Winter CMS vs Jekyll

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

Winter CMS
Winter CMS
Winter CMS is a free, open-source content management system, built on top of the Laravel PHP framework, enabling rapid development and deployment of websites.
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 Winter CMS and Jekyll have to say about their overall experience with the product.

Winter CMS's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Winter CMS.

Jekyll's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Jekyll.

Winter CMS's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Winter CMS.

Jekyll's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Jekyll.

Looking for a better alternative to Winter CMS & 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 Winter CMS and Jekyll daily about their experience with the editors.

Winter CMS's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Winter CMS's editor.

Jekyll's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Jekyll's editor.

Winter CMS's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Winter CMS'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.

Winter CMS:
Unknown

No specific information on mobile-first content creation experience found in Winter CMS.

"Winter CMS is a free, open-source content management framework, built on top of the Laravel PHP framework."
Source
"Winter CMS is definitely my recommendation, although I'm biased ;). Open source: https://github.com/wintercms."
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."
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"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.

Winter CMS:
No Automatic Content Linking

Winter CMS does not have an automatic related blog feature for linking similar content.

"Winter CMS does not provide automatic related blog linking capabilities in its documentation."
Source
"Winter CMS does not list any functionality for auto-linking blog posts."
Source
"No mention of automatic internal linking features for related blog content in Winter CMS documentation."
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.

Winter CMS:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Winter CMS does not mention support for Automatic CTA Linking in its documentation or features.

"The Winter CMS backend implements the MVC pattern. Controllers manage backend pages and implement various features like forms and lists."
Source
"The Form behavior is a controller behavior used for easily adding form functionality to a backend page."
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"The List behavior is a controller behavior used for managing lists of records on a page."
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"Plugins can extend the backend navigation menus by overriding the registerNavigation method of the Plugin registration class."
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."
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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

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.

Winter CMS:
No Comments Supported

Winter CMS does not provide an external commenting feature for site visitors. Comments can be managed internally through backend forms.

"... functionality of models in other plugins, or in the core of Winter CMS. ... $comment = new Comment; $comment->content = "Hello world!"; $comment->save; # Note: This indicates managing comments internally, not through an external feature."
Source
"... management features builtin to the System and Backend modules. Of the three modules present in Winter CMS, only the System module is required for Winter to operate."
Source
"Winter CMS will always be a free, open source, community driven content management framework."
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."
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"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.

Winter CMS:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Winter CMS supports multi-tenancy, allowing agencies to manage multiple client accounts effectively.

"Winter's vision is to be the world's best Content Management Framework supporting complex multi-tenant SaaS applications."
Source
"A multi-tenant CMS allows organizations to control content assets across multiple projects, supporting systematic management."
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 Winter CMS and Jekyll about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating Winter CMS:
Medium
Integration can be complex, especially for those unfamiliar with Laravel.
Ease of Integrating Jekyll:
Medium
Integration with Jekyll can be complex due to dependencies on Git and Markdown management, though many plugins are available.

Winter CMS's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Winter CMS.

Jekyll's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Jekyll.

Winter CMS's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Winter CMS.

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.

Winter CMS:
Customisable Content Types

Winter CMS supports content modelling with custom fields and traits for enhanced flexibility.

"Model traits are used to implement common functionality."
Source
"The Form behavior is a controller behavior used for easily adding form functionality to a backend page."
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"Models allow you to define and interact with your application data."
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."
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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."
Source

Custom React Components

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

Winter CMS:
No Custom React Components Supported

Winter CMS does not support custom React components directly in the content editor.

"Components can output HTML markup on a page, but it is not necessary - other important features of components are handling AJAX requests, form postbacks, and the page execution cycle."
Source
"Components must be registered in the Plugin registration class with the registerComponents method."
Source
"Winter CMS does not support adding developer-defined React components via its content editor."
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.

Winter CMS:
Full Text Search Supported

The Winter CMS supports full-text search across multiple fields through a dedicated plugin.

"Enables full-text searching capabilities to Winter, built on the foundations of Laravel Scout."
Source
"Search - Enables full-text search capabilities in Winter."
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"The List behavior provides the sortable and searchable list with optional links for each of its records."
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."
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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."
Source

Starter Kits

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

Winter CMS:
Available

Winter CMS provides various starter kits through plugins and themes compatible from October CMS.

(Expand section to see a list of Winter CMS 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 Winter CMS and Jekyll.

Winter CMS's Pricing
Free
$0 / lifetime
- Open-source
- Community support
- Plugin and theme marketplace
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 Winter CMS & Jekyll? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!