Modern Websites are Built on the Jamstack Architecture due to Performance, Reliability and Speed of Developer Workflows, According to Industry Survey by Netlify

More than 3,000 developers shared views on the modern Jamstack web architecture, including their favorite tools, use cases and benefits

SAN FRANCISCO and JAMSTACK CONF VIRTUAL – May 27, 2020 – Netlify, pioneer of the modern Jamstack web architecture, today announced web developers across industries and years of experience are adopting the Jamstack architecture, choosing speed of development backed by coherent workflows over commoditized cloud services. A survey of more than 3,000 web developers revealed the most sought-after benefits of the Jamstack are performance, reliability and developer workflows, while one third of respondents reported their Jamstack sites serve millions of users each year.

Jamstack is an architecture for building web sites and applications based on modern tools and workflows for a faster, simpler and more secure web. It delivers the speed and simplicity of pre-rendered static sites with dynamic capabilities via JavaScript, APIs and serverless functions, all without the need to run web servers. Even though this new wave of web development has been on the rise over the last five years, this is the first report to share broad data and insights on the Jamstack category.

Insights from the survey, conducted March 16-April 19, 2020, include three main takeaways:

Results indicate rapid adoption and mainstream acceptance of this new architecture pattern.
- Jamstack usage spans use cases and industries. Top use cases include consumer software (45%), internal tooling (36%), and enterprise software (35%).
- Usage of the Jamstack is spread across industries, with 38% of developers reporting they work for a technology company, while 62% work outside the tech industry, including advertising and marketing (21%), media and publishing (14%), education (14%), financial services (13%) and business support & logistics (13%).
- Developers of all experience levels are using the Jamstack, with 26% reporting more than 10 years of experience as a developer and 16% reporting less than 2 years of professional experience.
Developers are running large sites on the Jamstack. One third of developers noted they have worked on sites serving millions of users over the last year.
Developers report they most care about performance and speed in their web environments.
- The top Jamstack benefits cited by all types of developers are (1) performance, (2) uptime, (3) speed of development, (4) security, (5) compliance, and (6) avoiding vendor lock-in.
- In terms of requirements, enterprise developers prioritize security over speed in their architecture and workflow tools.

Developers were also surveyed about a wide variety of tools and frameworks in the Jamstack ecosystem, including their usage, satisfaction, and plans to use them in the future.

Jamstack spans JavaScript frameworks, with React reported as an overwhelming favorite, while Gatsby, Next and Nuxt made strong showings. Relative newcomer 11ty had a surprisingly strong showing.
Enterprise developers are more likely to use Typescript than other types of developers.
Out of API protocols cited, GraphQL has the most satisfied users, with almost half of respondents using it.
Out of more than 20 CMS options, respondents reported the highest satisfaction with Sanity, Strapi, Dato, Forestry, and Contentful. The open source Netlify CMS project also received high satisfaction scores.

With these results, Jamstack is showing wide adoption across levels and industries thanks to the flexibility it offers to developers around the world. Full survey results are available on netlify.com/blog.

Supporting Quotes

Mathias Biilmann, CEO, Netlify

“We coined the term ‘Jamstack’ in 2015 to better define what developers were already starting to do – decouple the front and backend web and apps, focus on best practices of speed and availability, and redefine their workflows. With the continued growth of tools and services in this community ecosystem, along with so many powerful web properties redefining how developers can do more with less, the next wave of web development is here, and it’s the Jamstack.”

Kevin Zellmer, vice president of partners, Contentful

“We continue to see strong adoption of Jamstack in the market. The ability to easily pull content via APIs makes this solution efficient and effective. The architecture enables developers to embrace headless CMS, distributing content through multiple channels at scale.”

Magnus Hillestad, CEO and co-founder, Sanity.io

“We are seeing massive growth and interest in the Jamstack from customers around the world. Structured content plays a crucial role in enabling developers and businesses to adapt Jamstack approaches to everyday use cases as well as modern enterprise infrastructures, accelerating content velocity.”

Additional Resources

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About Netlify

Netlify is the fastest way to build the fastest sites. Used by more than 900,000 web developers and businesses, the Netlify platform provides modern build workflows, serverless functions and a global multi-cloud Edge network to deliver the most performant, secure and scalable websites and applications. Netlify pioneered the Jamstack category, a modern web architecture that marries the best practices of static sites with the API economy and serverless functions, to deliver the faster load times and dynamic content, without worrying about web servers. Founded in 2014, Netlify is a venture-backed software company headquartered in San Francisco with a global team. For more information, visit www.netlify.com and follow @Netlify on Twitter.

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