I don't want to get into any arguments about "best", but what works best for me is to write the pages in Markdown and use a Makefile to convert them all to html. There's always overhead with projects like Hugo, concerns about upgrading, and rough edges with respect to customization. If you just want to create standalone pages, a Makefile and Pandoc is about as simple and flexible as you can get.

Edit: Here's the full code from one of my Makefiles:

  files := $(patsubst %.md,%,$(wildcard *.md))
  
  all:
    for f in $(files); do \
      pandoc -s -o $$f.html --template=template.html $$f.md; \
    done

My https://github.com/fiatjaf/react-site is imperative instead of declarative, maybe that will suit you.

By that I mean you write generator script[1] and use the helper functions `listFiles`, `generatePage` and `copyStatic` to generate the pages you want with the template/configuration you want at the path you want. That means you can render content not only markdown files, but any source whatsoever, and combine the sources in any way you like.

[1]: https://github.com/fiatjaf/levypla/blob/1407b110228387e4a4b7...

I use ikiwiki (https://ikiwiki.info/) for my blog (http://per.bothner.com/blog).

Hugo is a single binary that works on Linux, windows and osx. That's a godsend compared to setting up Jekyll - which needs you to setup ruby and then install all dependencies.

It is also many times faster than Jekyll. Both were the reason,we chose Hugo.

Hugo!

Jekyll works well with Netlify - you might just have needed a Gemfile or the like?