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

#discuss #svelte #production #webdev

We know there are a lot of perks using Svelte:

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

There are a few reasons as cons as well:

small community, less support for solutions
eco-system is not as diverse as others, such as React's
might not support vintage browsers such as pre-IE 11
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?

Top comments (4)

Phil Renaud • Aug 27 '20

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 • Aug 27 '20

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.

Stanislav Khromov • Feb 22 '23

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...