The NodeJS Digital Transformation Guide for Non-Technical Founders

When it comes to selecting the right back-end technology. It can be confusing to evaluate your project needs and a versatile fit for your back-end development. However,  NodeJS can be the best fit for your product. Thus, hire NodeJS developers to build the best business solution. Some of the crucial factors include whether you should look for offshore or onshore hiring. 

Considering you a non-tech entrepreneur, thus all you might be having a vision for a new business concept. Here, we understand that building a web server seems complicated, but it is not. Hire NodeJS developers, and you can create a web server in just a couple of code lines.

After going through this blog, you will know all the in’s and out’s of NodeJS technology and how to hire NodeJS developers that we are going to discuss.

As an Entrepreneur of Non-Technical background, are you aware about essential aspects of NodeJS technology? It’s Market presence? What is the predicted future of NodeJS and the finance involved with it?  Don’t worry, you will get all your such questions answered, while reading ahead.

This Digital Transformation guide for NodeJS is bundled with all you need to know about NodeJS for building your next project. It will enable you to make an informed decision to hire NodeJS developers or not. Let us tell you why we are experts on this technology.

We worked with 1000+ CTOs, hundreds of products amongst them have been funded by VC including MIT Delta V, Harvard innovation Lab. 

We want to share why they chose to hire NodeJS developers to build scalable solutions.

Select Best Back-End Technology

The choice of a relevant tech stack is especially challenging for small businesses and startups. As, they typically have limited budgets and thus, need a technology stack that gives the most bang for the buck to urge their projects off the bottom .

The right tech stack is to a great extent, the key to your project’s success. Whereas, the wrong choice of web app development technologies may be a reason for failure.

There are different languages available to the programmers. But let’s restrict the discussion to the languages which are popular and widely used. Each language has a variety of characteristics, support, communities, and ecosystems which affects the complete decision-making process.

Trending Technologies Available in Market

We are defining most trending technologies in the market at present, so you can get a better understanding of available technologies in the market. It will help you to choose the appropriate technology based on your product requirements.

1. Python

Python is popular among the scientific community. It is an open source, and high-level programming language which enhances code readability, precise code writing, and standard libraries.

Python also supports automatic memory management and dynamic type systems. It is suited to applications that scale horizontally across stateless servers. Thus, making it a good solution for applications that take advantage of the cloud based services.

Django is the most used Python framework which supports numerous startups such as Pinterest, Instagram, and EventBrite (Past).

2. NodeJS

NodeJS is a cross-platform framework, allowing programmers to build multiple platforms (desktop, web, mobile). As for examples of these solutions, it is difficult to imagine services, platforms, and software with a higher level of prominence.

Paypal, Uber, Netflix, Nasa, and Ebay are the few renowned companies which hire NodeJS developers to switch their existing tech stack with NodeJS.

Behind these titans of technology and internet activity are robust and versatile solutions built with NodeJS. You may see plain old JavaScript when accessing these services in your browser. But know that behind the curtain, NodeJS is running the show.

3. Java

Java is a general-purpose programming language that’s concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, and specifically designed to possess few implementation dependencies as possible.

Built on the philosophy of ‘write once and run everywhere’, Java is the hottest programming language as of 2015. The long commercial life and wide adoption of Java have created a strong ecosystem of documentation, libraries, and frameworks. Many of which are aimed toward e-commerce, security, and sophisticated transactional architectures. 

Java is employed for Android devices and will be considered if that platform is a component of your roll out strategy.

Thus, the selection of programing language is a crucial factor while building an internet application. But a clear vision on how to utilize the technology for achieving business goals is also essential.

Points to Consider while Choosing Back-End technology

In some projects, different technologies could be used interchangeably. In others, it would be impossible. That’s why it’s so important to make an informed choice instead of depending on the common myths or sticking to the easiest solution. Here are some factors to consider: 

1. Project Size and Complexity: Simple apps on tight deadlines, especially MVPs, require a different approach than huge products with an army of functions. However, in future if you like to upscale, then choose a flexible stack that allows you to grow your product.
2. Type of Product: Data-intensive apps, booking systems, social networking apps, streaming apps, CMS, IoT, FinTech apps, marketplaces, and simple MVPs will likely require different stacks. 
3. Cost: Remember that some tools are open-source and free for commercial use, which is only one point on the long list of the advantages that open-source gives both developers and stakeholders. Others are licensed and paid.

Hence you can conclude, despite choosing the right tech stack, it may not be a piece of cake to get the desired results. Here, specific technologies pair particularly well with applications. This makes the final choice a little bit easier.

What is NodeJS?

NodeJS may be a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. NodeJS uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient. npm may be a NodeJS package of an open source library which is the largest in the world.

It’s an asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime, which is meant to create scalable network applications. It can handle many concurrent connections at a time. When connection requests are made concurrently for every connection a callback is fired. If there’s no task to be performed NodeJS will attend sleep.

