PWA-pros-and-cons

PWA Pros and Cons: The battle of PWA Studio, Vue Storefront and ScandiPWA

by Summer

When customers always want to have a smooth and convenient experience during the time they are surfing on the internet, PWA is one of the perfect technologies. So which are the PWA pros and cons? The name of which PWA solutions is suitable for your business to catch up with the dynamic technological world? Scroll down to find out the answers in our freebie.

Introduction

Progressive Web App (PWA) has demonstrated its influence in the eCommerce market by offering superior functionalities compared to responsive web pages or native applications. Taking advantage of this trend, numerous online businesses have transformed their websites into PWA storefronts in different ways. 

To have a big picture on why PWA is the future for eCommerce websites, below is the comparison table between PWA vs Native apps vs Responsive websites:

comparision between-PWA-vs-Native-apps-vs-Responsive-website-pwa-pros-and-cons-

 

Check out this post to find out Top noticeable PWA statistics you should not miss!

As the PWA advantages are undeniable, technology providers have surged to develop their solutions to serve the exponentially growing needs of merchants. As a result, we now have three hottest names for their excellent PWA solutions and their application for Magento websites: PWA Studio, Vue Storefront, and Scandi PWA. 

  • The Magento PWA Studio is a set of developer tools and libraries that enable you to develop, implement, and maintain a PWA storefront on top of a Magento 2 backend. It is ready-to-use tools to create a build system and framework, which adheres to the Magento principle of extensibility.
  • Vue Storefront is a stand-alone frontend solution written on top of the Vue.js framework that is used to program eCommerce PWA projects. Vue Storefront may be used to develop a PWA interface for Magento (Vue Storefront with Magento 2), Spotify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and other platforms because it operates independently and does not rely on any backend platform.
  • ScandiPWA is the first Open Source PWA theme for Magento that has the largest amount of Magento features and constantly updates with new versions. It allows us to build websites on top of it as merchants don’t have to download any GIT source code or modify source code. The migration process is less complex thanks to the features supported and the absence of middleware. 

Even though these solutions are ready-made themes, they still encounter some extended drawbacks. It is hard to have a one-size-fits-all solution for all merchants in the eCommerce world. Therefore, we have come up with an in-depth comparison of PWA pros and cons from basic to comprehensive technical facts and statistics to give you an extensive view on which solutions will be your best fit. 

General Comparison

General Information

We have provided all of the general information for 3 solutions to give you a better idea of their development and achievements up to date.

PWA Studio Vue Storefront Scandi PWA
Provider Adobe Magento Vue Storefront Scandiweb
Started June 2018 November 2017 September 2018
Frontend Demo venia.magento.com demo.vuestorefront.io tech-demo.scandipwa.com
Latest version 11.0.0 1.12.3 5.0.6
Number of Releases 17 51 102
Github github.com/magento/pwa-studio github.com/vuestorefront/vue-storefront github.com/scandipwa/scandipwa
Github Stars / Forks 843 / 313 8.9k / 1.9k 415 / 236
Contributors 162 269 83
Open Source Yes Yes Yes
Project Live by Builtwith

– Backend

– Top 1m

– Top 100k

– Top 10k

324 live websites 

Magento 2

76

16

3

836 live websites

Magento, Shopify,  Shopware

103

13

2

236 live websites

Magento 2

32

3

0

Project Stats Undefined vuestorefront.io/live-project

500+ live projects. 80 showcases

scandipwa.com/case-studies.html

57+ live projects

57 showcases

Headless Yes Yes Yes
Support Magento 2 Magento 1 + 2, Shopify, Shopware Magento 2, Shopify
i18n (localization) Yes Yes Yes
Multi Websites / Multiple Stores Yes (most stable) Yes (beta) Yes (errors remaining)
CMS M2 CMS API / Page Builder M2 CMS API  Full Support
Search ElasticSearch ElasticSearch ElasticSearch/MySql
Payments Braintree Paypal, Stripe, Klarna, Mollie, Adyen, Checkout.com, Braintree, G Pay, Apple Pay Paypal, Klarna, Braintree, Stripe
Analytics / Tracking Google Tag Manager Vue Analytics

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager
Offline Support Yes Yes Yes

Comparing the community of all 3 solutions by Github Stars, Forks, and Contributors factors, we can see that Vue Storefront has the highest number of people who upvoted the solution on Github (10x higher than PWA Studio and 20x higher than ScandiPWA). Moreover, Vue Storefront also has the largest contributor community, in which users can be assured that there is a huge pool of knowledge and tutorials shared by experienced developers. 

