Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Plone VS GatsbyJS

Compare Plone VS GatsbyJS and see what are their differences

Plone logo Plone

Plone CMS: Open Source Content Management — Plone.org

GatsbyJS logo GatsbyJS

Blazing-fast static site generator for React
  • Plone Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-22
  • GatsbyJS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-12

Plone features and specs

  • Open Source
    Plone is an open-source platform, meaning there are no licensing fees. This can be a substantial cost saver, and it offers flexibility for customization.
  • Security
    Plone is known for its robust security features. It has a strong security track record and a dedicated team focused on maintaining its security posture.
  • Flexibility and Customization
    Plone supports extensive customization of content types, workflows, and permissions, making it highly adaptable to various use cases.
  • Strong Community Support
    Plone has an active community of developers and users who contribute to forums, documentation, and the development of plugins and updates.
  • Scalability
    Plone is capable of handling large amounts of data and traffic, making it suitable for enterprise-level applications.
  • Built-in Features
    Plone comes with a rich set of built-in features including a robust workflow engine, versioning, multilingual support, and content rules.

Possible disadvantages of Plone

  • Complexity
    Plone can be complex to set up and manage, requiring specialized knowledge. This complexity might be a barrier for small teams or projects with limited technical expertise.
  • Learning Curve
    Due to its extensive features and flexibility, Plone can have a steep learning curve, potentially requiring a significant investment in training.
  • Limited Plugin Ecosystem
    Compared to other CMS platforms, Plone has a smaller ecosystem of plugins and extensions, which might limit its functionality out-of-the-box.
  • Performance Overhead
    Plone's extensive features and flexibility can result in performance overhead, making it potentially slower than more lightweight CMS options.
  • Hosting Requirements
    Plone has specific hosting requirements, and not all web hosts support it natively. This could require more specialized hosting solutions.
  • Design Limitations
    While Plone allows for extensive backend customization, its theming and design options are comparatively limited and might require additional effort to achieve a modern and appealing UI.

GatsbyJS features and specs

  • Performance
    GatsbyJS pre-builds your site into static files for fast load times and instantaneous page loads thanks to features like code splitting, PRPL pattern, and Asset Optimization.
  • SEO-Friendly
    GatsbyJS generates static HTML, which helps search engines to index your site more effectively. Additionally, you have fine-grained control over metadata and other SEO optimizations.
  • Rich Plugin Ecosystem
    GatsbyJS boasts an extensive plugin ecosystem that covers a wide array of functionalities such as sourcing data from CMSs, adding analytics, integrating with various APIs, and much more.
  • Strong Community Support
    Gatsby has a robust and active community that provides ample documentation, tutorials, and support to help you get started and troubleshoot issues.
  • Secure and Scalable
    Since Gatsby sites are static, they are inherently more secure against traditional web-based vulnerabilities and can be scaled easily by deploying to a CDN.

Possible disadvantages of GatsbyJS

  • Build Time
    For larger sites, build times can become noticeably long as Gatsby rebuilds the entire site. This can be a bottleneck for frequent updates.
  • Less Suitable for Dynamic Content
    Since Gatsby generates static pages, it's less suited for applications that require real-time data updates or dynamic content unless they are integrated with client-side JS or third-party services.
  • Initial Setup Complexity
    Getting started with Gatsby can be complex for beginners unfamiliar with React and GraphQL, as it requires knowledge of these technologies.
  • GraphQL Learning Curve
    A significant part of customizing and extending Gatsby sites involves GraphQL queries, which can be a barrier for developers who are not yet familiar with GraphQL.
  • Plugin Quality Variability
    While Gatsby has a rich plugin ecosystem, the quality and maintenance of plugins can vary, requiring developers to vet the plugins they choose to integrate into their projects.

