Popular Apps built with NodeJS

Node.js is nothing but an open-source server-side runtime environment. It is built on JavaScript V8 Engine of Google Chrome. Node.js is used to build scalable and fast network applications. You can even say that this JavaScript runtime can be used to execute code in a fast, lightweight and modern way.

Node.js helps in developing real-time web applications with push capabilities for organizations and enterprises. Over time, Node.js has turned out to be a popular choice for web app development for several reasons. This has led to the growth of Node.js development companies offering effective Node.js development solutions. Due to its benefits & features, there are many tech companies uses NodeJS for fulfilling their needs. Let check some of them.

There are number of applications build on Node.js. Some of the popular ones have been explained here:

PayPal was one of those companies out there which got the chance to try out Node.js, take the risk and get benefitted from it as Node.js was not much popular in those days.

During those years, PayPal was first using JavaScript for the browser side and Java for the server side. They used Node.js and came up with a prototype first and did the same with Java too. For the prototype project, they assigned 5 Java developers and 2 Node.js developers.

The team of Node.js developers won the team of 5 Java developers in prototype development. With this, the PayPal team understood that Node.js is fast and it is possible to develop an application using it at half the amount of time. It was also evident that with Node.js the developers ended with 33% less lines of codes and 40% less files.

Initially, the company has issues while operating as different tasks were performed for the server-side and browser-side applications by the team separately. With the use of Node.js, everything became smooth for the team.

As per Jeff Harrel, Senior Director of Payments Products and Engineering at PayPal - .

By choosing to go for Node.js development services at the production level, Netflix was able to witness tremendous result in terms of performance and business.

We all know Netflix! It is today one of the largest online media streaming providers in the world, which has around 50 million customers in 60 different countries. It offers them approximately 7 billion hours of videos per quarter.

Earlier, the developers at Netflix used JavaScript for frontend Development and Java for server-side coding. This means the developers had to code twice for both sides and needed to have an understanding of both the languages. When it comes to activity tracking, error handling and debugging, they had to write the codes twice.

Why Netflix chose Node.js?

• They wanted to have a common language on both browser and server side.
• The team at Netflix wanted their application to be lightweight, fast and modular. With Node.js they were able to decrease the startup time of the app by 70%.
• Node.js comes with a large number of modules for increased application performance.
• Node.js helps to build single page application.

Earlier LinkedIn Mobile app was powered by Ruby on Rails, but later, it chose Node.js and became one of the most popular apps that chose this JavaScript-based language.

Earlier the Ruby on Rails app was a synchronous one, where the clients made the call for a single page many times. All the calls were handled sequentially and a thread handled a request. This led to the system overloading.

By opting for Node.js, they moved the app into an asynchronous event system. Here they came up with a model where the client request for a single page was handled. At this stage, the code got simplified and app moved to stateless servers.

By writing code in Node.js LinkedIn enjoyed certain benefits. By coming up with an event system, it became possible to execute multiple requests using a single process.

Package manager was another benefit they got to enjoy from Node.js. NPM was light and easy to use. The community of Node developed a number of small modules which can then be used by developers to build a vibrant ecosystem.

Medium is a very popular online publishing platform which makes use of Node.js for web servers. Here the app servers are built with Node.js and Nginx. Moreover, as a clean framework for Node environment, it also makes use of Matador.

At the first look, you may feel that it is just a simple web app which is based on a simple HTML page, but if you look deeper, you will find more with the technology. Medium is built in such a manner that it keeps improving and evolving with the users and their behavior. It is entirely a data-driven platform. If you have new ideas and want to experiment with it, then using Node.js for running A/B tests is quite apt to measure product changes.

Medium enjoys 25 million monthly readers and each week thousands of articles are published on it. Node.js allows Medium to share code between the server and client side as it has a service-oriented backend structure. By making use of Node.js, Medium was able to improve the deployment times by 15 minutes.

Yes, it is true. It is not a complete application of the technology, but it makes use of the JavaScript power that comes with it. Once, NASA was faced with a crisis where its data got scattered in many locations. In order to gain control of the situation, it decided to build its own data system and went ahead with Node.js.

NASA came up with Node.js enterprise-scale architecture and moved everything to the cloud. In order to link two environments, it came up with web API. This reduced the access time by 300%. In simple words, this means to have safer work environments for astronauts.

Trello which was released in 2011 is a JavaScript-based project management tool. The developers at Trello used Node.js to build the server part of the tool. The demand for a number of open connections support led to such a choice.