On the other hand, Magento PWA Studio has higher ranking websites compared to the other 2 solutions. Specifically, PWA Studio acquired 16 websites in the top 100K and 3 in the top 10K global websites while its developed websites are almost one-third of Vue Storefront projects. This indicates the significance of Magento PWA Studio quality. 

Additionally, if you are looking for a solution to adapt your emerging scalability that can manage multiple store views under one roof, PWA Studio is the most stable solution as Vue Storefront is in beta version and this feature in ScandiPWA remains many errors. 

Featured Websites

Let’s have a look at these 3 solutions’ successful projects, which have illustrated each solution’s optimal features that contributed to the business’s performance. Most High to Very High traffic websites are using Magento PWA Studio and Vue Storefront solutions, however, companies using ScandiPWA are achieving an enormous volume of sales revenue.

featured-website-comparison

Looking for a PWA development partner? Check out the top 9 PWA companies here.

Tech Stack Comparision

Based on 9+ years of experience, we have evaluated the tech stack of all 3 solutions to compare the difficulty level for PWA website development. Each solution has its PWA pros and cons so you can consider each factor to suit your specifications. 

We have come up with our evaluation on the degree of development and deployment of each solution, which illustrates that Magento PWA Studio is the easiest solution so far thanks to its tech stacks. 

Furthermore, we continue to explore the adaptability of these solutions to high traffic and their current issues to assess their Extensible Architecture level, known as their capability for expanded development/customization. In this assessment, Vue Storefront is the winner because it has the minimum number of existing issues, which allows developers to expand the capabilities in PWA development.

tech-stack-comparison-pwa-solutions

Theme Comparison

While PWA Studio and Vue Storefront are the suite of tools for creating new storefronts that developers can utilize, ScandiPWA is an installable PWA theme. Unlike many other PWA solutions, ScandiPWA does not offer the backend transformation, which can reduce performance, introduce errors, and demand additional resources for maintenance.

However, sometimes the interface components of ScandiPWA, such as buttons and text content blocks, are too small. Moreover, the logic of functionality separation is relatively narrow and not intuitive.

Fortunately, we have an alternative option here. Based on Magento PWA Studio, Siminia is an open-source PWA theme and responsive on both desktop and mobile. By speeding up page loading by up to three times, it improves Google ranking. The addition to the home screen and push notification functions makes it simple to convert your store into a headless storefront that is quick, interesting, and mobile-friendly.

magento-pwa-theme-siminia

Because of this, Siminia is an ideal option, enabling you to maintain the same backend that your developers are currently accustomed to while also incorporating all the benefits of the PWA technology!

>> Try Siminia frontend demo HERE

Google Pagespeed Insight

PageSpeed Insights (PSI) provides statistics and data on a page’s performance on mobile and desktop devices and recommends how it might be improved. At the beginning of the report, PSI provides a score that summarizes the page’s performance. This score is determined by running Lighthouse to collect and analyze lab data about the page. A score of 90 or above is considered good. 50 to 90 is a score that needs improvement, and below 50 is considered poor (Google). A website with optimized Google Pagespeed scores will enhance its ranking on the Google search engine with better SEO performance, increasing its visibility to potential consumers.

magento-pwa

Extension & Integration comparison

As PWA is a new technology, there is still no one-for-all solution for PWA websites. Each PWA provider is still developing their PWA solutions by more extensions and integration. Let’s take a look at each PWA solutions’ extensions and integrations. 

