ox-hugo takes a different approach: it uses org-mode’s ox-markdown exporter to produce Markdown from the org source, so that Hugo processes a Markdown file. This makes a big difference, as each tool is processing its own native format: org-mode processes org, and Hugo processes Markdown.
Thanks to this, you can even include Hugo shortcodes (https://gohugo.io/content-management/shortcodes/) in your org-mode source, and they will be passed untouched to Hugo (this is not entirely advisable as it makes your source Hugo-specific, but it’s doable if you want it).
Another very nice ox-hugo feature is its “One post per Org subtree” mode (https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/#screenshot-one-post-per-subtree), in which you keep your entire post tree (in fact, you could keep your entire website) in a single Org file. I was skeptical about this at first (who wants to keep *everything* in a single file), but in practice it works very well, and allows you to have tags/categories or other attributes per subtree, so you don’t have to repeat them on every post.
If you really want to keep each post in a separate file, that is doable as well. The ox-hugo website has a lot of very useful information.Finally, you can do the transition gradually - for my website, I had years of accumulated Markdown files from my adventures with Jekyll, Octopress and later Hugo. Those are still in place, and I have started only putting my new posts in an org file which ox-hugo processes. Since those are converted to Markdown files, they end up alongside the old hand-crafted files, and Hugo just processes them all together.
I really recommend ox-hugo, Kaushal has done a fantastic job and he is also really helpful and responsive with questions.
Tip: I learned a lot by reading the source files for https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/ and for https://scripter.co/, both of which are kept in ox-hugo structure. You can find pointers to those and some other examples (including my own websites, zzamboni.org and cf-learn.info) at https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/doc/examples/
Kaushal Modi