterprise plugins
- 99.9% uptime SLA

Compare with other technologies

Looking for a better alternative to Jekyll & Payload CMS? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!