Is Vue a Good Fit for My Project? - 7 Questions to Ask Before Choosing Vue

Why is Vue so popular right now? Here are some good reasons:

• It's lightweight and fast – even with minimal optimization, it performs better than many other popular frameworks.
• Compared to other frameworks, Vue is really versatile.
• Vue supports the component-based approach to building web apps – it includes single-file components that are independent and loosely-coupled to enable better code reuse and quicker development.
• The learning curve isn't steep – Vue is very easy to learn.
• The documentation is maintained very well – have a look here to find a comprehensive guide, well-documented APIs and even the official style guide.
• It includes tools that offer a great development experience.
• Vue is surrounded by an engaged community that grew impressively fast – have a look at its GitHub to get an idea of Vue's popularity.
• It's been adopted by many big companies, such as Alibaba, Xiaomi, Gitlab, and Expedia - and the list is still growing!
  

So how do you tell if Vue is a good fit for your project?

Unfortunately, there's no easy answer to that question, because it all depends on your individual needs and the requirements of your project.

That's why we prepared the following questions you should ask yourself to get a better grasp of your demands and decide whether Vue is the right choice for you. We answer every question with Vue in mind to point out what makes it a good or bad pick in any of these situations.

1. Are you planning to expand your team?

When growing your team, your main priority is to get the new people up and running quickly. The onboarding process needs to be swift to ensure that new team members are ready to work as soon as possible. Since Vue has a low level of entry and it's driven by the core value of approachability, it's the easiest framework to get started with. To make sure that your code is in good shape, your team can take advantage of conventions, the official style guide, and the eslint plugin.

2. Regarding your product, are you going to start small and grow as you go, or go full-in right from the start?

If your solution needs to be fully scalable, it's smart to bet on Vue. When designing a digital product, you may not always be certain about its final shape and level of complexity. One of the core values of Vue is versatility, and it definitely works to your advantage here. You can start with a simple app and quickly add extra building blocks as you go. Moreover, your team benefits from libraries that solve the most common problems maintained by the Vue organisation members, so you're pretty safe when developing your app.

3. Are you dealing with problems like inconsistent codebase or lack of solid conventions in another project and don't want to repeat your mistake? Or perhaps you have a working app (e.g. Rails or Django) and want to move towards modern architecture and improve your codebase gradually?

Vue is a versatile framework that scales perfectly to enable dev teams to develop products ranging from simple add-ons to fully featured CRMs. If you're looking to gradually improve or move an existing codebase toward a more modern architecture, Vue is a top pick. Consider GitLab as an example – they recently gradually modernized their code by writing small components first and then introducing entire flows and pages without any breaking changes.

4. Would you like to build a fully-fledged Progressive Web App (PWA) that performs great without emptying your wallet?

Thanks to its reactivity, Vue is a framework that requires less attention than similar solutions. The new version of the tool vue-cli makes adding PWA core setup a breeze. However, if you need to add more PWA features quickly, pick Nuxt.js. This fantastic minimal framework built on top of Vue and its own ecosystem helps integrate PWA features easily. It also provides server-side rendering (SSR) and pre-rendering out-of-the-box with zero configuration.

5. Are you running on a tight budget and need to develop your MVP quickly?

If you want to build an MVP quickly, the last thing you need is a complicated setup that takes days to get right. You need a simple yet flexible solution that will scale nicely and an ecosystem full of tools that can boost the efficiency of any dev team working on your digital product.

Vue is this kind of solution. Not only will your team be able to bootstrap the application fast, but your developers also won’t need to spend much time on optimisations to make your app performant, so you don’t need to worry that your MVP won’t be finished on time due to some technical caveats.

6. You want to build a static page, but you're not sure whether you'll need to add some extra features to it later on?

The framework we mentioned before, Nuxt.js, comes in handy here – especially if your project requires SSR. Both small and large projects can benefit from Nuxt.js because it simplifies the process of project bootstrapping, offers sensible defaults and eventually takes a lot of things off your plate. You can easily start with a simple landing page and, because it’s built on top of Vue, you can add more pages and features gradually. This means that you no longer have to choose between a static SEO-friendly page and an SPA.

7. Do you want to build a single page application (SPA) that's also SEO-friendly?

SPAs are not optimal regarding SEO to begin with. However, there are some widely adopted patterns and solutions that can help you build an SEO-friendly SPA. One of them is SSR, which stands for Server Side Rendering,.This means that the page, instead of generating HTML in the users’ browser, will do it on the server even before the content is delivered to the user. Vue provides a great official guide for SSR that covers the whole topic in-depth, but if you just need SSR and don’t feel like having to worry about extra setup, the recommended way is to use the Nuxt.js framework we mentioned a few times before. Not only will you get SSR out-of-the-box, but it also has you covered if, for some reason, SSR seems like too much and you only need to generate a few static pages based on your application’s output.

So, is Vue a good fit for your next project?

Now that you've answered these questions, you probably have a better idea whether Vue could help you build your next product.

Remember that Vue isn't the only option that might fit your needs. In this article, we focused on Vue to show you how it may match your requirements and help you build a fantastic digital product. It might seem pretty fresh, but Vue already has a number of great tools developed around it, and it's been proven to be suitable for projects of any size.

Still not sure whether Vue is a good pick for your project? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave a comment below; we'll be happy to help you find the right tool for the job.