[fastbeef]

What options are left if you need a simple website builder that's not

a) Wordpress, which is a swamp filled with mines in the form of plugins b) Wix, which forces hosting and bad HTML on you

Basically I want a Wordpress-like frontend + the rich template ecosystem and for it to spit out static HTML files.

[neurostimulant]

There are many solutions out there that can generate static sites from a WordPress installation. For example, you can use gatsby.js to generate a static site using WordPress as data source.

[TooCleverByHalf]

Just to clarify for myself, this person asked for alternatives that are not WordPress and Wix and you're recommendation is to use WordPress?

[neurostimulant]

My point if if you want wordpress ecosystem but don't want the associated risk, there are many ways to generate static websites from a wordpress installation. You can run wordpress locally in your local development computer and only host the generated static html in your server/hosting provider.

[DerekRobot]

Not a web developer, but Grav CMS is pretty neat.