PWA Studio Vue Storefront Scandi PWA
CMS
Magento CMS Yes Yes Yes
Storyblok No Yes No
Contentstack No Yes No
Amplience No Yes No
Contentful No Yes No
Bloomreach No Yes No
Magnolia No Yes No
LexasCMS No Yes No
Payments
Checkout.com No Yes No
Paypal No Yes Yes
Braintree Yes Yes Yes
Stripe No Yes Yes
Klarna No Yes Yes
Apple Pay No Yes No
Google Pay No Yes No
Mollie No Yes No
Third-party services
Algolia No Yes No
Contructor.io No Yes No
Talon.one No Yes No
Cloudinary No Yes No
Webeyez No Yes No
KLEVU No Yes No
Available PWA Extensions
Count 0 0 49 (coming soon 14)

marketplace.scandipwa.com

Login as customer No No Yes
MultiSafepay Payments No No Yes
Social Login No No Yes
Store Locator No No Yes
Magento 2 B2B No No Yes
Magento 2 Commerce Gift Cards No No Yes
301 Redirect Upload No No Yes
Upper Navigation for Mobile No No Yes
UPS Access Point Navigator No No Yes
Mageworx SEO Suite Ultimate Extension No No Coming Soon
Amasty Improved Layered Navigation No No Yes
Adobe Live Search No No Yes
Compatible with Other Magento 2 Extensions Need to customize Need to customize Need to customize
Own PWA marketplace No No Yes

Obviously, with long-term development time, Vue Storefront has developed many integrations for its PWA solution. It developed basic CMS integrations, payment integrations, and third-party services integrations. 

Regarding payment integration, while PWA Studio only supports Braintree, Scandi PWA supports 4 main payment methods, and Vue Storefront provides most of the needed payment integrations with 8 methods. 

Regarding available PWA extensions, Scandi PWA is the only provider with its own PWA marketplace and nearly 50 extensions (the list is still updated). All PWA solutions are currently not compatible with other Magento 2 extensions. However, users can choose to customize the Magento 2 extensions for their requirements’ fulfillment. 

Summary

Because PWA solutions are being developed, each PWA solution’s pros and cons are still listed. Let’s compare the current performance, support, and other criteria. 

On web analytics (Desktop)

PWA Studio Vue storefront Scandi PWA
SEO 100 99 84
PWA Best Practices 93 100 93
Performance 55 75 89
Accessibility 97 89 88
Summary 345 363 354
Winner

Notice the details, each PWA solution has its own strengths.  The PWA Studio is the best solution for SEO support, while Vue Storefront is evaluated higher in terms of PWA Best Practices and Scandi PWA is the winner for its performance. If we consider all criteria are equal, Vue storefront will be the winner on web analytics (desktop). 

Based on other criteria

PWA Studio Vue storefront Scandi PWA
Integration Features Winner
Number of Live Websites Winner
Top Sites in 100k Winner
Sale revenue websites Winner
Number of Integrated Extension Winner
Compatible with M2 Versions Winner
Stable Winner (Still Beta for M2)
Developer Friendly Winner
Number of Payment Gateways Winner
Community Winner
Smallest Number of Issues Winner
Frequent Updates Winner
Official Adobe Support Winner
Sum Win 6/13 Win 6/13 Win 1/13

 

The final question must be: which PWA solutions will be the best? It’s obvious that there is no certain answer to this question. Because each PWA solution has its own pros and cons, the best one should be suitable for your business – depending on your priority requirements. If your first requirement is to have a stable and developer-friendly solution, your website should go with PWA studio. In case you are looking for a comprehensive solution with supportive integrations, the winner will be Vue Storefront then. However, if you consider the available extensions as the most important aspect, the Scandi PWA should be your first choice.

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We hope this PWA pros and cons checklist can help you pick a suitable solution for your business. Therefore, if you are considering PWA solutions for your eCommerce website, an experienced consultant should discuss your requirements and advise you to have the best suitable solution for your needs. 

CHECK OUT more about our Magento PWA Development to see our services

Contact BSS Commerce for more valuable information and consulting. 

 

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