Angular

Angular Alternatives: Which Technology To Choose In 2024?

October 27, 2024•6 min read

Before exploring alternatives to Angular, let's clarify a common misunderstanding. Many articles across various blogs are titled "Angular Alternatives," but in reality, they often discuss alternatives to AngularJS —a framework that is dead and no longer supported.

It may create confusion, as Angular and AngularJS are entirely different frameworks, each with its own distinct use cases and purposes.

I want to ensure our readers and clients fully understand this distinction. When researching alternatives, it's essential to know what exactly you are looking for. Be cautious when reading such articles!

Our blog will focus specifically on Angular, a TypeScript-based framework widely used in modern web development. I will explain why businesses might consider alternatives to Angular, explore the available options, and discuss the reasons why some companies seek alternatives for a framework that remains highly relevant today.

Why Businesses Consider Alternatives to Angular

One of the main reasons businesses are considering alternatives to Angular is its decline in popularity.

Despite Google's framework being a leader in frontend development in 2018, developers' focus has shifted towards tools offering a simpler experience and fully meeting client needs.

Angular Verbosity and Component-Based Architecture

One of the core issues with Angular is its daily routine work.

Its component-based architecture requires breaking down user interfaces into separate components. While this approach allows to reuse code and organize everything better, developers often spend significant time writing boilerplate code that doesn't develop project in general.

It makes Angular less profitable than more streamlined tools, where your team can focus on more critical aspects of the project without getting slowed down by routine tasks.

For smaller teams or projects, the time spent on such tasks can be a notable drawback, leading to Angular alternatives research.

The Complexity of Learning and Maintenance

Angular's complexity is another crucial factor that pushes businesses to find alternatives. What is challenging? It requires a deep understanding of TypeScript and additional concepts like Modules, Services, and Dependency Injection.

Managing these different elements can feel overwhelming, especially for teams not deeply experienced with the framework.

Moreover, even basic troubleshooting requires extensive research because its error messages are often cryptic.

As a result, companies may find it more cost-effective to find a simpler tool and do faster onboarding and development.

Performance

While Angular uses the familiar Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, which separates the application into three interconnected parts — Model, View, and Controller — its performance can sometimes be a bottleneck.

Angular's two-way data binding feature, which keeps the user interface and internal data synchronized in real-time, can negatively impact performance in large applications where constant data syncing can cause lags in the system.

Users are not patient. They feel frustrated when your application or website slows down. With each millisecond of delay, the likelihood of them quitting increases, resulting in lost clients and money.

That's why many companies aim to offer fast and seamless user experiences, choosing more efficient and lightweight tools.

Angular can be overkill for your project

Google's framework remains robust, and thousands of projects have been built with Angular, but it has significant disadvantages for small and medium projects.

For those who are looking for more flexible business solutions, it's worth exploring my list of Angular alternatives I've chosen based on the following criteria:

Popularity Among Developers. The more popular a tool, the larger its talent pool and available resources.
Ease of Learning. Some tools are more accessible to pick up, especially for teams with varying levels of experience.
Performance. I evaluated how well each tool handles different applications and its ability to provide fast, responsive user experiences.
Integration. A good tool should work well within a diverse tech stack.

Next, let's go over some popular Angular alternatives.

Review of popular Angular alternatives

React

Honestly, when you are considering migrating from Angular, React is one of the top choices in 80% of cases. For good reason: React holds a leading position among the most-used technologies by software developers. According to a Statista study, it is used by 39.5% of experts, while Angular is used twice less (17.1%). Moreover, Angular's popularity is waning every day.

Another reason why React is one of the best alternatives to Angular is its simplicity and flexibility. Unlike Angular, which is a full-fledged framework, React is a JavaScript library. This feature gives developers more freedom to choose how to structure their applications.

Moreover, React offers an extensive number of add-ons, allowing developers to easily create dynamic user interfaces.