Trello also went ahead to use Node for some prototyping. First, they tried it on a single-page app then eventually moved on to a mockup server. By following it, engineers were able to adjust the design and try out things quickly.

Walmart is an international mega-corporation which makes hundreds of billions of turnaround every year. It was a few years back when Walmart decided to improve its business and work towards becoming the largest online retailer in the world.

With thousands of visitors coming to the website and mobile app especially during the holiday season, it needed to come up with a solution which is fast, usable, reliable and strong eCommerce system that is capable of reaching the set goals. Moreover, Walmart faced unfortunate data leaks making things worse. This is where Walmart decided to go for Node.js.

Walmart makes use of Node to arrange layers over legacy APIs. The developers here can now come up with new APIs for the store and within a few hours deploy it. This significantly brings down the release time.

Some of the benefits of choosing Node.js for Walmart and other eCommerce solutions are:

• With Node.js it is possible to keep content consistently fresh
• Node.js keeps the content of Walmart on Google and other search engines on the top
• Node.js builds universal JavaScript which helps Walmart to take full advantage of JavaScript developers for their business.

Mozilla is a free and open source web browser which is available for internet users. It is currently available for Linux, OS X, Windows, Firefox OS, and Android in 80 languages. Now Firefox enjoys more than 11% worldwide usage and is the second most popular web browser out there.

In a number of its web projects, Mozilla uses Node.js as the primary language. One of them, which is a cross-platform sign-in technology is Mozilla Persona. As per the Principal Engineer at Mozilla – Mark Mayo, they chose Node.js for two reasons. One is the ease to use the same language on the client side and server side and the memory footprint.

It was not easy for the team of Mayo to go ahead with Node in the beginning but, gradually they were able to achieve what they wanted in a single JavaScript repository without having any dependencies or languages.

Uber is an online transportation network company which offers its service globally in 65 countries and in and around 600 cities. The app works on to bring together the consumers with cab drivers with ease. Here the drivers own their car and Uber intends to match the best suitable pair for an amazing ride experience.

Once the ride is completed, the fare is then billed to the consumer automatically. Uber introduced Node.js into its production completely in order to build a huge matching system.

Why Uber chose Node.js?

Uber chose Node .js for three important reasons:

• Node.js is capable to processes large volume of information
• Programs can be tested and issues can be addressed quickly without going for restart
• The technology is continuously optimized by the open source community which makes it better all the time.

Groupon is quite a popular coupon portal which serves international customers. At a time you will find hundreds of thousands of active deals on the site made available to the customers spread across America, Asia, and Europe. It covers different sectors making it easy for the consumers to find every day at a single place. So whether they are travelling or sitting at the comfort of their homes, such deals are made available with ease by Groupon.

It was a few years back when Groupon decided to expand its horizons from the web and enter the mobile market. The users were using mobile devices more and more and so Groupon wanted to make this experience even better for its users. It was at this stage that Groupon decided to make a move from Ruby on Rails to Node.js.

The main reason why Groupon went ahead with Node was because of JavaScript. It is considered a universal language when it comes to learning and using it for frontend development.

By introducing Node.js, Groupon was able to have its web pages running 50% faster and were able to handle higher traffic.

GoDaddy is a web hosting company and a publicly traded Internet domain registrar. Today the company has more than 18 million customers and 78 million domain names managed under it. In short, we can say that GoDaddy is the largest registrar for website domains out there.

A few years back, GoDaddy took the step of working on its server-side infrastructure by opting for Node.js. The main aim behind such a move was to have fewer servers in their infrastructure compared to what they possessed earlier.

By introducing Node, GoDaddy was able to achieve 10* fewer servers when it comes to hosting customer websites as well as reduce TTFB- Time To Time Byte. When it comes to having a better position on Google, performance matters and Node.js has helped GoDaddy with it.

eBay is an US-based multinational eCommerce company offering internet sales services. It offers business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer sales services. The site is free for listing, free for buyers and sellers can use to sell their items. Currently, it has 1 billion active listings and 175 million global active users.

The company planned to go for Node.js for two reasons:

• To have a real-time application
• To take care of eBay specific services that are displayed on the web pages.

By going for Node.js the company was able to enjoy benefits like scalability, speed, performance, simplicity, single threading, transparency, handling I/O bound operations, etc.

Wrapping it up

Today more and more number of businesses is finding Node.js to be an effective solution when it comes to developing web applications. If you wish to grow in your business by following Node, you need to hire Node.js developers who are skilled and talented in the job. Some of the companies or say organizations, which has benefited from Node.js have been mentioned here.