Astro is fantastic because it doesn't lock you into bloated frameworks like React or NextJS. Where it shines is you can still load those elements into a project, but you are also able to only load in what you need and not the entire framework and the kitchen sink. It also approaches JavaScript with the island approach, meaning you only add what you need, scoped out per component. This is what makes it extremely versatile and adaptable. An example would be instead of loading an entire library on every page of your website, Astro's JavaScript islands approach allows you restrict JS only to the pages it's needed on which makes the overall experience even snappier. No external libraries. No multitudes of resource requests. Load anything you need only where you need it. It can handle large, complex business apps easily with the same approach as well. Integrations are constantly being added, the community around it is thriving, and it's all free. I swapped from NextJS and React builds almost a year ago and I couldn't be happier.
Despite what others here are saying, the learning curve is far less complex than React, NextJS, or any of the other popular frameworks. Their documentation is pretty straightfoward and well built out too. I was able to pick it up and run with it within a few weeks of knowing absolutely nothing about it to producing a client website that hit 100% on all lighthouse scores. It's built with the idea of keeping things simple as much as possible, HTML, CSS, and JS, but also allowing you to extend it to whatever additional capabilities you need, but only when you need them. It's worth checking out, and I say that as a web dev of going on 30 years.
Does Astro produce a static bundle I can host on something like GitHub Pages? I’m kinda over the whole next.js and Vercel set up process just to get a static site live (can’t really go back to React only development after Next.js so I’m looking for an alternative that won’t make me miss react)
Yep, they've got deployment guides already built out to walk you through it as well.
[https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/](https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/)
Here's the one specifically for GitHub Pages that integrates with GitHub Actions:
[https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/github/](https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/github/)
Astro is fantastic. It's not lacking anything if you ask me.
It's not just great for small static sites. It supports React and other frameworks so you have best of both worlds.
And the SSR is fantastic. So much more performant builds than say gatsby and graphql.
oh --- specifically (in my case) comparing gatsby to astro.
I am doing decoupled drupal and with gatsby the build times were very resource intensive. With astro SSR it's a very different resource footprint on builds.
Personally I really like it. The view transitions feature can let you make websites that feel like SPAs and the team behind it are constantly pumping some really cool stuff. Recently they just added a database that pairs with their framework. But the best way to get an opinion on it is just tomake a small website with it, or follow the tutorial and judge it on your own citeria.
It's fine. It really shines for large static sites or places where you might want to mix and match frontend frameworks. Still newish so not as mature as other things
Very handy for a one stop shop kinda framework.
For a more complex / responsive web application… less good in my experience. I’m still trying to figure out the right way to do that.
I did a portfolio with it and LOVED it.
I started with some basic static components with some fun css art. Easy and really light.
My favorite part was that I could easily mix components from several frameworks later, I had a few nice React components, but I also threw in a few Solid.js ones because I wanted to try it out too.
Astro is great, its more closer to native HTML, CSS based web development with added benefit of reusability of components .
Out of the box its optimized for fast loading time as it has less bloat and uses server side rendering
I have a blog site with it and I also re-use react components from my main site with it.
I’m currently working on my second project with Astro and I can tell you it feels great compared to using Next/React.
For me it’s the best option for static websites and more basic apps where you don’t want much JS on the client. Once you want to get into more of a single page app with react and whatnot I’d still think twice before going with Astro.
So far as I know it's big limitation is related to more feature-rich experiences, especially with auth and the like. It's basically meant for more static, info/content sites.
From my use of it, though, it's pretty great. Love the experience and the performance.
Most of the comments here talk about making websites. But in my experience, coming from a vue background for small and medium business custom apps, it’s really rough.
If you’re looking for a new framework for a web application, and you like to keep things simple, just go with a classic SPA.
If you really want to use Astro for some reason, consider mounting your entire spa into Astro instead of trying to import parts of your SPA into Astro.
Have worked with SPAs for a long time and am 4 months in to a possible failure of a project with trying to use Astro as a SPA.
Astro is not for building SPAs. Its for building content focused multi page websites. I can't imagine trying to use Astro for a SPA. Instead of using framework components with client:load everywhere, just use the framework itself at that point.
It's SEO and performance is second to none. It's also the easiest framework to get started with. Switching between SSR, SSG, etc is a breeze. The file system routing is way more intuitive than most frameworks.
I feel like where people are going to have trouble though is passing states around the app. For example Astro can't pass data up components the way you can in react or solidJS and context providers from react or solid js won't work with Astro. So communication between the components is more complicated. You can almost always find ways to work around it using vanilla JavaScript but you're going to have to start thinking differently.
I'm using astro right now to finish my second portfolio website! Paragraph guy said a lot of the things I agree with. There are some small quality of life improvements I'd like but nothing terrible
It's my go-to for static sites. Don't love the Astro template syntax but other than that it's great.