It uses JavaScript alongside C/C++ for things like interacting with the filesystem, beginning HTTP or TCP servers. Due to it’s rapidly growing community and NPM, NodeJS has become a really popular, open source and cross-platform app. It allows developing in no time and scalable network apps which will run on Microsoft Windows, Linux, or OS X.

Areas where it’s perfect to use NodeJS are as follows;

• I/O bound Applications.
• Data Streaming Applications.
• Data Intensive Real-time Applications (DIRT).
• JSON APIs based Applications.
• Single Page Applications.

At the same time, it’s not suitable for heavy applications involving more CPU usage.

What is Express? (NodeJS Framework)

Express.js—or simply Express; is a Sinatra-inspired framework for web development  on NodeJS. 

It’s a web framework that lets you structure a web application to handle multiple different http requests at a specific URL. Express is a minimal, flexible, and open-source NodeJS web app framework. It is introduced to make website development, web apps, & API’s much easier task.

It is considered the de-facto standard for the majority of NodeJS applications out there today.

Why use Express Framework?

Express helps to respond over requests with route support so that developers can write responses over specific URLs. It supports multiple templating engines to simplify HTML generation. 

The additional benefit about it is, it’s very simple and an open-source framework. There are also middleware modules present in express which help in data handling and keeping application error free. 

The middleware layer in a technology stack consists of Content Management Systems, Web Servers, and other similar tools that support Web Application Development. These middleware’s are written in languages like C# or Java which facilitates data management and communication between the front-end and the back-end.

In simple terms, middleware enables communication between data and database. For instance, when a user submits a registration form. It is  carried out through the middleware which creates a profile of the user and stores the data into the database.

Some Core Features of Express Framework

1. Allows middleware setup to respond over HTTP Requests.
2. Defines routing table which performs numerous actions based on URL and HTTP Method.
3. Allows dynamic rendering of  HTML Pages based on passed arguments to the templates

Features of NodeJS

1. IO helps Concurrent Request Handling 

All APIs of NodeJS are asynchronous. Therefore, if a NodeJS receives a request for any Input/Output operation, then it will execute that operation within the background and move ahead to process other requests. Thus, it doesn’t wait for the response from the previous requests.

2. Fast in Code Execution

NodeJS uses the Version-8 JavaScript Runtime Engine. It is also used by Google Chrome. NodeJS has a wrapper over the JavaScript engine. Hence, it makes the runtime engine much faster and processing of requests within NodeJS also becomes faster.

3. Single Threaded but Highly Scalable 

For event looping, NodeJS works on a single thread model. Thus, the response from such events may or may not reach to the server instantly. Despite that, this does not block other operations and makes NodeJS a highly scalable language. 

The Traditional servers build definite threads to handle requests. Whereas NodeJS creates a single thread and provides service to a much larger number of requests.

4. NodeJS library uses JavaScript 

This is another important aspect of NodeJS from the developer’s point of view. The majority of developers are already well-versed in JavaScript. Hence, the developer who knows JavaScript, for them development in NodeJS becomes easier.

5. Active and Vibrant Community

The active community of NodeJS framework, ensures to keep the framework updated based on the latest trends in web development.

6. No Buffering 

NodeJS applications never buffer any data. They simply output the data in chunks.

Advantages of NodeJS

• It makes really fast to build real-time, high-traffic apps (eg. chat or gaming apps). 
• NodeJS makes it possible to code in JavaScript for both the client and server side.
• It increases the development process efficiency by filling the gap between front-end and back-end developers.
• The ever-growing NPM (NodeJS Package Manager) gives developers multiple tools and modules to use, thus further boosting their productivity.
• Code executes faster than in any other language.
• NodeJS is perfect for micro-services which are a popular solution among enterprise applications.

With all of its advantages, NodeJS now plays a critical role in the technology stack of many high-profile companies who depend on its unique benefits. The NodeJS Foundation has consolidated all the best thinking around why enterprises should consider to hire NodeJS developers and technology.

Why Startups Hire NodeJS Developers and Prefer NodeJS over Other Techs?

The event-based nature of NodeJS makes it a perfect ingredient for applications where concurrent requests need to be handled in real-time, including frequent data transmission from the client to the server. There are certain situations and types of solutions for which NodeJS is best suited to and hire NodeJS developers, when compared with other technologies:

1. Streaming Services

The input/output model used by NodeJS makes it very handy for streaming. In particular, active connections allow users to upload and download data simultaneously rather than the process taking place in turns. Netflix opted to hire NodeJS developers and results into getting benefited from NodeJS technology. It allowed them to manage a large user database which is simultaneously streaming on their devices at the same time.

