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Comparison · Mkt Auto

Sulu vs Eleventy

A side-by-side editorial comparison of Sulu and Eleventy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

Sulu vs Eleventy: at a glance

FeatureSuluEleventy
SectorMkt AutoMkt Auto
Velocity score5.05.0
Sparks · 30d00
Top themessymfony-cms, dual-branch-releases, ckeditor, doctrine-migrationsstatic-site-generator, rebrand, breaking-changes, async-templates
Last editorial update1h ago2h ago
WebsiteVisit →Visit →

What is Sulu?

Sulu ships 2.6 and 3.0 in lockstep, and the 3.0 line still reads like a maintenance branch.

Sulu is a Symfony-based CMS for developer-built sites, and its release process is a synchronised pair: every 3.0.x patch ships within a minute of the matching 2.6.x patch, carrying largely the same pull requests. Six releases in five months — 3.0.8/2.6.25, 3.0.7/2.6.24, 3.0.6/2.6.23 — are almost entirely fixes, editor upgrades and framework compatibility work. A security advisory was patched across both branches in March.

Read the full Sulu trajectory →

What is Eleventy?

The v4 canary line is being renamed Build Awesome while 3.x is kept on pure maintenance.

Two lines run in parallel. The 3.x branch gets dependency-only releases — 3.1.5 and 3.1.6 explicitly ship no core code changes, after 3.1.3 and 3.1.4 failed to publish and were left as immutable dead tags. The v4 alpha train, meanwhile, is where the work is: Node minimum raised to 22.15, page.inputPathDir and page.dir removed, batched incremental builds added, and a large refactor of the Nunjucks fork onto a fully-async prerelease. The releases themselves now carry the Build Awesome name and offer an @awesome.me/buildawesome install alongside @11ty/eleventy@canary.

Read the full Eleventy trajectory →

Sulu vs Eleventy: editorial side-by-side

S
Sulu
MKT AUTO
5.0

Sulu ships 2.6 and 3.0 in lockstep, and the 3.0 line still reads like a maintenance branch.

◆ Current state

Sulu is a Symfony-based CMS for developer-built sites, and its release process is a synchronised pair: every 3.0.x patch ships within a minute of the matching 2.6.x patch, carrying largely the same pull requests. Six releases in five months — 3.0.8/2.6.25, 3.0.7/2.6.24, 3.0.6/2.6.23 — are almost entirely fixes, editor upgrades and framework compatibility work. A security advisory was patched across both branches in March.

◆ Where it's heading

Three threads run through the pairs. Editor upkeep is constant, with CKEditor moving to 47 LTS and then 48 and the fallout — table widgets, webpack font builds — fixed release by release. Framework compatibility is the second: Request->get calls replaced for Symfony 8, PHPUnit 13 and PHPStan kept green on lowest dependencies. The third and most interesting is data-model cleanup on the 3.0 side, where tags migrated from names to IDs behind a newly added DoctrineMigrationsBundle, with smart-content filters reworked to match. What is not visible is any capability that exists on 3.0 and not on 2.6 — a major version that is not yet behaving like one.

◆ Prediction

Expect the paired-release rhythm to continue with more Symfony 8 preparation and CKEditor 48 fallout. The open question is when 3.0 starts receiving work that is not upmerged from 2.6; until then the major version number is not buying users anything.

E
Eleventy
MKT AUTO
5.0

The v4 canary line is being renamed Build Awesome while 3.x is kept on pure maintenance.

◆ Current state

Two lines run in parallel. The 3.x branch gets dependency-only releases — 3.1.5 and 3.1.6 explicitly ship no core code changes, after 3.1.3 and 3.1.4 failed to publish and were left as immutable dead tags. The v4 alpha train, meanwhile, is where the work is: Node minimum raised to 22.15, page.inputPathDir and page.dir removed, batched incremental builds added, and a large refactor of the Nunjucks fork onto a fully-async prerelease. The releases themselves now carry the Build Awesome name and offer an @awesome.me/buildawesome install alongside @11ty/eleventy@canary.

◆ Where it's heading

v4 is accumulating breaking changes faster than it is stabilizing — three of the entries in this window announce removals or minimum-version bumps, and alpha.10 exists only to hotfix a regression alpha.9 introduced. The Nunjucks refactor is the biggest bet: making the fork fully async removes the need for async-specific template tags, but the release notes flag it as risky for existing Nunjucks users. The naming change is proceeding on the same timeline, so users tracking canary are absorbing an identity shift and an API shift at once.

◆ Prediction

Expect more v4 alphas carrying breaking removals before any beta, with the Nunjucks async refactor generating follow-up regressions; 3.x looks likely to keep receiving dependency-only patches with no core changes.

Alternatives to Sulu and Eleventy

Other Mkt Auto products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Sulu or Eleventy.

See all Sulu alternatives → · See all Eleventy alternatives →

Recent activity from Sulu and Eleventy

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 15d agoSuluSulu 3.0.8 validates selection filter params at build time
  2. 15d agoSuluSulu 2.6.25 adds a redirect after SSO login
  3. 1mo agoEleventyNunjucks fork refactored onto a fully-async prerelease
  4. 1mo agoEleventyNode 22.15 minimum, page path properties removed
  5. 1mo agoEleventyHotfix for a layout cache invalidation regression
  6. 1mo agoEleventyEleventy v3.1.6: Everybody wants to do Maintenance
  7. 2mo agoSuluSulu 3.0.7 fixes smart-content filtering and speeds up indexing
  8. 2mo agoSuluSulu 2.6.24 upgrades CKEditor to version 48
  9. 2mo agoSuluSulu 3.0.6 migrates tag names to IDs with Doctrine migrations
  10. 2mo agoSuluSulu 2.6.23 moves to CKEditor 47 LTS and preps Symfony 8
  11. 4mo agoEleventyCanary warns the Eleventy name is changing to Build Awesome
  12. 4mo agoEleventyDead tag: this release failed to publish, use 3.1.5

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Sulu and Eleventy?

They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Sulu and Eleventy are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 5.0 vs 5.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.

Is Sulu better than Eleventy?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Sulu and Eleventy are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 5.0 vs 5.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Mkt Auto products to evaluate alongside.

What are the best alternatives to Sulu?

Top Sulu alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Sulu alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/sulu for the full list with editorial commentary on each.

What are the best alternatives to Eleventy?

Top Eleventy alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Eleventy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/eleventy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.