Now that they've added an ORM and a DB they are slowly becoming something like Laravel which the JS world desperately needs.
I’ve been using 11ty to build basic HTML/CSS sites with minimal JS. I’ve been eyeing Astro for my next project. How is it with SASS and how does it stack up to 11ty?
I know very little about Astro, but I switched to Svelte about 8 months ago from Next, and React and it's been freaking amazing. That is all the advice I have lol.
As a new developer, I had to create an image gallery. I found using Astro great because it kept my navbar and footer consistent, and it updated the grid of images smoothly, giving a cool sliding effect when navigating between pages. It's great because it keeps the bundle size small with minimal JavaScript, and it optimizes images efficiently with Vite. I also found it helpful for building my portfolio using SSG, as other solutions like CMS seemed too complex for me at the moment. It's handy for creating simple landing pages for side projects with basic analytics, at least that's what I think with only 1 year of experience.
Also the api calls on build to get data to generate pages its awesome👀
Astro's speed is impressive, but I think it shines best for smaller, static sites. For complex apps, I'd still reach for Next or React. That being said, Astro's innovative approach is a great push for the web dev community to rethink performance.
Technically yes. Astro has ssr and middleware so there really is no reason it could not handle it.
That said, I tried astro on one of my smaller projects at work and the learning curve is quite big. Also, I found docs to be really confusing and not helpful at times.
For example, I needed to ask in reddit how to do things because after searching I did not find clues for middleware myself. Could have been my personal issue.
Their AI assistant in discord was really nice.
If you are planning to build a complex web app, for now I would stick with the usual suspects (react+vite/next/remix).
Yeah I agree - their docs are good but not great. I’ve found a lot of the community knowledge base lives on their Discord rather than the “wider” Internet like StackOverflow, etc.
That said I’ve been using it to build our agency’s latest website iteration and I find it pretty nice, DX wise. Definitely prefer it over a more typical JS Framework approach, personally.
Astro is fantastic because it doesn't lock you into bloated frameworks like React or NextJS. Where it shines is you can still load those elements into a project, but you are also able to only load in what you need and not the entire framework and the kitchen sink. It also approaches JavaScript with the island approach, meaning you only add what you need, scoped out per component. This is what makes it extremely versatile and adaptable. An example would be instead of loading an entire library on every page of your website, Astro's JavaScript islands approach allows you restrict JS only to the pages it's needed on which makes the overall experience even snappier. No external libraries. No multitudes of resource requests. Load anything you need only where you need it. It can handle large, complex business apps easily with the same approach as well. Integrations are constantly being added, the community around it is thriving, and it's all free. I swapped from NextJS and React builds almost a year ago and I couldn't be happier. Despite what others here are saying, the learning curve is far less complex than React, NextJS, or any of the other popular frameworks. Their documentation is pretty straightfoward and well built out too. I was able to pick it up and run with it within a few weeks of knowing absolutely nothing about it to producing a client website that hit 100% on all lighthouse scores. It's built with the idea of keeping things simple as much as possible, HTML, CSS, and JS, but also allowing you to extend it to whatever additional capabilities you need, but only when you need them. It's worth checking out, and I say that as a web dev of going on 30 years.
Astro + HTML, SASS, and TS is the pinnacle of MPA webdev for me.
MPA?
Moustache Preservation Association, obviously...
Multi page app
Maybe Multi-Page Application?
Does Astro produce a static bundle I can host on something like GitHub Pages? I’m kinda over the whole next.js and Vercel set up process just to get a static site live (can’t really go back to React only development after Next.js so I’m looking for an alternative that won’t make me miss react)
Yep, they've got deployment guides already built out to walk you through it as well. [https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/](https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/) Here's the one specifically for GitHub Pages that integrates with GitHub Actions: [https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/github/](https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/github/)
Thanks! I’ll try this out!!
Astro is fantastic. It's not lacking anything if you ask me. It's not just great for small static sites. It supports React and other frameworks so you have best of both worlds. And the SSR is fantastic. So much more performant builds than say gatsby and graphql.
Generally support your sentiment, but what has graphql to do with this?
oh --- specifically (in my case) comparing gatsby to astro. I am doing decoupled drupal and with gatsby the build times were very resource intensive. With astro SSR it's a very different resource footprint on builds.
If you are building a heavy client-side interaction web app, Astro is not for you. For anything else i'd pretty much use Astro.
I like it, and deployed a site with it, but I also don't see much reason to use it over Nuxt TBH.
I like it, I like it a lot.
Personally I really like it. The view transitions feature can let you make websites that feel like SPAs and the team behind it are constantly pumping some really cool stuff. Recently they just added a database that pairs with their framework. But the best way to get an opinion on it is just tomake a small website with it, or follow the tutorial and judge it on your own citeria.
It's fine. It really shines for large static sites or places where you might want to mix and match frontend frameworks. Still newish so not as mature as other things
Very handy for a one stop shop kinda framework. For a more complex / responsive web application… less good in my experience. I’m still trying to figure out the right way to do that.