2. Chat Systems

This is another type of solution that plays to the strengths of the framework. When NodeJS is deployed with the right web sockets, even the most popular and active chats will function as expected. It handles the massive traffic and maintains great message delivery speed. A good example of twitter can be considered where they provide a chat-like inbox interface amongst various users. To implement it successfully, Twitter adopts NodeJS and hire NodeJS developers to achieve perfection in the service. 

3. Online Games

Online games usually involve a large number of connections that few runtime environments are equipped to handle. Thankfully, this one is built to handle such situations, enabling fast synchronization of data between the client and server and even allowing players to engage in multiplayer modes. Some mid-sized companies that have made online gaming possible by using NodeJS are Next Big Technology, Logic Simplified, Exio.tech, Casino Game Developers, etc.

4. Single-Page Applications

Single-Page Applications (SPAs) are a great option for NodeJS work because pages can be rendered on the server before this happens in the browser. So the user ultimately gets to see the content faster. This advantage is often compared to the abilities displayed by React and Angular. Trello is the best example of SPAs for project management & collaboration systems. The company preferred to hire NodeJS developers to use the tech stacks to the fullest in association with NodeJS.

5. REST APIs

Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs are used extensively in server-side architecture and are an important part of making microservices work. ExpressJS (another JavaScript framework) combined with NodeJS allows for the creation of responsive, lightweight, and efficient APIs of this kind. 

Various implementations of third-party APIs may be necessary for your next project NodeJS makes it simple to implement and function without hassle.

Apart from that, NodeJS is also preferred for IoT implementations. As you might have noticed, all of the aforementioned solutions involve a large number of users and quick responses, which are exactly the kind of conditions that NodeJS is tailored to.

Market Presence of NodeJS

Looking at the current IT trend, especially in the web development field, you can say that NodeJS development and the trend of dedicated NodeJS developers in building server-side is increasing. 

Lets begin with recent trends comparing NodeJS & Python

Recent trends comparing NodeJS & Java

Market Share by Top Websites showing NodeJS vs Python

Market Share by Top Websites showing NodeJS vs Java

Website Categories

NodeJS has better coverage in usage of more websites categories. Including Computers Electronics & Technology, Law & Government, Lifestyle, Arts & Entertainment and 16 other categories when compared with Python.

NodeJS has better coverage in usage of more websites categories. Including Computers Electronics & Technology, Law & Government, Lifestyle, Arts & Entertainment and 18 other categories when compared with Java.

Various NodeJS Stats

1. 3 out of 4 NodeJS users say they use a version manager. The most commonly used one, 52%, is NVM. (Source: NodeJS) A version manager can make your life easier. Programmers are practical people, so most of them use NVM.
2. 55% of NodeJS users rely on long term support (LTS) release line. 43% of users and most of the newer users opt for the current release. (Source: NodeJS) A slight majority of users choose stability and maturity over the latest features. Still, a big part of developers like to use the latest and greatest – and apparently, they are fine with an occasional bug here and there.
3. NodeJS has been using the Google V8 engine since its launch in 2009. (Source: NodeJSsource, NodeJSsource Insights) The V8 engine was written from the get-go with speed in mind. It is a core reason why NodeJS is so unbelievably fast.
4. In 2018, NodeJS  was downloaded more than 360 million times, with an average of 1 million downloads per day. (Source: NodeJSsource, NodeJSsource Insights) With the language being this awesome, that’s to be expected. Good thing its website is built on NodeJS as well, so it can handle all this traffic and also increases the demand in the market to hire NodeJS developers.
5. In 2018, the average monthly releases saw a small rise – from 5.08% in 2017, to 5.25% in 2018. (Source: NodeJSsource, NodeJSsource Insights) The popularity of the language serves to motivate the developers behind it. More frequent releases introduced more new features.

The NodeJS Market Share is at 1.12% (Source: Similar Web)

All we’ve said about this technology, 1.12% of market share must sound shocking? Well, not really. As effective as NodeJS is way more expensive (and time-consuming) than installing a simple WordPress script and instantly getting your own website in minutes.

WordPress which is based on PHP has a 33.6% market share – because it can get your website ready in minutes. If you just need an informative website, WordPress is likely a good idea.

If, however, your business needs a custom solution with all types of fancy features, developing one with NodeJS is still much more affordable than any other alternative. These trends and market share also depicts why businesses seek to hire NodeJS developers recently.

Comparison with Some Competitive Back-End Technologies

Here, we are comparing NodeJS with two of its major competitors, i.e., Java and Python.

