Use Node.js Development Services
to Build Powerful Web Apps

The dynamics of your development team depend on the technologies used in building your app. Here’s what to expect with Node.js:

• The first thing to consider is the time scale of your project. In the long run, Node.js offers a relatively low cost of development. Your initial budget will be bigger in comparison to Ruby on Rails, for instance, but with the app’s expansion, scale, new features, and further maintenance, the costs will drop, and the development time will be shorter. That’s why it’s more efficient to build a demo or an MVP and prototype your application with Ruby on Rails. That said, the costs will grow more rapidly with time with RoR.
• Secondly, since many popular front-end frameworks are based on JavaScript (e.g., React, Ember, and Angular), it will be much easier to communicate within the team between backend and front-end developers. Both sides of your development team will write in the same language, so they will be able to understand the code with ease, working more efficiently as a result.
• Node.js is an unopinionated environment, which means that it comes with few guidelines. Developers need to pick and write solutions on their own. Therefore, at the start of a project, their experience and knowledge about different frameworks should be more extensive than in the case of RoR projects, where many things will be predefined from the get-go.
• JavaScript is one of the most popular development languages, which makes it easier to find full-stack programmers with Node.js experience. It is also easier for someone who already knows Node.js to learn front-end and vice-versa. Quite often, you can find developers that can both write the server- and client-side of the application. You are likely to have a smaller development team that will be easier to manage.
• Finally, you should consider that with the growing popularity of Node.js, there is a rising demand for skilled and experienced developers, which will make finding members of your team more difficult. This is a more significant factor if you are planning to scale your application in the near future. If you want to hire more developers for your team, specify your recruitment needs, and plan it in advance to avoid a lack of coders hampering your work. Alternatively, you can avoid recruitment issues altogether by using the services of an experienced development company.

Technically, e-commerce platforms are complex systems. Here’s why Node.js might be the perfect match:

• Performance: Node.js supports multitasking by giving better outcomes with lower costs. Comparing it to PHP, for example, it’s way more convenient. As the buyer’s journey for an e-commerce store involves numerous operations, such as adding things to the basket, changing product features, choosing payments, etc., it’s crucial from the performance viewpoint that the technology serves such tasks efficiently. And Node.js effectively handles different operations conducted at the same time, which makes it a good choice for e-commerce.
• Scalability: Node.js enables quick scalability. In a short period, your e-commerce store can grow substantially. This is an important factor to consider when choosing the right technology. Node has an inbuilt mechanism that helps to manage scalability and adjust it to the individual needs of your company.
• Big and active community: The Node.js community is a very active and vibrant group of developers who contribute to the constant improvement of Node.js. Thanks to their dedicated services, the framework is well-documented, up-to-date, and continuously supported, which makes Node.js development much easier and faster. They produce a ton of ready solutions, code in Github, plugins, modules, and many more possibilities. In addition, if a problem pops up in development, chances are the answer already exists on StackOverflow.
• Many plugins and packages in npm: Node.js comes with many packages that can be easily implemented in your web or mobile app. That way, developers don’t need to write everything from scratch but can leverage reliable open-source solutions. This advantage significantly increases the speed of Node.js development. There are great packages available for e-commerce too.
• One language on the backend and front-end: Node.js is a JavaScript-based environment, and many popular front-end frameworks (such as React, Ember, and Angular) use the very same language. Therefore, you can create web and mobile apps that are isomorphic and written in one language. This streamlines the development process, eases communication between frontend and backend teams, and enables teams to understand both sides of the codebase much better. Potentially, you could have a smaller and more efficient development team that is easier to manage. Finally, with no technological diversity, recruiting new people in case of scaling up won’t be a problem.

Want to learn more about Node.js? Use our Node.js Technology Guide.

Node.js is a runtime environment enabling server-side execution of JavaScript. Here are some challenges you might face during its maintenance:

• Extensive stack: Node.js doesn’t provide any specific convention for developing a web or mobile app. Frameworks that use Node.js are mostly unopinionated, meaning that they don’t give you any specific guidelines for the way code should be written. That’s why every web and mobile application requires an individual approach and, as a result, more experienced programmers who have worked out robust processes for developing and maintaining code internally.
• Technical debt: Many problems with Node.js stem from a lack of good practices. The open-source community is very active and offers plenty of ways to build superb web and mobile applications. Having too many options, however, could be a problem for inexperienced developers and could lead to app structure incongruency. The ecosystem is still relatively immature. Implementing well-tested design patterns borrowed from other more traditional environments, like Java, is crucial for later code maintenance.

• Scalability challenges: Node.js is a single-threaded process, which makes scaling a little bit more complicated. Developing more complex applications with CPU/MEM-heavy computations might require dividing them into smaller microservices that handle different operations. When architecting a performant and scalable Node.js web application, keep in mind it should be relatively small and stateless. Recent years have brought development in the area in the form of different architectural approaches such as the aforementioned microservices or serverless, as well as Node.js threading support (still in the experimental stage, but they should be a regular feature in Node v12).

• Poor documentation: Documentation is crucial to every IT development project – it gives you an idea of how the app works. It tells developers what the main components are, how they relate to each other, and what the main purpose of the application is. It provides explanations as to why certain solutions, especially the less obvious ones, were applied. Poor documentation will very likely extend development time and make the whole process more difficult. It can expose the app to problems with performance and inhibit the implementation of new features.