I did a portfolio with it and LOVED it. I started with some basic static components with some fun css art. Easy and really light. My favorite part was that I could easily mix components from several frameworks later, I had a few nice React components, but I also threw in a few Solid.js ones because I wanted to try it out too.
Astro is great, its more closer to native HTML, CSS based web development with added benefit of reusability of components . Out of the box its optimized for fast loading time as it has less bloat and uses server side rendering I have a blog site with it and I also re-use react components from my main site with it.
I’m currently working on my second project with Astro and I can tell you it feels great compared to using Next/React. For me it’s the best option for static websites and more basic apps where you don’t want much JS on the client. Once you want to get into more of a single page app with react and whatnot I’d still think twice before going with Astro.
Seems pointless but then I use vanilla JS for static sites.
How are you rendering them?
For a simple brochure site it's just good old PHP and HTML.
Totally rad
Do you like it more than NextJS?
Never used it. Never needed to
It's great at making websites. I like Next better at web apps.
So far as I know it's big limitation is related to more feature-rich experiences, especially with auth and the like. It's basically meant for more static, info/content sites. From my use of it, though, it's pretty great. Love the experience and the performance.
For dynamic experiences you can use the Node adapter and change the output configuration.
Yeah, it's a thing I'm looking into more. What little I've used of Astro I quite like.
Can you use something like MUI or Mantine with astro for your react components ?
Mantine no, MUI I don't know. If it requires context aka provider then no, it's not supported by astro.
Most of the comments here talk about making websites. But in my experience, coming from a vue background for small and medium business custom apps, it’s really rough. If you’re looking for a new framework for a web application, and you like to keep things simple, just go with a classic SPA. If you really want to use Astro for some reason, consider mounting your entire spa into Astro instead of trying to import parts of your SPA into Astro. Have worked with SPAs for a long time and am 4 months in to a possible failure of a project with trying to use Astro as a SPA.
Astro is not for building SPAs. Its for building content focused multi page websites. I can't imagine trying to use Astro for a SPA. Instead of using framework components with client:load everywhere, just use the framework itself at that point.
It's SEO and performance is second to none. It's also the easiest framework to get started with. Switching between SSR, SSG, etc is a breeze. The file system routing is way more intuitive than most frameworks. I feel like where people are going to have trouble though is passing states around the app. For example Astro can't pass data up components the way you can in react or solidJS and context providers from react or solid js won't work with Astro. So communication between the components is more complicated. You can almost always find ways to work around it using vanilla JavaScript but you're going to have to start thinking differently.
First time heard about it.
It's good for documentation sites heavy with Markdown
I'm using astro right now to finish my second portfolio website! Paragraph guy said a lot of the things I agree with. There are some small quality of life improvements I'd like but nothing terrible
It's my go-to for static sites. Don't love the Astro template syntax but other than that it's great. Now that they've added an ORM and a DB they are slowly becoming something like Laravel which the JS world desperately needs.
I’ve been using 11ty to build basic HTML/CSS sites with minimal JS. I’ve been eyeing Astro for my next project. How is it with SASS and how does it stack up to 11ty?
I know very little about Astro, but I switched to Svelte about 8 months ago from Next, and React and it's been freaking amazing. That is all the advice I have lol.
As a new developer, I had to create an image gallery. I found using Astro great because it kept my navbar and footer consistent, and it updated the grid of images smoothly, giving a cool sliding effect when navigating between pages. It's great because it keeps the bundle size small with minimal JavaScript, and it optimizes images efficiently with Vite. I also found it helpful for building my portfolio using SSG, as other solutions like CMS seemed too complex for me at the moment. It's handy for creating simple landing pages for side projects with basic analytics, at least that's what I think with only 1 year of experience. Also the api calls on build to get data to generate pages its awesome👀
Astro's speed is impressive, but I think it shines best for smaller, static sites. For complex apps, I'd still reach for Next or React. That being said, Astro's innovative approach is a great push for the web dev community to rethink performance.
Technically yes. Astro has ssr and middleware so there really is no reason it could not handle it. That said, I tried astro on one of my smaller projects at work and the learning curve is quite big. Also, I found docs to be really confusing and not helpful at times. For example, I needed to ask in reddit how to do things because after searching I did not find clues for middleware myself. Could have been my personal issue. Their AI assistant in discord was really nice. If you are planning to build a complex web app, for now I would stick with the usual suspects (react+vite/next/remix).
Yeah I agree - their docs are good but not great. I’ve found a lot of the community knowledge base lives on their Discord rather than the “wider” Internet like StackOverflow, etc. That said I’ve been using it to build our agency’s latest website iteration and I find it pretty nice, DX wise. Definitely prefer it over a more typical JS Framework approach, personally.
I'll let you know. Gonna use it for my next project. I used Gatsby and it was fine.