All The Numbers From The State of Vue.js Report 2019

The popularity of the last edition of State of Vue.js surpassed our expectations. We got over 8k downloads from people all around the world. Many of them used the report to convince their teach leads, CTOs, or even themselves that Vue,js should be taken into consideration for their next project which was the exact thing we wanted to achieve.

And since a lot has changed for Vue, it’s time for the new case studies and data from its users.

Like its predecessor, this new, revised edition of the report was created for three main reasons. One, it was to serve as a reliable source of Vue.js business use cases to anyone interested in getting a sneak peek of how other companies use Vue.js. Two, it was supposed to reach individuals who have never heard of Vue and provide them with good reasons to give the framework a closer look. Three, with the report at our disposal, we’d never again have to convince our clients that Vue.js is a ready-to-use solution that has everything we need to build all kinds of applications.

But things have changed for Vue and it’s become much more stable and comprehensive than it has been 2017. Plus, we believe that startups and SMBs have finally realized the power of Vue.js and understand the value it brings. So we made it our mission to send the same message to enterprise-level organizations, as we know that some of them have already adopted the framework to great success—hence the IBM case study featured in this updated edition (which were outlined in the downloadable version).

Now, you can download the complete State of Vue.js report with case studies, survey data, and “Future of Vue.js” article from Evan You, or read on to discover all data and insights from this year’s survey.

Thanks to courtesy of Chris Fritz, we added some new questions which give some nice perspective on how deal with Vue.js in practice. Enjoy the read!

How Developers Use Vue.js?

Like its predecessor, the 2017 State of Vue report, this new, updated version was also supposed to allow us to learn more about the community of professionals using Vue.js framework. Using an online survey, we sourced data from both software developers and Chief Technology Officers which we then examined to gain the insights on:

• the popularity of Vue.js in their organizations,
• the reasons behind adding Vue to their tech stack and the doubts that accompanied the decision,
• the solutions they choose when developing Vue projects,
• the libraries/frameworks they use for frontend development,
• languages used for backend development,
• their predictions (and wishes) for the future of Vue.js.

Report Data

All data used to draft the report was collected in a survey conducted over a five-week period in November and December of 2018. We received 1,553 responses, mainly from software developers and Chief Technology Officers (88% of the respondents held one of these roles) whose organizations currently use Vue.

We also asked Evan You, Vue creator, and Szymon Korzeniowski, Head of Development at Monterail, to comment on the results of this survey, to give us even more insights and a better understanding of the broader context.

Key Insights

• Over 92% respondents would use Vue.js again for their next project
• 94% of the survey participants used the official documentation to learn about Vue
• 75% of the respondents pointed to ease of integration as the biggest advantage of Vue.js
• Almost 60% of the survey participants believe Vue.js will become even more popular within their organizations in the next 12 months
• 58% decided to add Vue to their tech stack because it’s a pretty easy framework to start with

Survey Questions & Answers

1. What was the most important reason behind adding Vue.js to the technology stack?

More than a half of the respondents describes Vue.js as easy to start with. Start-ups choose it to enable faster MVP development, while in enterprise companies its adoption is usually driven by its its ease of integration with existing CMSes.

It should be noted that in our 2017 survey, a similar portion (59%) of the respondents chose the same reason behind adding Vue.js to their technology stack, implying that key adoption drivers have remained mostly unchanged between then and now.

2. What were the doubts you and your team had when planning to add Vue.js to your tech stack?

Almost 50% of the respondents say that lack of former Vue-related experience was their main doubt when planning to add Vue.js to the tech stack. This number is pretty similar to the one we saw in 2017 when the answer was picked by 45% of the people we polled.

It bears noting, however, that in the span of nearly fifteen months that separated the two survey, trust in the future of the framework grew by nearly 10%—where in 2017 45% of our respondents mentioned doubts about the future of Vue.js, similar reservations were brought up by only 36% of the 2019 respondents.

Evan You: That’s definitely a good sign, and we hope the number will go down further in the future as we put more work into the project’s governance, contribution management and long term sustainability.

3. What are the biggest advantages that Vue.js brings to your organization?

4. Is there anything you’re missing when it comes to Vue.js?

637 respondents (up from 481 in 2017) shared their suggestions through the survey. Again, we decided to pool these comments and requests in order to better flesh out the bigger picture.

Over 130 people pointed to Vue’s lack of a mobile solution as one of its biggest flaws. This was also the top suggestion the last time we ran this survey.

Evan: NativeScript’s Vue integration is pretty solid now. Maybe not enough people are actually aware of it because it’s not“official” - but I’ve only been hearing good things about it from those who have tried it. And Progress (the company behind NativeScript) is really doubling down on their investment in it. In the hybrid app space, Quasar has really matured and is close to 1.0, plus Ionic 4 is now fully compatible with Vue as well. So I believe we’ve got a solid list of solutions for anyone wants to build mobile apps with Vue today.

50 replies mentioned the need for a bigger Vue ecosystem that would provide a better collection of tools and libraries.

46 of the respondents brought up the need for improving Vue documentation to enable smoother app development.

Evan: I think our current docs has been serving us really well so far. But we do plan to revamp the docs together with 3.0—there’s always room for improvements for sure.

42 of the pooled replies mention better testing tools and libraries’ need for further Vue development.

Evan: 3.0 will likely have a simpler testing methodology compared to today’s because the custom renderer API allows easy creation of custom renderers for testing purposes.