Another significant advantage is performance. React utilizes a virtual DOM, which means it can update only the parts of the user interface that have changed rather than reloading the entire page. This makes React particularly efficient for applications needing real-time updates or dynamic content.

Compared to Angular's two-way data binding, which can sometimes slow down large applications, React's approach is faster and less resource-intensive.

Strengths

Versatility Across Industries: React is suitable for various industries, including e-commerce, automotive, and media, making it a versatile option for building web applications.
Code Reusability: React's flexible structure allows developers to reuse code. This eliminates the need to rewrite code sections, significantly speeding up the development process.
Scalability: React's architecture is ideal for building large web projects. It allows developers to quickly scale applications and add new functionalities. The JavaScript library is well-suited for these types of modifications.
Large Community: As one of the most popular frontend technologies, React has a massive community. So, finding resources, libraries, and experienced developers is rarely an issue. The frequent updates and improvements provided by Meta (Facebook) ensure that React stays up to date with the latest trends and needs in web development.
Seamless Transition to Mobile: If you decide to build a mobile app with React Native, your development team will find it easy to adapt.
Excellent Performance: Applications built with React offer high performance and run smoothly on various desktop devices.

Weaknesses

Less Strict Architecture: React's flexible architecture requires more attention to code organization. Without careful planning, the architecture of a web application may become problematic over time.
Additional Tools: One downside is that devs must learn several related tools to use React effectively.
Initial Confusion: Although React is relatively easy to learn, developers may experience some initial confusion when getting familiar with the technology and its ecosystem.

If your development team asks to migrate to React, their request might be worth considering. React's flexibility and performance benefits can boost development speed and improve user experience, which are critical factors for any growing business.

Vue.JS

Vue (pronounced like view) is an excellent Angular alternative, as it is also a framework that allows devs to do the same job but with several key advantages. It builds on top of standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and provides a declarative, component-based programming model that helps efficiently develop user interfaces of any complexity where performance and adaptability are crucial.

Moreover, Vue.js is much easier to learn. While Angular requires a deeper understanding of TypeScript, modularity, and many built-in tools, Vue.JS provides flexibility and simplicity, allowing developers to understand and implement the framework quickly.

Vue.JS integrates easily into existing projects and can work alongside other libraries or frameworks. It doesn’t require a complete project overhaul if you want to add Vue to an existing application. Conversely, Angular demands total control over the project, making integration into existing codebases impossible.

Strengths:

Flexibility and Simplicity: Vue gives developers more freedom in structuring their applications than Angular.
Lightweight and Fast: Vue is lightweight, leading to faster load times and better overall performance, especially in smaller to medium-sized applications.
Component-based Architecture: Vue allows developers to create reusable components, simplifying the maintenance and scalability of large projects.

Weaknesses:

Smaller Ecosystem: While Vue is growing, it still lags behind Angular in terms of ready-made solutions, tools, and plugins for complex enterprise-grade applications.
Limited Corporate Adoption: Vue is popular among smaller projects and independent developers but is not as widely adopted by large corporations as Angular or React.

This is why devs call Vue "The Progressive Framework": it's a framework that can grow with you and adapt to your needs.

jQuery

jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library that has been popular for many years. It simplifies common tasks in web development with an easy-to-use API that works across many browsers.

"Getting started with jQuery can be easy or challenging, depending on your experience with JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and programming concepts in general." - jQuery.

It's true. All the power of jQuery is accessed via JavaScript, so having a high skill in it is essential for understanding, structuring, and debugging your code.

But it is worth it because jQuery is the perfect tool for projects where you don't need complexity and want to handle everyday tasks quickly. Even with the rise of modern libraries like React, jQuery is still one of the best Angular alternatives.