Benefits of NodeJS when Compared with Java

• It is Easy to get started with.
• Great for prototyping and agile development.
• Build twice as fast as Java with fewer developers.
• Considering the PayPal tech shift; NodeJS uses 33% fewer lines of code and 40% fewer files, in comparison with the previous Java-based application.
• NodeJS doubles the number of requests served per second while decreasing the average response time by 35%.
• In NodeJS applications, we use JavaScript (so, If you have a front-end developer that knows JS he can reuse his JS skills and transit to a full-stack developer without learning a new programming language).
• NodeJS uses the largest ecosystem of open-source libraries available (no need of spending time on building infrastructure from scratch, instead you’ll focus on the core of the application).
• NodeJS is an event-driven (the server only reacts when an event occurs) and non-blocking environment. That makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time apps.

Both options are great in their own right, especially under different circumstances. For example, NodeJS is the more popular and helpful choice when it comes to desktop apps, while Java dominates the Android platform. 

Another example of their differences pertains to threading: Java web servers are multi-threaded (code is processed more efficiently), while NodeJS is single-threaded, causing blocks and slowdowns when bulky requests are sent to it. Thus, companies prefer to hire NodeJS developers for web app development.

“On the other hand, NodeJS is much easier to learn and has a faster development time than Java, as well as better scalability with hardware. Consider to hire NodeJS developers as it has better scalability scope in future.”

Benefits of NodeJS when Compared with Python:

• NodeJS is a server-side platform built on Google Chrome JavaScript Engine whereas Python is an object-oriented, high level, dynamic, and multipurpose programming language.
• It is better for web applications and website development whereas Python is best suitable for back-end applications, numerical computations, and machine learning.
• NodeJS is best suited for asynchronous programming whereas Python is not the best option for asynchronous programming.
• It is best suited for small projects while Python is best suited for developing large projects.
• NodeJS is best for memory-intensive activities whereas Python is not advisable for memory-intensive activities.

Python is the better choice when it comes to servers performing numerical computations and machine learning, while NodeJS excels in most general types of web services, especially real-time applications. Unlike Python, NJS supports asynchronous programming by default, allowing for better and faster scalability.

Let me restate what NodeJS homepage says about their advantages. They describe that NodeJS is “lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.” Yes, the applications that fit the description above well and can take advantage of NodeJS features. 

“NodeJS is stable enough and is being deployed in complex applications/systems. It’s easy to get started with NodeJS and when you’re building a next gen web application, especially APIs for mobile/web integration or want to create something with a custom solution, NodeJS is a run-time environment that suits you best. You should hire NodeJS developers for your project as it will boost your product timeline.”

How to Ensure NodeJS is SEO friendly?

Most SEO guidelines specialize in off-page SEO. Without an optimized website, off-page SEO campaigns are useless.

As with any project, the success of an SEO campaign starts with mastering and flawlessly executing the basics .

Digital marketing involves having well-optimized online land then letting the planet realize it. The success of your online business, therefore, rests on building a solid website backend that’s optimized for performance and usefulness. In all you should look to hire NodeJS developers who are also familiar with the SEO aspect of developing websites.

What does an SEO-friendly backend look like? Here are some issues to concentrate to:

1. Clean Code

Page loading speed has become a big Google ranking factor. Google users are highly  impatient and usually exit quickly from a site that takes much load time.

In fact, 25% of the visitors will also leave your site if it takes quite four seconds to load, consistent with KISSmetrics.

Google, for the aim of providing users with a seamless search experience, rewards sites that load fast. Therefore, you’ll start the method of accelerating your site and page loading speeds by cleaning up your code.

Clean code allows program spiders to know the knowledge on your site. you will have better ranking chances for the search terms you’re targeting if you give the search engines the chance to know what your content is all about.

You can use a tool like ‘Pingdom Website Speed Test’ to work out page speed performance using various factors like JavaScript, redirects, CSS, and more.

You want to wash up your code as soon as you discover out that it’s messy, you can do that yourself or hire a programmer. The simplest route to require is hiring an experienced programmer if you’re not confident in your technical SEO skills.

NodeJS reduces code lines by almost one-third of any traditional technology, which indirectly helps in optimizing your website. Hence, you should prefer to hire NodeJS developers to get SEO friendly products.

2. Crawlability

The amount of pages to be crawled on the online is mind-boggling – search engines only have such a lot of time to spend to index a page. If your page takes forever to crawl, you’ll not get much love from the search engines as they’ll advance to subsequent sites that afford them a simple and fast crawl.

Improving your website’s crawlability; support removing some dead-ends and have direct paths that support search engines to easily read your content. Otherwise, the website will not be rank ready if content couldn’t be indexed by the search engines.

“The website must be easily crawled and indexed by the Google bots and ideally easy to manage so as to optimize the URLs and other SEO elements of the web site ,” says Magicdust SEO.

The easiest thing to do is to make and submit an XML Sitemap to the search engines. A tool like XML Sitemap Generator helps you create a file of the varied pages which will be found on your site.

Another action required to eliminate dead ends is to get rid of broken links. Broken and bad links don’t aid the online in any way and only annoy the users and search engines as well.