Plone videos

Plone - the open source CMS-as-a-service platform: An eGov case study

More videos:

  • Review - Plone Add-On Review #1: Responsive Design for Diazo
  • Review - Plone Workflow

GatsbyJS videos

The Great Gatsby - Movie Review by Chris Stuckmann

More videos:

  • Review - The Great Gatsby movie review
  • Review - The Ultimate Gatsby Moving Rubber Review!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Plone and GatsbyJS)
CMS
29 29%
71% 71
Blogging
28 28%
72% 72
Blogging Platform
41 41%
59% 59
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Plone and GatsbyJS

Plone Reviews

11 Popular Free And Open Source WordPress CMS alternatives in 2021
Plone is an open-source, enterprise-grade, all-in-one content management system. lightweight free open-source portable photo editor for Microsoft Windows. It has a simple interface similar to Adobe Photoshop.
Source: medevel.com

GatsbyJS Reviews

Top JavaScript Frameworks in 2025
Gatsby JS is a free, open-source, React-based framework that is used to create static websites. It has a great ecosystem of plugins that serve various needs like sourcing data from CMSs, integrating tools, managing images using lazy loading, and more.
Source: solguruz.com
Top 10 Next.js Alternatives You Can Try
Gatsby allows you to add plugins with versatile functions and customization to increase your efficiency when developing websites. Here, you can use multiple styling approaches like Sass and CSS-in-JS library solutions to build web pages more smoothly. Moreover, using Gatsby as an alternative to Next.Js provides you with a complete learning guide to enhance your developing...
20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
A React-based maestro, Gatsby transforms the way sites come to life by hooking into a rich set of data sources. Picture this: a web that’s blazing fast, where your creations go live almost before you hit ‘publish’. That’s Gatsby for you. Inside its engine, it’s got GraphQL superpowers, making data dancing across your pages a breeze.
10 Best Next.js Alternatives to Consider Today
A React-based framework, Gatsby excels in crafting static websites renowned for their exceptional performance. Leveraging GraphQL, Gatsby efficiently pulls data from diverse sources, empowering developers to build dynamic, data-driven websites effortlessly. Its expansive plugin ecosystem allows seamless integration with various data providers, content management systems...
20 Best JavaScript Frameworks For 2023
Gatsby lets users pull data from any data source imaginable – CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Netlify, Contentful, etc., or APIs, databases, or simple markdown. Unlike Next.js, which we discussed above, Gatsby does not perform server-side rendering. Instead, it generates HTML content on the client side during build time. As a result, Gatsby delivers blazing-fast performance,...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, GatsbyJS should be more popular than Plone. It has been mentiond 16 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Plone mentions (2)

  • What's the experience of using Python to build the backend of a large application?
    Plone and its dependencies codebase is ~200 MB Python code. It's all open source and openly managed, so you can always look up Plone for the best practices for code contribution processes. It is manageable. Legacy code from Python 2.x era is a bit problematic, but anything cleanly written for the latest Python version (3.8+) with type hinting is easy. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Django 3.2 Released
    It’s still alive and still underpins the CMS plone [1]. It has evolved and separated into zope [2] zodb [3] and ztk. [1] https://plone.org [2] https://zone.org [3] https://zodb.org. - Source: Hacker News / about 4 years ago

GatsbyJS mentions (16)

  • React SEO: How to Build Search-Friendly Pages in React
    The most famous frameworks for developing SSR applications are Gatsby and Next.js. Although there are differences between them, their main goal is similar: to allow next-generation web applications to remain blazing-fast. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • External content for GatsbyJS
    If you enjoy React and want a standard-compliant and high performance web, you should look at GatsbyJS. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Replatforming from Gatsby to Zola!
    Since around 2019 I have used Gatsby as my static site generator. Its plugin system makes it super feature extensible. It uses React under the hood which makes components easy to write and has tons of community support. Once I had a Gatsby site styled and running, publishing blog posts is fairly trivial:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Build a Documentation Website with Gatsby in 10 Mins
    Smooth DOC is a ready-to-use Gatsby theme to create a documentation website. Creating a pro-quality website like this one takes weeks. Smooth DOC saves you time and lets you focus on the content. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Where to begin?
    I'd start with learning HTML and CSS first, then Javascript after those. There are a lot of free online resources for learning those. For websites, I use jekyll which is a great way to start off because there are a lot of community website templates that you can customize, which is great for beginners and learning. Then I'd recommend learning/moving to React. The Gatsby website generator would be good for React... Source: over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Plone and GatsbyJS, you can also consider the following products

Drupal - Drupal - the leading open-source CMS for ambitious digital experiences that reach your audience across multiple channels. Because we all have different needs, Drupal allows you to create a unique space in a world of cookie-cutter solutions.

Jekyll - Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator.

WordPress - WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Hugo - Hugo is a general-purpose website framework for generating static web pages.

Joomla - Joomla! is the mobile-ready and user-friendly way to build your website. Choose from thousands of features and designs. Joomla! is free and open source.

Ghost - Ghost is a fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.