Who is the Biggest Company Using Node.js?

Node.js has become a go-to platform for countless web developers looking to enhance their backend development while sticking with their preferred language, JavaScript. It’s easy to pick up, highly scalable, and its non-blocking thread execution makes it faster than many other options. With these advantages, it’s no surprise that many major companies have adopted Node.js to power their projects.

What is Node.js?

JavaScript is one of the most widely-used programming languages across the globe. It’s used by a huge number of websites today and has attracted a multitude of designers and developers who want to create modern and sophisticated web features. JavaScript is undoubtedly one of the best programming languages for every coder to learn.

For the initial 2 decades, JavaScript was primarily used for client-side coding. As it was restricted to the text within the ‘script’ tag, developers were forced to use multiple frameworks and languages between the frontend and backend components.

Node.js, a runtime environment comprised of everything needed to execute a JavaScript-written program, was later introduced and changed everything.

Node.js is an open-source, single-threaded, cross-platform runtime environment used for building fast and scalable networking and server-side applications. It features a non-blocking I/O, event-driven architecture (making it efficient and a great choice for real-time applications), and runs on the V8 JavaScript runtime engine.

Which Major Companies Use Node.js?

The number of websites using Node.js has grown substantially in the last 20 years. The popular runtime platform already exceeded the 1-billion download milestone in 2018. And W3Techs estimates that it’s used by 2% of websites across the world. That may not sound a lot, but it equates to more than 20 million websites across the internet.

As you’d expect, the platform is hugely popular with websites of all sizes, including large businesses. Here are some of the biggest companies using Node.js today:

Trello

Trello is an online tool that allows employees to collaboratively organize projects and share ideas through virtual boards. Users can find out what projects are currently being worked on, which employees are responsible for individual tasks, and how far the project is in the development process.

The team at Trello was in search of a lightweight server with lightning-fast loading speeds. The application is built on Coffeescript, a language that accumulates JavaScript, which made Node.js an easy choice for using server-side. Here are just some of the reasons Trello is a company using Node.js:

• The application needs to provide its users with instant updates and minimal latency.
• Since most of Trello’s architecture is based on JavaScript, a server also using JavaScript is needed to ensure the code is maintainable and quick to develop.
• Trello calls for multiple real-time open server connections to keep up with the speed and delivery of updates.
• Node.js allows developers to make the Single Page Application very lightweight — Just 250Kb.
• Prototyping and development time are both cut short due to the Node.js architecture.

Medium

Medium is an online article publishing platform with high volumes of diverse content. It has a staggering 25 million unique users each month and was one of the first companies to use Node.js.

The Medium team needed to efficiently share code between the client and server sides. Medium developers chose Node.js and the webserver NGINX to build their app servers, speeding up deployment times by a massive 15 minutes. Here are some of the biggest reasons Medium used Node.js from the start:

• Medium uses React.js for most of its web frontend and therefore requires a JavaScript runtime.
• It needs something that will uphold its high-performance standards for its ever-growing userbase.
• Super-fast 2.7 second loading time, including content processing and large images.
• The Server calls from the front-end, resulting in a smooth transition and superior user experience.
• Efficient big data management with the least server load. This is incredibly important as Medium publishes around 20,000 new articles each day.

Walmart

Walmart is a huge American retail corporation that operates around 10,500 stores and clubs in 24 countries. It became one of the biggest companies using Node.js because it wanted to optimize its e-commerce website, providing a better user experience while being sufficiently agile for distributed teams.

Walmart depends on the Node.js framework for its user interfaces. It also acts as an orchestration layer for creating APIs for the company’s apps. This helps developers integrate multiple services or applications, allowing Walmart app users to access several unique functions from one platform. Here are some other reasons the major company uses Node.js:

• The old monolithic Java web app made it difficult for distributed teams to work. They needed a superior modularization version.
• With almost 80 million users each month, the website needs a robust system that can easily handle so many requests.
• Node.js allows Walmart to create an HTML-based SEO website and increase its search performance.
• It also provides the company with a way of decreasing consumer response time and increasing customer engagement, which results in more conversions.
• The Walmart development team is releasing updates faster than ever before, decreasing development time and effort.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy is one of the world’s biggest domain names and hosting providers. It’s also one of the largest companies using Node.js. When GoDaddy redesigned its site in 2016, it switched over to Node.js. The move was primarily due to a wish to reduce server load, lower costs, and offer a better user experience.

