Seconding this -- I use HTML inside hugo all the time. The problem hugo has is that you cannot include _partials_ in your markdown, like you can with Jekyll.

And as parent5446 said, the shortcodes don't give you enough information in some cases.

I also think that people who aren't very technical will have a hard time getting started with the Go templating language, whereas Jekyll is dead obvious (super loose scoping, it looks like any other scripting language, etc.)