Pages can easily be found if many links are pointing thereto. It requires only an honest internal linking strategy that not only promotes human visitors but also boost search engine crawling. Startups hire NodeJS Developers as this technology is efficient with optimizing the number of pages to be crawled.

A plugin like broken link checker can assist you identify if there are any broken links on your site if you’re using WordPress.

Optimizing the quantity of pages to be crawled on the online is sort of easy to manage using NodeJS because it is sort of flexible with JavaScript technology and is additionally getting used at the front-end.

3. Readability for URL

One of the on-page SEO techniques you’ll easily cash in of is optimizing your URLs for the search engines and readers.

The key thing to recollect is that humans should be ready to scan your URL and decipher what your content discusses. If humans can do so, then search engines won’t have any trouble in understanding such URLs.

“Accessibility has always been a neighborhood of SEO, but never more so than today, when engines can leverage advanced user and usage data signals to work out what people are engaging with vs. not,” said Rand Fishkin.

Here are other takeaways from the Moz post to think about when optimizing your URLs:

• You should put keywords in your URL/Link but avoid unnecessary keyword stuffing.
• Avoid dynamic URLs whenever possible.
• Go with either a www. or non-www but not both.
• Make your URLs readable to humans.
• Use hyphens to separate words.
• All 301 errors to be redirected to all 404s (This state of error arises when URL doesn’t have any content in the webpage).Include your target keyword earlier on within the URL.

The best time to settle on a URL structure is before you post anything on your site. The next best time is now. I would advise you not to change the URLs of live pages, however only modify the URLs if you know what you are getting yourself into and there is a valid reason for the change. 

Readability also depends on the factor of developers coding style, if you hire NodeJS developers, you will find that they will naturally have these skills to improve SEO optimization.

Changing the URL structure of your pages depends on your CMS platform. WordPress has functionalities that allow you to quickly settle on an honest URL structure. However WordPress is limited to small products, if you are planning for a large scale product, then its better to prefer NodeJS as it also has the functionality to modify URL structure.

4. Redirection

If you do change your URLs, you need to remember that the old URL becomes a 404 page since the content moved to a new URL.

To still tap into the power of the URL and to avoid inconveniencing your visitors, you can redirect old URLs to the newly created ones.

Developing a 301 redirect map will assist you to strategically structure your site and may be a significant step in developing a 301 redirect strategy.

You can easily ruin your site’s structure if you’re not intimate with the technical side of SEO. You may want to hire an experienced person to put this together for you.

Technical SEO often scares many marketers, and a few prefer to stand back altogether from taking any steps towards optimizing their websites’ backend. You do not want to be one of these people.

Winning at SEO starts with having a great product, and an optimized site is one of the few competitive advantages you can have against your competitors. You can make use of any SEO strategy that can provide you an upper hand and can effectively hire NodeJS developers to achieve the target.

A good technology like NodeJS leaves no scope for loopholes. However if there exists any. NodeJS gives the flexibility to the developer to manage the same.

Marketing Benefits of NodeJS as Back-End Integration

So what does digital transformation mean for marketers? Successful back-end integration has numerous benefits, including:

1. Usable Data- Back-end integration means much more data on customer interactions to collect and analyze when determining the effectiveness of an online digital marketing strategy, as each front-end interaction will be tracked. As NodeJS is an open-source technology, hence it has many libraries and utilities which can be taken advantage of and such components may also be reused time-to-time.

2. Seamless Improvements for Users- In connecting front-end user experiences with back-end data collection, marketers can create a seamless system of evaluating online client interactions and turning them into measurable analytics that help empower a company’s workforce.

This kind of process usually involves an in-depth analysis and a continuous commitment to improvement. But front-end interactions will generally seem effortless and organic to customers. Choosing NodeJS as a backend technology is beneficial as it allows to interact/talk with frontend JavaScript technology as it has no I/O blocking errors.

3. Focused Improvements- Businesses can find key takeaways here on how potential clients are interacting with marketing material, this can improve focused marketing. Marketing teams that solely focus on front-end marketing and design or rely on outdated methods of client data analysis can lead to static websites that gain little valuable data from visitors no matter how many may come to the site. Refocusing marketing efforts can be like trying to hit a target with a blindfold. As discussed by Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, connecting a marketing organization’s front-end with back-end data, technology and processes is integral in driving predictable demand generation and strategic customer acquisition.

4. Greater ROI- Marketing departments can create a detailed cause-and-effect data concerning their interactions with some of the potential clients. Companies can reduce their cost per opportunity while also increasing lead-to-customer movement, according to reports by Integrate. 

Combined, these two forms of digital transformation have a substantial total impact on Return On Investment (ROI), as well as on optimizing a marketing department’s usage of client data.

