head to head · open source
hugo vs ZKEACMS
hugo has 89,858 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped today. ZKEACMS has 2,839 stars, 858 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. hugo leads on adoption by 3,065% (89,858 vs 2,839 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ZKEACMS is written in C# under GPL-3.0. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, ZKEACMS 30%. hugo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cms), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| hugo | ZKEACMS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 858 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick hugo if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ZKEACMS if
- You want the ZKEACMS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and ZKEACMS fits your workflow better
About hugo
Hugo is a static site generator written in Go that renders a complete site in seconds, often less, and it is aimed at developers, technical writers, and content teams who build blogs, documentation sites, portfolios, landing pages, and corporate sites as static files.
About ZKEACMS
ZKEACMS Build With .Net 9 ZKEACMS is a visual design, WYSIWYG Content Management System. Page Design Add Content To Page Get Started Demo Site Try it on our demo site: Create Page How to create a new page: Multi tenant demo Culture Change the culture code to en US to use english in appsettings.json Publish / Release Use Publish.cmd or Publish.sh to publish the project. You can also use the command line below to publish: Publish width runtime Run on Docker Development .Net 9 SDK Microsoft Sql Server 2016+ / MySql 5.6+ / SQLite 3 Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 / Visual Studio Code Responsive Design ZKEACMS is featuri…
read the full ZKEACMS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or ZKEACMS more popular?
hugo has 89,858 GitHub stars and ZKEACMS has 2,839. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and ZKEACMS free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ZKEACMS under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and ZKEACMS?
hugo is written in Go and ZKEACMS in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, hugo or ZKEACMS?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,858 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ZKEACMS if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.