What are reasons you're not using Svelte in production?
Annie Taylor Chen

Annie Taylor Chen @annietaylorchen

About: A hybrid of coder, designer, photographer. I love innovative and creative projects. I also cook awesome vegan food!

Location:
Stockholm, Sweden
Joined:
Jul 7, 2020

What are reasons you're not using Svelte in production?

Publish Date: Aug 26 '20
11 4

We know there are a lot of perks using Svelte:

  1. less code to write, less bugs to chase
  2. smaller bundle size, fast performance
  3. compiler only, no big run-time library or virtual DOM
  4. typescript-friendly
  5. built-in easy-to-use transition and animation
  6. easy to use state management
  7. friendly for juniors to learn

There are a few reasons as cons as well:

  1. small community, less support for solutions
  2. eco-system is not as diverse as others, such as React's
  3. might not support vintage browsers such as pre-IE 11
  4. no big well-known application as examples to demonstrate the scalability of the apps

Are there any other reasons you're not using it in production? Especially if you're a tech lead, CTO or senior developer who has a say about what tech stack to use for projects, I'd really love to hear your perspectives! I understand it takes time time to rewrite things if you already have an app to maintain, but if you are given a chance to select tech stack to build new apps, will you choose Svelte? Why or why not?

Comments 4 total

  • Phil Renaud
    Phil RenaudAug 27, 2020

    Hi Annie -- thanks for making this post. It's timely; we launched a Svelte (+Sapper) app to production last week.

    This is from a brand new team at our organization. I chose Svelte because of how JS-oriented it feels (compared to React or Angular or Ember, which tend to feel like a lot of what you learn are framework-oriented). Further, Svelte allows our devs from various backgrounds (python/flask, vue, react, vanilla JS) to contribute meaningfully early.

    It's been a really nice experience. I would encourage anybody thinking about adopting a new framework to consider Svelte strongly -- the productivity is through the roof.

    • Annie Taylor Chen
      Annie Taylor ChenAug 27, 2020

      That's so nice to hear. :) I wish more people are open like you.

      The purpose for this post is to find the "cons" that are preventing people from learning/adopting Svelte, as I have only a personal project, and as a junior dev, I might not know any short comings people might have met in the larger production application or if they have concerns that I don't know yet. :P So we who are Svelte enthusiasts could do something positive for the community.

  • Otabek
    OtabekMay 15, 2021

    FYI, Spotify, Chess.com, OLX.UA, Semrush.com, NYTimes.com, Ikea.com, Mail.ru, squareup.com, rtvslo.si, live.bilibili.com - all uses SVELTE!

  • Stanislav Khromov
    Stanislav KhromovFeb 22, 2023

    We are using Svelte in production more and more every day. Right now we use it mostly for smaller projects but that's just inertia - most larger web projects have a lifespan of several years. If Svelte continues on the current path you will see a lot more "big" projects coming out of it in the years to come

    eco-system is not as diverse as others, such as React's

    Regarding this point, Svelte has the amazing benefit of "using the web platform". You don't need a wrapper for that third party JavaScript library, you can use it almost like in normal HTML.

    For example, a user recently asked how to use the TypewriterJS library in Svelte. The end result was under 10 lines of code:
    svelte.dev/repl/d347ff45ef40472893...

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