Companies Hire NodeJS Developers to Upgrade Tech-Stack

1. NASA

A company that doesn’t have to be introduced. In this case, NodeJS usage is of greater importance than in other cases. The NASA application is focused on keeping astronauts safe during their space expeditions. After an accident in which one of the astronauts nearly lost his life, NASA faced a challenge of moving all data of EVA spacesuits to a single cloud database.

They adapted NodeJS and then looked to hire NodeJS developers which helped to decrease the number of procedural steps from 28 to 7.

Benefits:

• Single database.
• The access timelines reduced by 300%.
• Less procedural steps.

2. PayPal

In 2013, PayPal decided to migrate from Java to NodeJS. This resulted in 200ms faster page response time and double the number of requests that can be handled per second. 

Since the development teams were once divided into those who wrote browser-specific code and those who write app layer-specific code. For this, NodeJS was an ideal solution and so they went ahead and started looking to hire NodeJS developers. It brought the much-needed cohesiveness and resolved issues at both ends.

Benefits:

• NodeJS app for PayPal was built 2 times faster with fewer people working on it, as compared to the previous Java based app.
• The average response time reduced by 35%.
• The serving of pages increased to 200ms.
• 30% less code.
• 40% reduction in lines.

3. Uber

Uber is the world’s famous platform connecting cab drivers to their customers. Their app was engineered utilizing some of NodeJS tools and programming languages. Although they’re constantly introducing new technologies, NodeJS remains their base as it allows fast scaling. Worth adding is that Uber was one of the first companies that utilized NodeJS.

Benefits:

• Great processing power.
• Gained an open-source community.

4. LinkedIn

A platform serving over 63 million users in 2011 decided to make a switch from Ruby on Rails to NodeJS. By doing so, developers were able to move from synchronous to asynchronous event systems. This resulted in a boost in performance and scalability. All this was possible when they started to hire NodeJS developers.

Benefits:

• 10 times reduction in the overall number of machines for service hosting.
• Servers cut from 30 to 3.Doubled traffic capacity.
• Much better performance and lowered memory overhead.
• New mobile applications are 20 times faster in some scenarios.
• Front-end & back-end mobile teams can be merged into a single unit.
• Enough headroom remains to handle 10x current levels of resource utilization.

5. Trello

It is a project management tool used by over 25 million people worldwide and Selleo is amongst one of them. Trello uses NodeJS for its server-side and as a prototyping tool for building single-page applications.

Benefits:

• Event-driven, non-blocking server.
• Ability to hold many open connections for instant updates.

6. eBay

eBay wants to have a real-time application to maintain live connections on the server-side that altogether provides a great solution that could handle a huge number of eBay-specific services. Among many features of NodeJS they mention: performance, scalability, speed, simplicity, full control and feeling of transparency.

Benefits:

• Faster and more reliable application.
• Single threading.
• Transparent processes.

7. Groupon

With Ruby on Rails, Java and PHP getting harder to maintain, Groupon decided to rebuild their web layer on NodeJS. Their year-long moving project has become one of the largest production deployments of NodeJS.

Benefits:

• 50% faster platform.
• More stability and capability to handle big amounts of traffic.
• Smooth and flexible.

8. Walmart

With $481.32 billion global net sales in 2017, Walmart decided to use NodeJS despite it being a young technology. They redeveloped their mobile app to provide advanced features to customers. NodeJS’s famous asynchronous I/O brought great effects, excellent UI and security.

Benefits:

• New plugins and NPM packages.
• Precise results.
• Capable of using SmartOS.

9. Netflix

With over 130 million subscribers from all around the world, this biggest streaming media and VOD provider switched their backend from Java to NodeJS. They wanted a scalable solution that should handle both 1 billion hours of weekly video streaming and simultaneous requests. Leveraging a fast and lightweight platform like NodeJS allowed Netflix to reduce startup time by 70%.

Benefits:

• Boot time of the new application is reduced by 70%.
• Streamlined development.
• Reduce development times.
• Increased level of customization for each user.

Hire NodeJS Developers to Benefit your Business

NodeJS solves a list of production challenges for top organizations. Some are platform-related, while others are focused on resource utilization. Across the board, Netflix, PayPal, LinkedIn, all have admitted to loading-time savings of up to 60% as reported by Hackernoon.

Speedtest.net, a popular tool for benchmarking internet speed, is itself using NodeJS. Amongst others, better developer productivity, lower development cost, and higher app performance are the top reasons why companies use NodeJS apps.

NodeJS has been a real blessing for giants like Uber and Netflix, since its launch, thanks to the numerous business benefits it provides:

1. Extremely comfortable to work with.
2. High scalability.
3. Executing codes on the server side (or on a browser).
4. Quicker development cycles.
5. Lightning fast speed of processing.
6. Thriving open-source community.

Considering all these advantages start-ups look to hire NodeJS developers for their product development needs.

