- Alibaba Group
- Zoom.com
- GitLab.com
- Grammarly.com
- Netlify.com
- 9GAG.com
- Upwork.com
- Behance.net
- PornHub.com
- Other projects built with Vue.js
- Bottom line
With each project presenting fresh challenges, we’ve always taken our time selecting the best tool for the job, considering the tasks at hand and the customer’s desires for future growth. Today, we’d like to discuss Vue.js, one of the most prominent and efficient front-end libraries available, and one that we use often.
Vue.js is a versatile open-source JavaScript framework for creating dynamic user interfaces and responsive one-page apps. Initially created by Evan You, an ex-Googler, it has since been kept up to date by a core team of experienced developers from major corporations, as well as a vast and expanding international community.
Over the years, following the initial release of Vue.js, it has grown to become a direct competitor of such renowned front-end frameworks as Angular and React. Developers appreciate the following features and characteristics:
- Use of the MVVM template (Model-view view-Model)
- Super-compact size (18–21 KB)
- Nice transition effects
- Remarkable ease of setup and familiarization
- Ease of integration into existing applications
- Excellent documentation in many languages
Despite the ever-growing popularity of Vue.js, it does not always appear as hot a buzzword as Angular or React. The purpose of this article is to show all those still mulling over the choice of the right framework for their next project that Vue.js is not just “as good as” its competitors but rather better in many respects. We’ll try to do it by example, looking at some of the most popular sites out there that have taken advantage of the library’s impressive capabilities.
Alibaba Group
Alibaba Group is one of those companies that people often refer to in superlative terms. The then largest IPO in history ($25 billion in 2014), one of the top 10 most valuable corporations on the planet, the second Asian company in history to reach a $500 billion valuation, the 5th largest AI company in the world, and the operator of the largest B2B, B2C, and C2B marketplaces in the world. The list could be easily continued.
The company was one of the early adopters of Vue.js — mostly thanks to its inherent qualities, but also, to no small degree, due to the fact that Vue.js was actively promoted in China both by its author, Evan You, and a large community of developers that quickly formed around their compatriot and his work.
Today, Vue.js is widely used in many of the company’s services and countless internal tools.
Average monthly visits: 14.56 million (Alibaba.com), 42 million (Taobao), 14 million (TMall)
Backend: Java / Spring
Database: Oracle / MySQL / LevelDB / Hadoop / Redis
Zoom.com
Prior to 2020, Zoom was a fairly popular video calling tool, accounting for up to 60 billion yearly meeting minutes in December 2019. If you’ve been around since 2013—especially in 2020—you’ve probably made a minimum of one Zoom call to stay in touch with coworkers, clients, friends, or family. Still, the pandemic combined with the work-from-home trend catapulted it to popularity.
Here are some impressive Zoom statistics:
- Number of mobile app downloads in 2020: 485 million
- Number of paying business customers: 467,100
- Number of annual meeting minutes: over 3.3 trillion
- Number of minutes in webinars: 45 billion
- Revenue Q4 FY 2021: $882 million, 400% growth from FY 2020
As you’ve already guessed, Zoom uses Vue.js for its website and its web-based client, both visited and navigated by millions of users every day — all enjoying the same fast, uncluttered, and responsive UI, offering the best experience for regular and professional users alike.
Average monthly visits: 418 million
Backend: N/A
Database: N/A
GitLab.com
GitLab is an extremely popular cloud-based DevOps orchestration platform originally developed by Ukrainian developers Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Valery Sizov. Since the original release in 2014, the product has gone through several rounds of funding from major investors to reach a valuation of over $6 billion and become the first Ukrainian unicorn startup.
GitLab uses a combination of Go, RoR, and Vue.js for all of its tools and services. The company’s experiments with Vue started around 2016 and just a year later, they published a very positive and enthusiastic article about their experience with Vue.js, highlighting its remarkable flexibility, scalability, and time-saving characteristics.
GitLab’s own estimates place the number of registered users in the ballpark of 30 million. The actual number may be higher, as GitLab is an open-source project that people can use without registration.
Average monthly visits: 3.15 million
Backend: Go / Ruby
Database: PostgreSQL
Grammarly.com
Grammarly has long been a must-have tool for the writing public. Released by a trio of Ukrainian developers in 2009, it is a powerful writing assistant that detects and suggests corrections and improvements pertaining to grammar, punctuation, spelling, writing style, and the overall tonality of the text.
Grammarly’s technology stack is extremely diverse: from Common Lisp at the core, TensorFlow and Python in AI/ML modules, Spark and Scala in the Data Science department to … Vue.js in some parts of the UI! For example, one of the most popular features of the service is that it is available to all users — an online text editor — having been built with Vue.js.
Grammarly is one of the fastest-growing and successful products of its type, with 30+ million daily users and 2,000+ enterprise clients.
