You should be able to use SQLAlchemy with your Django database, they aren't mutually exclusive. Also, if you think you need a more "powerful" template system,

You should be able to use SQLAlchemy with your Django database, they aren't mutually exclusive. Also, if you think you need a more "powerful" template system, you are probably bloating your template with code that should reside in your view functions written in python instead. HTML templates should be mainly HTML.