Hire NodeJS Developers to Improve Product Timeline

If you want to create a product and are looking to hire NodeJS developers, your choice of back-end technology may ultimately boil down to preference and expertise.

But if you’re running on a budget and wish a product unrolled directly, the selection of language then becomes more important. The larger the project, the more important this choice becomes.

We have listed down some factors that affect the cost of development, considering NodeJS as a back-end technology:

Factors Affecting the Cost of Development

1. Features: The various features and functionalities of the web applications have their inherent cost. They require a lot of coding which means more working hours. The more the features are, the more the cost will be. The features may include payment methods, integration of different APIs, etc. Each feature is associated with its own developmental hours.
2. Complexity: The complexity of the web application also affects the development time. The more complex the web application is to build, the more will be the development time. This means the cost of development will increase substantially and if you hire NodeJS developers then they should be experienced enough to handle such kinds of projects.
3. Third-Party Services: Most of the web applications take the use of third-party services. These third-party services provide the much-needed features to the web applications to provide the holistic user experience.
4. Maintenance and Support: A web application can face different issues from time to time. There are instances where the users experience discomfort due to issues with application. It is essential to provide regular maintenance of the application to fix bugs and error handling. 

It is necessary to provide a seamless experience to the user. Also, proper support is required to answer the queries of the users in case they face any trouble. Each of these aspects come at their own cost. 

If you are looking to hire NodeJS developers, you can rest assured that there will not be a need for high maintenance as required in other technologies. This should be included in the total cost of development.

Required Budget & Team Planning for Your Project Development

Depending on your needs, website development costs anywhere between $100 and $500. If you need a feature-rich, custom-built website, it can go as high as $30,000 or more.

To build a small scaled website, you should have a budget for the domain name as well as web hosting. A domain name usually costs around $14.99 per year and web hosting around $7.99 per month. Altogether, starting a site will cost you as low as $110.87 annually.

The overall cost of domain name and hosting may become expensive, especially if you’re just starting out.

Summing up the development time and cost of every stage described, you’ll get an approximate website development price.

If you are interested in hiring an IT agency the monthly quotes for the project can start from $1000 USD/month to $2999 USD/month. Based on project requirement. Hence, hire NodeJS developers based on project needs.

The Approx. required cost to build a website application are as follows;

Based on your project requirement, you can hire NodeJS developers as a Freelancer, In-house Developer, or an Outsourcing Agency. 

1. Freelancers

A freelancer is a self-employed person who offers his/her services to clients that can be companies, startups, or other organizations. Such developers are mostly preferred for smaller parts or chunks of project development. 

Freelancers have the flexibility of working for more than one client at the same time. Hiring process for freelancing developers has its own pros and cons.

Pros:

• Reduction in Cost and Risks.
• Increase in Global Reach.

Cons:

• Issues with Supervision.
• Issues with Security and Dedication from the side of the developer.

2. In-House Developers

In-House developers are the hired employees of a company that works as permanent members of a team. However, choosing this mode to hire NodeJS Developer does come with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Pros:

• Effective Collaboration.
• Control of Development Process.
• No communication issues.
• Better management.

Cons:

• Monthly Wages irrespective of the contribution.
• Additional incentive expenses.
• Lack of talented engineers.
• Flexibility issues.

3. Outsourcing

It is the process in which a company or an organization hires a third-party programmer or a team of developers agency, which offers services in the field of software development. As the previous two modes used to hire NodeJS Developer, this mode has its own benefits and drawbacks as well.

Pros:

• Reduced production Cost.
• No additional expenses.
• Accessibility to talent.
• Improved quality of work.

Cons:

• Language barrier.
• Communication issues due to different time zones.
• Maintaining financial relationships.

Future Perspective and Growth of NodeJS

NodeJS is one of the very few software development technologies that has seen steady growth ever since it was launched. NodeJS is also known as digital transformation as it offers microservice development, delivery of handy applications, or integrations of the non-web, and IoT is the next future. 

Amidst the development & research, the technology that supports IoT will have long-term growth. Given the growing nature of this technology, people looking to hire NodeJS developers are also increasing.

It is useful in simplifying workflows of databases and offers great solutions for handling real-time data. The demand for NodeJS is certainly set to increase even further mainly because it can build both client-side and server-side apps using one set of codes.

The use of NodeJS in building robust real-time apps is surely going to be a dominant trend in the upcoming years.

Top Reasons Why Startups Prefer to Hire NodeJS Developers

Let’s have a look at some of the reasons why startups are leaning towards NodeJS for their application development:

1. Scalable- Both Vertically & Horizontally 

Scalability is the basic benefit that attracts startups towards choosing NodeJS. It allows startups to develop lightweight and fast systems that give a good real-time response and can be scaled up later. NodeJS has an unmatched capability to maintain live server-side connections along with handling a huge number of concurrent connections. In 2013, eBay also considered it more capable as compared to Java, in terms of scalability to build server-side stacks for mobile devices. 