Strengths:

Cross-browser Compatibility: jQuery ensures consistent behavior across different web browsers, solving many compatibility issues developers face when writing vanilla JavaScript.
Simplified DOM Manipulation: jQuery makes it easy to select, manipulate, and modify HTML elements, reducing the amount of code.
Large Ecosystem and Support: With a long history and widespread use, jQuery has a huge community, extensive documentation, and various plugins and extensions.
Great for Legacy Projects: jQuery is still widely used in older web applications, making it an essential tool for maintaining or upgrading legacy projects.

Weaknesses:

Outdated for Modern Development: While useful in the past, jQuery has mainly been replaced by modern frameworks and libraries like React and Angular, which offer more advanced features for building complex applications.
Performance Issues in Large Applications: jQuery can be less efficient than modern frameworks when used in large or complex applications, as it lacks the optimization capabilities of more modern tools.

With a combination of versatility and extensibility, jQuery has changed the way that millions of people write JavaScript.

Svelte

Svelte is another framework for building user interfaces on the web. It uses a compiler to turn declarative components written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into lean, tightly optimized JavaScript.

What makes it a good Angular alternative is speed in smaller projects as it handles changes directly in the DOM without needing a virtual DOM like Angular.

Moreover, Svelte has fewer complexities than Angular. It doesn't require deep knowledge of modules, services, or state management libraries, making it easier to learn and quicker to implement.

Devs use this framework for many projects, from standalone UI components to full-stack web applications.

Strengths:

No Virtual DOM: Svelte eliminates the overhead associated with a virtual DOM by rendering components during the compile step. This leads to faster load times and better overall performance, especially for small to medium-sized applications.
Lightweight and Minimalistic: Svelte applications are often smaller than those built with Angular, resulting in quicker load times and a better user experience, especially on mobile devices or slower networks.

Weaknesses:

Smaller Ecosystem: Svelte is relatively new and has a smaller ecosystem than Angular. This means fewer pre-built solutions, third-party tools, and community support, making finding help or resources for more complex use cases harder.
Limited Corporate Adoption: Svelte is still growing in popularity, but it has yet to achieve the widespread enterprise adoption of frameworks like Angular or React.

Conclusion

The number of Angular alternatives is beyond the technologies we mentioned above. Different options serve different things. Frameworks like Angular and Vue.js are ideal for large-scale projects where structure, scalability, and a well-defined architecture are essential.

On the other hand, libraries like React are more suited for projects where flexibility and the ability to customize your tech stack are priorities. It is especially useful for projects requiring a lighter, more flexible solution focusing on user interaction.

To successfully migrate to another technology, you must have a reliable partner with an experienced team and find the best tool possible.

The Frontend Company has a proven track record of guiding businesses through finding the best Angular alternatives and migrating to modern technologies smoothly and efficiently. Contact us today for a consultation, and we’ll find the best solution for your project.

FAQ

1. Why should I migrate from Angular to another framework or library?

Migrating from Angular is beneficial when looking for a more straightforward, flexible tool that performs better for your specific needs. While Angular is powerful, frameworks like Svelte, Vue, or libraries like React can be more lightweight, easier to learn and offer faster load times, particularly for smaller or less complex projects.

2. How do I choose the right alternative to Angular?

Finding a suitable alternative to Angular depends directly on your project's specific needs and priorities. Whether you’re looking for performance, flexibility, or simplicity, the best choice will vary. We recommend contacting our manager for a consultation to make the decision easier. We will assess your requirements and help you choose the right alternative to Angular.

3. Do I need to pay for migrating from Angular to another technology?

Yes, migrating from Angular to another technology will typically involve costs, as the process requires careful planning, development time, and expert execution. However, the investment can improve project performance, provide faster load times for users, and streamline the development process for your team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex Vasylenko

CEO at The Frontend Company, Founder of Digital Business Card

Alex Vasylenko is the founder of The Frontend Company, DBC and several other successful startups. A dynamic tech entrepreneur, he began his career as a frontend developer at Deloitte and Scandinavia's largest banking company. In 2023, Alex was honored as one of 'Top 10 Emerging Entrepreneurs' by USA Today.

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