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ExpressJS vs Meteor: What are the differences?

Introduction

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that is commonly used for formatting text on websites. In this task, we will format the content and provide key differences between ExpressJS and Meteor.

1. Scalability: ExpressJS is a minimalist web application framework for Node.js, while Meteor is a full-stack JavaScript platform. ExpressJS allows developers to have fine-grained control over the application structure, making it highly scalable for complex projects. On the other hand, Meteor provides a high level of abstraction and simplifies the development process, making it more suitable for small to medium-sized applications.

2. Real-time Communication: Meteor has built-in support for real-time communication between the client and the server. It uses a technology called WebSocket to establish a persistent connection, allowing data to be transferred instantly. ExpressJS, on the other hand, does not have built-in real-time communication capabilities and requires additional libraries or tools to achieve the same functionality.

3. Database Integration: ExpressJS offers flexibility in terms of database integration. It provides support for various databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc., allowing developers to choose the database that best suits their project requirements. In contrast, Meteor comes with its own database system called "MongoDB" and promotes its use by providing seamless integration and real-time updates out of the box.

4. Community and Ecosystem: ExpressJS is a widely adopted web framework with a large and active community. It has a vast ecosystem of third-party libraries, plugins, and extensions, which gives developers a wide range of options to enhance their applications. Meteor, although less popular compared to ExpressJS, has a dedicated community and provides a curated set of packages that offer ready-to-use functionality for different use cases.

5. Development Speed: Meteor emphasizes rapid application development by providing a unified and integrated development environment. It simplifies the process of building real-time applications by handling various aspects such as server-client synchronization, database updates, and user interface updates. ExpressJS, being more lightweight and versatile, offers more control and customization options but may require more time and effort to set up and configure for different development needs.

6. Learning Curve: ExpressJS follows a modular structure and requires a good understanding of Node.js concepts and middleware integration. It allows developers to have more control but also requires more knowledge and experience to use efficiently. Meteor, on the other hand, abstracts away many complexities and provides a simpler programming model, making it more accessible for beginner-level developers or those with less experience in web development.

In summary, ExpressJS and Meteor have key differences in terms of scalability, real-time communication, database integration, community and ecosystem, development speed, and learning curve. Depending on the project requirements and the level of control and simplicity desired, developers can choose the framework that best suits their needs.

Decisions about ExpressJS and Meteor
Lucas Litton
Founder & CEO at Macombey · | 13 upvotes · 571.8K views

Next.js is probably the most enjoyable React framework our team could have picked. The development is an extremely smooth process, the file structure is beautiful and organized, and the speed is no joke. Our work with Next.js comes out much faster than if it was built on pure React or frameworks alike. We were previously developing all of our projects in Meteor before making the switch. We left Meteor due to the slow compiler and website speed. We deploy all of our Next.js projects on Vercel.

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This basically came down to two things: performance on compute-heavy tasks and a need for good tooling. We used to have a Meteor based Node.js application which worked great for RAD and getting a working prototype in a short time, but we felt pains trying to scale it, especially when doing anything involving crunching data, which Node sucks at. We also had bad experience with tooling support for doing large scale refactorings in Javascript compared to the best-in-class tools available for Java (IntelliJ). Given the heavy domain and very involved logic we wanted good tooling support to be able to do great refactorings that are just not possible in Javascript. Java is an old warhorse, but it performs fantastically and we have not regretted going down this route, avoiding "enterprise" smells and going as lightweight as we can, using Jdbi instead of Persistence API, a homegrown Actor Model library for massive concurrency, etc ...

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Pros of ExpressJS
Pros of Meteor
  • 381
    Simple
  • 336
    Node.js
  • 244
    Javascript
  • 193
    High performance
  • 152
    Robust routing
  • 73
    Middlewares
  • 72
    Open source
  • 59
    Great community
  • 37
    Hybrid web applications
  • 16
    Well documented
  • 9
    Sinatra inspired
  • 9
    Rapid development
  • 7
    Isomorphic js.. superfast and easy
  • 7
    Socket connection
  • 5
    Light weight
  • 4
    Npm
  • 4
    Resource available for learning
  • 3
    Callbacks
  • 3
    Event loop
  • 2
    Data stream
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 251
    Real-time
  • 200
    Full stack, one language
  • 183
    Best app dev platform available today
  • 155
    Data synchronization
  • 152
    Javascript
  • 118
    Focus on your product not the plumbing
  • 107
    Hot code pushes
  • 106
    Open source
  • 102
    Live page updates
  • 92
    Latency compensation
  • 39
    Ultra-simple development environment
  • 29
    Smart Packages
  • 29
    Real time awesome
  • 23
    Great for beginners
  • 22
    Direct Cordova integration
  • 16
    Better than Rails
  • 15
    Less moving parts
  • 13
    It's just amazing
  • 10
    Blaze
  • 8
    Great community support
  • 8
    Plugins for everything
  • 6
    One command spits out android and ios ready apps.
  • 5
    It just works
  • 5
    0 to Production in no time
  • 4
    Coding Speed
  • 4
    Easy deployment
  • 4
    Is Agile in development hybrid(mobile/web)
  • 4
    You can grok it in a day. No ng nonsense
  • 2
    Easy yet powerful
  • 2
    AngularJS Integration
  • 2
    One Code => 3 Platforms: Web, Android and IOS
  • 2
    Community
  • 1
    Easy Setup
  • 1
    Free
  • 1
    Nosql
  • 1
    Hookie friendly
  • 1
    High quality, very few bugs
  • 1
    Stack available on Codeanywhere
  • 1
    Real time
  • 1
    Friendly to use

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Cons of ExpressJS
Cons of Meteor
  • 27
    Not python
  • 17
    Overrated
  • 14
    No multithreading
  • 9
    Javascript
  • 5
    Not fast
  • 3
    Easily Insecure for Novices
  • 5
    Does not scale well
  • 4
    Hard to debug issues on the server-side
  • 4
    Heavily CPU bound

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What is ExpressJS?

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

What is Meteor?

A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.

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What companies use Meteor?
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What are some alternatives to ExpressJS and Meteor?
Koa
Koa aims to be a smaller, more expressive, and more robust foundation for web applications and APIs. Through leveraging generators Koa allows you to ditch callbacks and greatly increase error-handling. Koa does not bundle any middleware.
React
Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
Flask
Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.
Django
Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
Golang
Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.
See all alternatives