Hugo vs Craftum: a comparison for a developer's blog

So, for reasons beyond my control, I had to leave Craftum. Overall it’s fine, but not for blogs. Seriously, it’s just not what it’s built for. Want a nice landing page? Sure. Want a corporate site? Also fine. But a blog? That’s a nightmare to work with.

Why Craftum isn’t for blogs

Problem number one: since under the hood it’s still just a Craftum page, you can’t properly set the background, you can’t properly set up SEO — basically, anything related to styling and SEO configuration is a pain.

Problem number two: the article editor. Sure, it exists, but using it for regular publishing is torture. Especially if you’re used to writing in Obsidian or any other Markdown editor. Constantly switching between interfaces, copy-pasting, losing formatting. Come on, no.

And third — this wasn’t the main problem, but it still drove me crazy: you can’t just bulk-upload content. No, you have to do everything manually through the interface. That doesn’t work for a blog. I need to write articles in a comfortable editor, not in a browser. Oh, and since the editor lagged mercilessly, changes sometimes just wouldn’t save -_-

What I was looking for

I didn’t want to switch to another website builder. Why would I? Same nonsense, just with a different interface. Same problems, same limitations. No thanks. And for money, too. Yeah, for me Craftum was free :)

And I definitely didn’t want to spin up some bloated CMS with admin panels and databases just for a bunch of notes. WordPress? No thanks, I don’t want to update plugins every week and fight vulnerabilities. Drupal? Are you out of your mind. Joomla? That’s from the last century.

I needed a simple blog. Write in Markdown, keep everything static, no unnecessary overhead. And no headache with admin panels, databases, and all that junk.

Found Hugo

And then I came across Hugo. And you know what? It’s exactly what I needed. Not a website builder, not a bloated CMS, but a proper modern blogging platform.

What I liked right away:

1. Theme + customization. Dropped in a theme, tweaked it a bit to my liking — and that’s it, it works. No need to spend six months figuring out how everything is structured. Grab it, adjust it, done. (It uses Go templates, so I didn’t have to dig too deep into the templating engine either.)

2. You write in Markdown. This is just fantastic. I’m used to writing in Obsidian, that’s where all my notes and drafts live. And now I can just copy the text from Obsidian, paste it into Hugo — and it just works. Formatting is preserved, links work, everything’s as it should be.

3. A static blog. This is the key point. Hugo generates a static site. That means:

   • Fast loading. No database queries, no rendering on the fly. Everything’s already built, everything’s ready.
   • No runtime. No need to keep Node.js, PHP, or anything else running in memory. All the files are already built, just serve them.
   • Resource usage is close to zero. The server can be the cheapest one available, and it’ll still run just fine.

4. Automation. I set up CI/CD, wrote an article, pushed — and it all rolled out to the server automatically. No need to log into an admin panel, no need to configure anything by hand. Write it, push it, done.

5. All sorts of useful things. Sitemap is generated automatically. So is RSS. You can add regular pages, not just posts. You can set up navigation, menus, whatever you need.

6. Full control over the theme. If you want to change something — just go in and edit it. No limitations, no “well, that’s only in the paid version.” Everything’s open, everything’s accessible.

What I ended up with

In the end, I got exactly what I wanted:

• I write articles in Obsidian in Markdown
• I keep all my drafts locally
• When an article is ready, I just copy it into Hugo
• Everything gets published automatically via CI/CD
• The site loads fast because it’s static
• Resource usage is minimal
• No databases, no admin panels, no headaches

And you know what? It works. It just works. No unnecessary fuss, no complications, no problems.

Conclusion

Craftum is a great website builder for landing pages and corporate sites. And the collections we built were so ahead of their time that competitors still can’t pull it off. Too bad there wasn’t time to move the blog over to collections — if there had been, this whole question wouldn’t even come up. Hugo is a different story. It’s exactly what a blog needs: simple, fast, convenient.

If you’re writing a blog and need a simple, effective tool — try Hugo. You won’t regret it. And if you’re stuck on Craftum trying to run a blog on it — just stop. It’s not built for that. Seriously, don’t torture yourself, and don’t torture your readers.

By the way, if you’re curious how I used Craftum for the frontend (and why I eventually left) — check out the article I hate frontend: how Craftum simplified development . And if you need help automating your publishing — try Cursor AI .