If you write in Markdown and want a website, there are two broad routes: build the site yourself with a static site generator, or publish the files to a hosted platform that turns them into pages. Both keep your content as Markdown. They differ in who does the work around it.
Building a static site
A static site generator — Hugo, Jekyll, Quartz and many others — reads a folder of Markdown files and produces HTML pages. You then deploy that output to a host of your choice.
What it involves:
- Choosing and configuring a generator and a theme.
- Keeping templates, dependencies and the build working over time.
- Setting up hosting and deployment, often through CI.
- Adding extra services for things the generator doesn’t do, such as payments or memberships.
What you get: complete control over design, structure and output.
Publishing on a hosted platform
A hosted Markdown platform takes the files as they are and publishes them. With Sentilis, you install the CLI (or the Obsidian plugin), log in, and sync a folder:
sentilis sync ./my-contentWhat it involves:
- Following the platform’s folder conventions — with Sentilis,
press/,bio/,market/,prime/andgallery/. - Adding a short settings block to each file.
What you get: hosting, layouts and features like checkout and memberships, with nothing to build or maintain.
Compared
| Static site generator | Hosted platform (Sentilis) | |
|---|---|---|
| Content format | Markdown files | Markdown files |
| Setup | Generator, theme, hosting | Account, CLI or plugin |
| Ongoing maintenance | Build, dependencies, hosting | None on your side |
| Design control | Complete | Platform layouts |
| Commerce and memberships | Extra services | Included |
| Where files live | Your project | Your disk or repository |
How to decide
Choose a static site generator if you enjoy maintaining a code project, need a design that no platform offers, or want to control every byte of the output.
Choose a hosted platform if you want to spend your time writing, need posts, docs, a bio and products in one place, and prefer not to maintain a build.
Either way, your content stays in Markdown — so the decision is reversible. You can move the same files from one route to the other later.