Alexis Kestler
As a web developer with over 10 years of experience building web apps using traditional LAMP and MERN stacks, I was intrigued when I first heard about the Jamstack architecture. It promised speeds and simplicity that sounded almost too good to be true.
Over the past year, I‘ve built several production Jamstack sites and evangelized its benefits to my colleagues. This article aims to explain Jamstack clearly for those new to it and showcase why it represents the future of web development.
What Exactly is Jamstack?
The term Jamstack was coined in 2016 by Matt Biilmann, co-founder of Netlify, as a modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup.
Jamstack builds on the idea of static web pages and adds dynamic capability via JavaScript and APIs. According to Jamstack.org, some key aspects of how it works:
- Uses prebuilt markup templates generated at build time
- Served via CDN and needs no web server
- Leverages APIs and functions for server side logic
- Enables automated builds for rapid deployment
The key advantage of prerendering pages into static HTML is it unlocks incredible performance, security and scalability benefits compared to traditional server-side rendered apps.
Jamstack completely changed how I think about designing and building web apps. Let‘s compare it in more detail to the traditional approach.
Jamstack vs Traditional Web App Model
Building web apps the traditional way has some inherent drawbacks in terms of speed, security, complexity and scaling. Typically it involves:
- A server-side framework like Ruby on Rails or Django
- The server renders HTML for each page request
- Web servers like Nginx or Apache host the app
- Adding more servers (scaling up) to handle more traffic
- Potential security vulnerabilities on the web server
Jamstack offers a completely different paradigm:
- Prerendering pages into static HTML that can be served from a CDN
- No web servers required to deliver pages
- JavaScript for dynamic functionality
- APIs abstract server-side logic into reusable endpoints
- Easy horizontal scaling by adding more CDN nodes
This architectural shift unlocks enormous advantages, especially for sites with mostly static content. Let‘s analyze the improvements in detail:
Performance
Jamstack sites served over CDNs can achieve near instant page loads even under heavy traffic loads. There is no server-side processing or database calls slowing things down.
Prerendering also allows pages to load fast on weak internet connections compared to JavaScript heavy SPAs. Jamstack sites commonly achieve 100 scores on Google Lighthouse and WebPageTest.
Security
With no web servers in the architecture, common attack vectors like XSS, CSRF and SQL injections are non-issues. CDN platforms provide DDoS mitigation. Jamstack‘s simplicity leaves little surface area to breach.
Scalability
CDNs are designed to scale seamlessly to huge traffic volumes by distributing requests across their edge nodes. Jamstack sites can easily absorb traffic spikes from events like product launches and flash sales.
Cost Efficiency
Maintaining dedicated app servers is expensive compared to highly optimized CDN hosting. Prerendering also saves compute costs as pages don‘t need to be rendered on each request.
Developer Experience
For frontend devs like myself, developing with modern frameworks like React and Vue is much more enjoyable than legacy server-side frameworks. We can focus on building slick UIs without server config and deployment hassles.
Maintainability
With automated builds and atomic deploys from git, Jamstack sites can be easily updated. There‘s no need to coordinate frontend and backend releases.
Clearly, the pros of Jamstack are too substantial to ignore for sites not requiring complex user-specific functionality. Companies like Gatsby, Netlify and Next.js have further simplified building Jamstack apps.
Core Components Enabling Jamstack‘s Speed
Under the hood, Jamstack combines three key web technologies creatively to unlock its advantages:
1. JavaScript
Modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue and Svelte provide the dynamic capability to Jamstack apps via interactive UI components, client-side routing, form validation and more.
JavaScript overlay on static markup is powerful for dynamic functionality without sacrificing speed or security.
2. Reusable APIs
Dedicated backend APIs abstract away server-side data and logic:
- Database query APIs
- File upload/storage APIs
- 3rd party service APIs
- Functions-as-a-Service APIs
Consuming reusable APIs from the frontend is cleaner and more flexible than traditional monolithic server-side code.
3. Prebuilt Markup
Static site generators like Gatsby and Next.js build HTML pages from component frameworks like React and Markdown content. The prebuilt HTML can be served incredibly fast from CDN caches.
Markup also makes pages SEO friendly and provides offline browsing capability.
These technologies combined provide a simpler, more secure and scalable foundation for modern web apps compared to legacy architectures.
Real-World Data On Jamstack‘s Speed Boost
Curious about real data on the performance benefits of Jamstack? Check out the impact at a few prominent sites:
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Netlify: Improved site performance by 3x by moving to Jamstack (source)
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Smashing Magazine: Page load times reduced from 6.5s to 0.8s after switching to Gatsby and Netlify (source)
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Yellow.com: Time to Interactive reduced by 10x moving from Wordpress to Gatsby (source)
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Nike.com: Adopted Next.js for up to 50% faster page loads
The measurable data confirms Jamstack‘s immense impact on web performance across real production sites.
Jamstack Use Cases to Replace Traditional Apps
The Jamstack architecture is extremely versatile and can replace traditional server-side apps for the following use cases:
- Blogs and content sites
- Ecommerce stores
- Documentation sites
- Company websites
- Portfolios
- Landing pages
- Web apps with mostly static pages
For content sites like blogs, the ability to prerender all pages provides enormous performance benefits compared to rendering on the server.
Ecommerce sites can prebuild product catalogs for speed while using APIs for inventory and orders. Checkout flows can rely on client-side JavaScript.
Documentation sites with hierarchical content and search benefit tremendously from prerendered markup delivered over CDN.
I‘ve personally built company websites, portfolios, landing pages and blogs using Jamstack which provide a faster experience for visitors compared to WordPress or other CMS solutions.
Even large web apps like Nike.com with millions of pages leverage Jamstack successfully. The simpler architecture helps focus on product innovation rather than infrastructure.
Getting Started with Your First Jamstack Site
Excited to build something with Jamstack? Here is a step-by-step guide to building your first Jamstack site:
1. Choose a Static Site Generator
Static site generators like Gatsby, Next, Nuxt and Jekyll do the work of prebuilding your markup templates. Gatsby and Next are great choices for React based sites.
2. Develop the Site Frontend
Use your favorite React, Vue or Svelte framework to start building components and pages. The output will be prerendered to HTML.
3. Add Content Integration
Choose a Git-based workflow or headless CMS like Contentful or Prismic for content management. Use their APIs to fetch content during build.
4. Automate Builds and Deployment
Connect your Git repository to Netlify or Vercel for automated CI/CD on every commit. It will build and deploy your site when you push code.
5. Add Dynamic Functionality
Use APIs from services like FaunaDB, Stripe and Sentry to enable payments, databases, analytics etc. Or build your own Node.js or Serverless APIs.
That‘s all you need to get a basic Jamstack site up and running! The simplicity compared to traditional apps is incredibly refreshing.
Why I‘m Betting Big on Jamstack
As a developer who has built apps using varying languages, frameworks and architectures over the past decade, I‘m incredibly excited for the future promised by Jamstack.
My key reasons for adopting Jamstack wholeheartedly:
- Simplicity of prerendered markup, no servers and scalable CDN delivery
- Speed benefits unlocking near instant site performance
- Security of static assets and no web server attack surface
- Developer experience superior to legacy server-side frameworks
- Scalability and cost benefits of CDN versus web servers
- Product velocity from decoupled frontend and APIs
- Offline browsing capability with Service Workers
- SEO friendliness of rendered HTML
I plan to build all my personal projects using Jamstack going forward. The benefits are just too massive to miss out for startups and companies focused on their frontend experience.
The growing community around Jamstack also makes it easier than ever to get started. Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions!