There are many other established brands who benefitted from this, such as ebay, LinkedIn, and Groupon are the few notable companies among them.

2. Reduces Development & Response Time

NodeJS is extremely lightweight with no compilations which allow you to just write and deploy the code. An important factor that makes it faster is it uses the same language for frontend and backend. 

For quick development also, it offers an array of tools delivering innovative features that developers can easily incorporate in their coding. This consequently ensures faster response time by making the time-to-market cycle shorter. Thereby creating more value in less time with little efforts. 

Recently some of the giants like PayPal and Walmart adopted NodeJS because it helped them reduce response time at least by half while doubling the number of requests.

3. Low Learning Curve

The developers have to learn Whenever a new technology is introduced, developers tend to learn it from scratch. This can be even more challenging to some and because we are talking about startups, we may expect the developers to be beginners. But, thanks to NodeJS which surprisingly have a low learning curve. 

It offers excellent documentation and tutorial videos about the working of NodeJS which offers great help to new developers. NodeJS is quite easy to use since it utilizes JavaScript, which is known by most of the developers. Hence, the developers take not more than a few weeks to actually master the framework.

4. Compatible with Mobile

NodeJS allows for easy and quick development for mobile platforms. Its high speed, performance, and adaptability makes it the best suitable platform for web development. It enables developers to build critical functions of a responsive website in a matter of a few days. 

This framework allows you to build a number of apps in a short span of time by ensuring fewer lines of script and robust feature set. Using the same language in frontend and backend also helps in speeding up the development process. 

NodeJS proves to be crucial for startups where development speed is an important factor to keep up with the demand.

5. Tested & Trusted

You need not worry about the authentication of NodeJS as the number of companies using it has dramatically increased in the past years. It has been well-tested by some of the giants like PayPal, Netflix, and eBay. It’s not going to be neglected or abandoned any time soon.

Required Skills & Knowledge to Hire NodeJS Developers

If you are looking to hire NodeJS developers, you ought to confine the new skills that your developers must-have. Skilled developers can level up your application by adding powerful features and functionality to your project.

Must-have skills for NodeJS developers are:

• A basic understanding of front-end technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3
• Knowledge of NodeJS and other frameworks such as Express, StrongLoop, etc.
• In-depth understanding of what asynchronous programming is about and its workarounds.
• In-depth understanding of server-side templating languages such as Jade, EJS, etc.
• Decent knowledge of server-side CSS preprocessors such as ‘Stylus’.
• Working knowledge and implementing in user authentication-authorization between multiple systems, servers, and environments.
• Can integrate multiple data sources as well as databases into a single system.
• Decent understanding of all fundamental design principles behind a scalable application.
• Should know the differences between the number of delivery platforms and optimizing their output.
• Capable of Implementing automated testing platforms and unit tests.
• Have knowledge of versioning tools, such as Github, Gitlab, etc.
• Hands-on experience working on NodeJS development tools like npm, grunt, gulp, brunch, broccoli, etc.
• Error handling is a crucial part of the application to get right: knowing when to crash, or simply just log the error and continue/retry can be hard.
• The Twelve-Factor application manifesto describes all the best practices on how web applications should be coded or written.
• Decent knowledge of Semantic Versioning.
• Add more skills related to NodeJS, like AngularJS, PHP, jQuery, CSS3, etc.

The required soft skills to hire NodeJS Developers:

• Active learning.
• Commitment.
• Resilience.
• Engineering thinking.
• Analytical ability.
• Result-oriented attitude.
• Ability to work individually and as part of the team.
• Decent English proficiency.

Rising Graph to Hire NodeJS Developers

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010 more than 900,000 software developer jobs have been posted, and is expected to increase 30% by 2020. There’s also the often-cited analysis from Code.org that underscored the widening gap between supply and demand.

Ways to Hire NodeJS Developers can differ depending upon the requirements and the methods that a company adapts to.

Salary in India & Other Countries

The hiring rate differs from region to region and for the post that the company is offering. The salary in $/hrs. pattern across the world is as given below.

Conclusion

NodeJS is one of the most powerful JavaScript frameworks. So it is heavily used for web application development. NodeJS is a part of popular web development technology stacks like MEAN and MERN because of how developer-friendly this framework is.

The start-ups and mid-sized businesses are also looking to hire NodeJS developers because of its brilliant performance. 

If you have an app idea in mind, it is wise to consider using a robust framework like NodeJS to ensure the scalability of the app. However, to transform your ideas to full-fledged products it is important for the businesses to hire NodeJS developers.

Hope this article delivered a brief understanding on how NodeJS supports and is important for the Back-End development of a website app and will continue to do so.

Help us keep updated by sharing your experience with us here.

Also published on EngineerBabu.