Average monthly visits: 11.39 million
Backend: LISP / Erlang / Python / Go
Database: MySQL, Postgres, Redis, MongoDB
Netlify.com
Netlify is a rapidly growing Californian provider of cloud computing and serverless hosting services, the inventor and popularizer of the Jamstack architecture, and one of the most progressive think tanks in the web development world. The company has been named among the most prominent innovators in the Enterprise Tech 30 report for two consecutive years.
Netlify built its site with Vue.js and listed the technology as one that is fully supported by Netlify’s cloud platform, among other popular frameworks. Vue.js fits very neatly into the framework of the JAMStack architecture (JavaScript + API + Markup) that the company is promoting.
To date, the company has signed up over 1 million developers and enterprise users and is trusted by clients such as Nike, Verizon, Danone, and Unilever, among many others.
Average monthly visits: 0.42 million
Backend: N/A
Database: N/A
9GAG.com
9GAG is a Hong Kong-based social media site specializing in the aggregation and distribution of user-generated content and publishing branded content created by 9GAG’s own production team. Launched around 2010, the platform boasts some very impressive achievements:
- Users: 40 million registered accounts
- Audience: 150 million globally
- Monthly page views: 3.5 billion
- Monthly social video views: 2.2 billion
In order to keep visitors browsing for an average of 12 minutes per session (according to official statistics), the team had to choose a front-end technology capable of withstanding the highest load yet remaining responsive. Vue.js turned out to be the best choice for the job, and the company has since been known as one of the most notable users of the framework.
Average monthly visits: 18.22 million
Backend: PHP / Python
Database: Amazon S3 / Amazon RDS / Amazon Redsshif / MySQL / Redis
Upwork.com
Upwork is officially the world’s largest freelancer marketplace, with over 18 million vendors, 5 million clients, and over $1 billion in job postings each year. The platform, which provides top-tier talent across a wide range of disciplines, allows businesses all over the world to swiftly locate and hire the best people for the job.
On the client side, Upwork employs Vue.js to power its interfaces throughout the site, resulting in a seamless, dynamic, and consistent UX for both freelancers and companies. On the backend, the Nuxt.js framework is used for server-side rendering, better SEO, and faster speed.
Average monthly visits: 6 million
Behance.net
Founded in 2005 and currently owned by Adobe, Behance is the world’s largest exposition of personal art and creative works used by authors and talent hunters alike. A Behance account is an essential accessory for every creative designer or illustrator willing to be discovered.
Behance uses Vue.js as its primary UI framework and concentrates on making the user experience as intuitive and hassle-free as possible. The interface is minimalistic yet functional, and prioritizes users’ art over its own design, which makes perfect sense. The use of the compact and lightweight Vue.js framework minimizes the load time for non-image content and also ensures a smooth transition between images and user portfolios.
Average monthly visits: 5.83 million
Backend: Python / Flask / RoR
Database: Cassandra / Amazon SS3 / Amazon DynamoDB / MySQL / PostgreSQL
PornHub.com
Last but not least, this site is the undisputed champion of the adult entertainment arena and the 14th most popular site in the US. According to the official “Year In Review” 2019 report, the site had 42 billion visits (115 million visits per day) and 39 billion searches and transferred a staggering 6,597 petabytes of content. Although no further reports have been published so far, one could safely assume that those numbers have grown substantially during the pandemic and the lockdowns that ensued.
The adult industry has always been at the forefront of technological progress — think of the early adoption of high-resolution Blu-ray discs or the emergence of broadband connectivity in response to the explosively growing amounts of photo and video content transferred over the Internet.
With so many users to serve and so many pages to render every second, a lightning-fast UI is a must, which is why the company picked Vue.js as the primary front-end framework for all of its sites. It is used in combination with multiple proprietary components, highly customized video players, analytical modules, and other elements that work in sync to make the user experience more enjoyable.
Average monthly visits: 335 million
Backend: PHP
Database: MySQL / Redis
Other projects built with Vue.js
The examples above are just the tip of the iceberg. Countless other websites and online services use Vue.js as their core front-end technology, including Chess.com, Nintendo, Infermedica, Laravel, Spendesk, Keap, and many more. Vue.js development services can be used while building different kinds of systems, from PWAs and mobile apps to enterprise-grade software.
Bottom line
As you can see, Vue.js is a mature, powerful framework that has already been chosen by a great number of leading online platforms in various categories. With a thriving community of thousands of professional developers from every corner of the world and a core team that has a vision for years to come, the future of Vue.js is unquestionably very bright.
Our team holds the same optimistic opinion about Vue.js and has delivered multiple projects based on this technology. Please feel free to check out our portfolio and reach out to us for a professional consultation and a free quote for your next project leveraging the power of Vue.js.