Keystone vs Jekyll

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

Keystone
Keystone
The superpowered CMS for developers. Keystone helps you build faster and scale further than any other CMS or App Framework with a powerful GraphQL API & beautiful Management UI.
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.

What Users Say

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

Keystone's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Keystone.

Jekyll's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Jekyll.

Keystone's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Keystone.

Jekyll's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Jekyll.

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

What Marketers & Content Creators Say

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

Keystone's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Keystone's editor.

Jekyll's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Jekyll's editor.

Keystone's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Keystone's editor.

Jekyll's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Jekyll's editor.

Mobile Editing

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

Keystone:
Not Suitable for Mobile

KeystoneJS does not specifically support a mobile first editing experience; the editing capabilities are primarily designed for desktop use.

"Keystone helps you build faster and scale further than any other CMS or App Framework. Describe your schema, and get a powerful GraphQL API & beautiful Management UI for your content and data."
Source
"KeystoneJS is a powerful Node.js content management system and web app framework built on express and mongoose. It features an intuitive Admin UI."
Source
"... Strapi is more oriented towards providing a mobile-friendly and customizable interface compared to KeystoneJS which has a more traditional desktop-focused UI."
Source
"Keystone has a beautiful auto-generated Admin UI that is primarily designed for desktop use without a mobile-first editing option."
Source
"Keystone's Admin UI will save you time and make managing your data easy, but there is no mention of mobile editing capabilities."
Source
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."
Source
"JekyllEx allows creating and editing Jekyll posts directly from Android."
Source

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.

Keystone:
No Automatic Content Linking

Keystone JS does not support automatic related blog linking, relying instead on manual relationships.

"Keystone facilitates building structured content but does not automate linking similar blog posts."
Source
"Keystone requires developers to manually define relationships between content."
Source
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."
Source
"Both Hugo and Jekyll have built-in methods for accessing related content automatically."
Source

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.

Keystone:
No Automatic CTA Linking

KeystoneJS does not support automatic linking of CTAs to content through AI.

"The document field does not include AI-based automatic CTA linking."
Source
"No built-in support for automatic call-to-action linking."
Source
"KeystoneJS does not feature automatic CTA linking in any form."
Source
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."
Source
"Settings that affect your entire site can be changed in Jekyll’s configuration file."
Source
"A call to action (CTA) is a prompt on a website that tells the user to take some specified action."
Source
"Jekyll made it possible for me to realize the following goals: familiarize myself with the basics of HTML5 and CSS3 transitions."
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.

Keystone:
No Comments Supported

Keystone.js does not support built-in external commenting features out of the box. Custom fields can be created, but not natively.

"Keystone.js does not provide native support for external commenting features."
Source
"The platform focuses on content management but lacks built-in comment mechanisms."
Source
"Keystone can be extended with custom fields, but external commenting is not a built-in feature."
Source
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."
Source
"Giscus provides a comment system powered by GitHub Discussions."
Source

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.

Keystone:
No Multi-tenancy

KeystoneJS does not support multi-tenancy for managing multiple client accounts in a single framework.

"KeystoneJS does not support multi-tenancy."
Source
"KeystoneJS is not optimized for multi-tenancy."
Source
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

What Developers Say

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

Ease of Integrating Keystone:
Medium
Integration of Keystone JS is moderately complex, with some specific challenges noted.
Ease of Integrating Jekyll:
Medium
Integration with Jekyll can be complex due to dependencies on Git and Markdown management, though many plugins are available.

Keystone's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Keystone.

Jekyll's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Jekyll.

Keystone's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Keystone.

Jekyll's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Jekyll.

Content Modelling

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

Keystone:
Customisable Content Types

KeystoneJS offers extensive content modeling capabilities with various field types and GraphQL API.

"Keystone helps you build faster and scale further with the programmable open source GraphQL API back-end for structured content projects."
Source
"KeystoneJs is an open source Node.js CMS with a wide range of features including a user-friendly admin UI, content modelling, and a powerful GraphQL API."
Source
"KeystoneJs is an open-source Node.js CMS with a wide range of features including a user-friendly admin UI, content modelling, and a powerful GraphQL API."
Source
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."
Source
"Using Collections is the best way to design multiple post types in Jekyll."
Source
"Collections extend Jekyll’s post and pages publishing functionality to other content types."
Source
"TinaCMS uses schemas to define content models that are version-controlled, allowing for flexibility in defining fields."
Source

Custom React Components

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

Keystone:
Custom React Components Supported

Keystone supports adding custom React components via Document fields in the rich text editor.

"The really cool stuff is behind the **`+`** button on the right of the toolbar – these are the **Custom Components**."
Source
"They store structured data, and can be inserted (and edited!) anywhere in the document."
Source
"If you need a field type which isn't provided, or you need a specialised version of an existing field type, you can define your own custom field type."
Source
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."
Source
"This article explains how to embed React components into Jekyll posts, showing Jekyll's limited ability to support React."
Source

Full Text Search

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

Keystone:
Full Text Search Supported

Keystone.js supports native full-text search across entire datasets, allowing robust search functionality.

"Native full-text search. A way for you and editors to easily search for strings across your entire dataset."
Source
"Keystone manages three models fundamental for the whole system. The role of Keystone is to manage the content of basic pages for the main frontend app."
Source
"Thanks for posting. It looks like you are calling the findOne query using the non-plural name on GraphQL; you can see a list of example GraphQL queries Keystone generates."
Source
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."
Source
"Jekyll Tipue Search plugin enables full-text search, compatible with GitHub Pages."
Source
"Using a database and PHP for full text search implementation in Jekyll."
Source
"Simple Jekyll Search allows lightweight, client-side full-text search."
Source

Starter Kits

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

Keystone:
Available

KeystoneJS offers a starter kit to quickly create a new project.

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

Jekyll:
Available

Multiple starter kits and templates for Jekyll are available.

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

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Keystone and Jekyll.

Keystone's Pricing
Open Source
$0 / forever
- Unlimited users
- Unlimited content
- Community support
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

Compare with other technologies

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