GoDaddy’s backend infrastructure relies on Node.js. With the advanced platform, developers can make high-quality apps and roll out new features quickly. It also provides them with a practical means of testing, REST, and NPM resources. Here are some other reasons why GoDaddy is a company using node.js:

• As a web hosting provider, GoDaddy needs a server-client tool with the capabilities to reduce server load and lower costs.
• The lighter Node.js runtime allows GoDaddy to reduce costs by a staggering factor of 10.
• Node.js offers a considerably higher end-user performance for the company’s web hosting services. This makes websites hosted with GoDaddy perform much better than before.
• The company is also able to increase the performance of its website builder tool, one of the most important features for end-users.
• GoDaddy was able to roll out the entire website rebrand in just 60 minutes.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a sophisticated social network for people to share their achievements and make professional connections. It’s also used by people seeking employment and companies looking to fill open positions. It boasts 467 million users from more than 200 countries.

In late 2011, LinkedIn made the switch from Ruby on Rails to Node.js. The move was a smart one, pushed forward by LinkedIn developers who wanted to optimize the mobile app, increase scalability, and boost performance. Other reasons LinkedIn is using Node.js include:

• By using Node.js, the development team can massively reduce server resources, resulting in an app that runs 20 times faster than the previous one.
• It allows developers to combine the frontend and backend mobile teams into a single unit.
• Significant reduction in the number of machines needed from service hosting — down from 30 to just 3.
• Double the traffic capacity, which is important as LinkedIn has 310 million monthly active users.
• There’s still enough headroom to manage 10x the current resource utilization levels.

PayPal

PayPal is one of the biggest and most trusted online services for making payments, receiving payments, and sending money. The popular platform allows people from all over the world to interact with each other virtually, without disclosing personal information, such as debit or credit card numbers. There are currently 426 million active users on PayPal.

The platform uses Node.js to build its user-facing content because it allows developers to use JavaScript to build both server- and client-side. The company was initially hesitant to adopt Node.js due to team segmentation.

Paypal didn’t want the developers working on browser code to be separate from those working on server application code. As Node.js works with JavaScript for both server and browser applications, making the move made perfect sense. Here are some more reasons PayPal decided to make the switch and some of the impressive benefits it has enjoyed by being a company using Node.js:

• The Node.js app for PayPal was built in half the time and with fewer people, compared to the other Java-based app.
• It doubles the number of requests per second.
• Results in a 35% decrease in the average response time when compared page-to-page.
• Requires 33% fewer lines of code to build.
• Needs 40% fewer files to function.

Which is the Biggest Company Using Node.js?

The above are just six examples of huge international corporations benefiting from the sophisticated platform. Which is the biggest company using Node.js, and why do they use it?

FAQs

Q1. Does Netflix use Node.js?

Yes, Netflix does use Node.js. The hugely popular online streaming service features a user interface that was built with Node.js. The development team was attracted to the framework because of its modularity.

The team wanted to replace its stable, full-featured application with something lightweight. Fewer complexities and more powerful interfaces were required, while it was also necessary to leverage the existing infrastructure at the same time. These are the main reasons Netflix shifted its entire user interface to Node.js. The company is even beginning to move data access layers to it.

By switching to Node.js, Netflix was able to reduce its startup time by 70%. It was also able to streamline the development process, drastically cutting build times. Node.js allowed Netflix to increase its level of customization for every user, too.

Right now, Netflix is the world’s largest provider of video-on-demand and streaming media. It’s available in 190 countries and currently has 192.9 million subscribers, solidifying its place as the biggest company using Node.js.

Q2. Does Uber use Node.js?

Yes, Uber uses Node.js. In fact, the global transportation group was one of the first companies to use the framework to its fullest extent by building most of its platform with Node.js. Uber uses Node.js for 3 main reasons: fast processing speeds, an open-source community that offers continuous development, and ease of error-checking.

The Uber app connects riders with drivers and has to be able to process a huge amount of information at a quickly-growing scale. Uber opted for Node.js to build its colossal matching system because of its ability to maintain the pace of Uber’s professional needs and it has sophisticated data processing capabilities.

By using Node.js, Uber can quickly deploy new code, benefit from a strong open-source community that continuously provides innovative solutions, and can reliably process extremely high levels of data in short spaces of time.

Right now, Uber is the biggest transportation company in the world. But is it the biggest company using Node.js? Not quite. It doubles in size every 6 months and is currently available in more than 80 countries, boasting 93 million users. This means it’s not quite as big as Netflix and isn’t the biggest company using Node.js.

Q3. Does Facebook use Node.js?

Facebook does not use Node.js. It’s one of the very few major websites not to use the platform. Several years ago Facebook experimented with the platform and created some proof of concepts to analyze internally, but that’s as far as things got.

Node.js is a high-level environment with just one thread. Facebook uses PHP, which is also a high-level language. It doesn’t make sense for Facebook to switch from one high-level environment to another one, especially considering all the time, effort, money, and resources it would take to do so.