35 people suggested growing and improving available learning resources to include even more real life examples, especially of implementation in enterprise apps. However, the last time we asked, this need was brought up by 67 people, so the decrease in this particular area seems to show that the number and quality of the available learning resources have improved since.

5. What’s the probability of you using Vue again for a new project?

A whopping 92.3% of respondents claim there is a very high and high probability of them using Vue.js for their next project. A framework can ask for no better review than that. Having this many developers with prior experience in Vue.js who are still strongly motivated to use it is undoubtedly impressive.

6. How long Vue.js has been in use within your organization? 

Last time we asked, 46% of the people we polled have been using Vue.js for less than six months. This particular metric saw the biggest shift in the intervening fifteen months. Today, almost 37% of the respondents declare to have between one and two years of experience with Vue. This would indicate that those developers who started using Vue.js during or just before our last survey decided to stick with it.

7. What resources do you use to learn about Vue.js?

Like two years prior, the official documentation continues to be the most popular resource among those willing to improve their knowledge of the framework. However, the popularity of online courses also saw a pretty significant increase, by over ten percentage points. The broader availability of more high-quality learning online courses may be one explanation for the change.

8. Do you think the number of employees using Vue.js in your organization will increase in the next 12 months?

Over 59% of respondents are convinced Vue.js is going to get even more popular in their organization within the next 12 months. To compare: in 2017, the number was 54%. It is also worth stressing that among those respondents who work at large enterprises (with over 1,000 employees) over 73% are certain that Vue is going to be widely adapted inside their companies.

9. In Vue.js projects over the past year, which of the following have you used for JavaScript?

Szymon Korzeniowski: With major new features introduced in ES2015 and newer versions, modern JavaScript has been embraced by developers—and browsers—everywhere. Tools like Babel, which can be easily added to a project thanks to Vue CLI, allow for effortless transpilation to ES5 for older browsers. Therefore, 86% respondents have been using modern JavaScript in their Vue projects, whereas 35.7% have worked with plain ES5.

TypeScript is also fast becoming a popular option in the Vue ecosystem, with stronger support for the language introduced in Vue 2.5 and first-class support in Vue CLI. This number is likely to rise even further in the future, as Vue 3.0 will be rewritten from the ground up in TypeScript.

10. In Vue projects over the past year, which of the following have you used to write HTML?

11. In Vue.js projects over the past year, which of the following use cases for Vue have you had?

Szymon Korzeniowski: Vue’s truly progressive nature, covering a broad spectrum of possible use cases, is reflected in the results of our survey. 85% of respondents have used Vue as a complete solution to build a full-blown single-page app, with 23.1% going even further using it together with server-side rendering. On the other hand, “drop-in” use cases for Vue—adding interactivity to existing static sites or background applications—are also common, with 36.5% and 32.6% respondents, respectively, using it this way.

12. In Vue projects over the past year, which of the following have you used for routing?

Szymon Korzeniowski: As the official Vue routing library, Vue Router is a strong leader here, with nearly 85% respondents having used them in their projects over the past year. About 10% keep their routing on the server side, while 4% use no routing at all.

13. In Vue.js projects over the past year, which of the following have you used for global state management?

Szymon Korzeniowski: Similarly to Vue Router, Vuex is the official state management solution in the Vue ecosystem, and is therefore used by the majority of respondents—nearly 87%, to be precise. Not all projects require complex state management, however—around 20% respondents have worked on projects without any global state, and around 11% have opted for using a shared state.

14. In Vue.js projects over the past year, which of the following have you used to scope CSS?

Szymon Korzeniowski: The ability to create scoped styles in .vue files with a simple HTML attribute has proven to be a whopping success, with nearly 80% respondents using it to scope CSS. Only less than a third of developers are still using manual scoping strategies like BEM.

15. In your last Vue project, how much of the CSS was global?

Szymon Korzeniowski: Despite the popularity of scoped styles, global CSS is still a thing. Even though 38% of respondents use little to no global styles, for nearly 20% it comprised the majority of styles in their last project.

16. Which CLI tool did you use to create your last Vue project?

Szymon Korzeniowski: 2018 saw the stable release of Vue CLI 3, which has made it super easy to kickstart new projects with a pre-configured Webpack 4 setup, multiple integrations, and an awesome graphical user interface. More than half of the respondents were quick to jump on the Vue CLI 3 bandwagon, using it to setup their most recent project.

17. What libraries/frameworks do you use for frontend development?

18. What languages does your organization use for backend development?

Demographics 

Company size (number of employees):
Small and Medium-Sized (<100): 65.1%
Medium Enterprise (101 - 1,000): 19.5%
Enterprise (1,000+): 12.5% 

Team size (number of teammates):
Small team (2-10 people): 73.5%
Solopreneur: 13.5%
Medium team (11-25 people): 10.5%
Large team (25+ people): 2.5% 

Role in organization:
Software developer: 75%
Chief Technology Officer: 13%
Other: 8%
Project Manager: 4%

As you can see, this edition is a continuity of trends we’ve seen last time. The biggest change, which in my opinion may greatly influence next years, is the number of experienced developers (2+ years) which proves stability of the framework and probably will give new hiring opportunities. Vue.js 3.0 version may also shaken up the JS world a bit and make the following months a breakthrough for Vue.

What do you think of those numbers?