Top 20 World-Famous Companies Using Node.js

Node.js tops the list of the most loved, dreaded, and wanted other frameworks, libraries, and tools in Stack Overflow developer survey 2020.

18.1% of developers from the survey are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it. Node.js ranks first in this list followed by TensorFlow (17.2%), React Native (14%), and Flutter (10.7%).

Source: stackoverflow.com

Statista also surveyed 40,314 respondents (software developers) in its report of most used libraries, frameworks, and tools among developers worldwide in 2020. According to the survey, 51.4 percent of respondents used Node.js, topping the chart of most utilized frameworks worldwide in 2020.

Source: Statista

This article talks about top companies that have leveraged Node.js development and why they have used it.

Before we talk about companies using Node.js, let’s first know what Node.js is.

What Is Node.js?

Node.js is a runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside a browser. It is an open-source, asynchronous, back-end, and cross-platform compatible runtime environment. It is designed to build scalable apps and allows developers to use JavaScript for server-side scripting. With Node.js, backend development has been changed significantly as Node.js enables the use of a single programming language to build complete websites. This is opposite to the traditional approach where different languages are used for frontend and backend development.

Node.js was originally created by Ryan Dahl and now maintained by OpenJS Foundation.

When developers were asked to describe Node.js. in the 2018 Node.js User Survey Report, they mostly used positive terms like “fast”, “easy”, “awesome”, “powerful”, “flexible” and even “fun”.

Good Read: What Is Node.js? Explained In 200 Words

Why Node.js? What Is Node.js Used For?

It is chosen by well-known brands and a wide number of enterprises that want to utilize it for better scalability and performance. Here are some of the benefits of Node.js.

Node.js Advantages

Scalability:

It is one of the key advantages of Node.js. It is designed in a way that makes scalability a breeze. There are web and mobile applications that have thousands of concurrent users at a time. Node.js ensures smooth performance and greater reliability, making it a widely-popular and desirable choice for developers and large enterprises.

Ease of Use:

It is open-source and easy to use. As JavaScript is primarily used for server-side programming, it makes development faster and efficient. There is no need to switch between client-side and server-side programming languages.

It is one of the important parts of MEAN Stack.

Community:

Node.js community is one of the largest communities as it is one of the widely-used software around the world. It has a strong community of developers, contributors, collaborators, and students across the world. The open-source community and OpenJS Foundation release frequent updates and build new tools to make the development process more efficient, faster, and secure.

Fast:

Node.js is influenced by systems like Ruby and Python. It is an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime where many connections can be handled simultaneously. The architecture of Node.js free developers from worries of dead-lock and blocks. This results in easy and non-blocking I/O processes, making it easier to build scalable systems.

Modern:

It is suitable for building all types of web applications, especially, real-time web applications where scalability is an important factor. It is best suitable to develop streaming apps, chat apps, social media platforms, collaboration tools, and even game apps. Due to the easy learning curve, it is suitable for startups and MVP development.

Here is the list of companies using Node.js:

Top Companies Using Node.js

• Uber
• Netflix
• Twitter
• PayPal
• Medium
• LinkedIn
• Trello
• Yandex
• IMDB
• BBC
• GoDaddy
• NASA
• eBay
• Groupon
• Walmart
• Yahoo
• Amazon Web Services
• Microsoft
• SAP
• Rakuten

These companies are using Node.js in one way or the other. They favor Node.js over other frameworks for better performance, scalability, and speed.

Uber:

Uber has popularized the ‘on-demand economy’ model where quick accessibility is given prime importance. Uber is a prominent example of a sharing economy and after a huge success of this model, companies started uberisation where mobile apps work as a mediator between service providers and clients. Uber has simplified transportation for every person and now offering more than just an on-demand taxi service. It offers services like vehicles for hire, food delivery, freight, couriers, package delivery, and vehicle rental services.

With over 110 million monthly active users worldwide, Uber is one of the largest providers in the gig economy. It carries out operations in over 900 cities worldwide.

Uber uses Node.js in its APIs, UberEats application, and almost much of its code written in Python, Node.js, Go, and Java. Uber’s API Gateway was one of the largest Node.js applications at Uber. Source: uber.com

Netflix:

Hardly, there is a person who doesn’t know this name. Netflix is one of the amazingly popular over-the-top (OTT) platforms headquartered in California.

As of October 2020. Netflix had over 195 million paid subscriptions worldwide. It is one of the largest entertainment/media companies by market capitalization.

Netflix uses Node.js to handle high-volume streaming for millions of users. Architecture at Netflix is designed in a way that offers observability, debuggability, and availability. It is flexible, fast, and offers smooth performance – these are the key attractions of choosing Node.js at Netflix. Source:openjsf.org

Twitter:

Twitter is one of the most-visited social networking platforms with 187 million monetizable daily active users worldwide as of the third quarter of 2020. Source: Statista

For Twitter, scalability and availability are two important factors in the technology stack. Twitter’s Progressive Web App, TwitterLite is powered by Node.js. It is a fast, responsive, and lightweight app. It can be opened in a browser, uses less storage, offers offline use, and on-demand accessibility. The use of Node.js in the architecture of Twitter Lite offers exceptional performance, reliability, and speed.

PayPal:

Established in 1998 as Confinity, PayPal is one of the world’s largest online payment systems operated across the world. It is a revolutionary payment system and served as an electronic alternative to traditional checks and money orders. A wide number of today’s online businesses and organizations are using PayPal as a payment processor.

The team at PayPal used Node.js to leverage the unified development experience Node.js offers. The use of a single language, JavaScript to write both the server-side and client-side applications helped them quickly respond to the needs and effectively scale.

Medium:

Medium is a well-known online publishing platform launched in 2012. It acts as a mediatory platform between readers and writers and offers a delightful experience for reading and writing. It is developed by Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter.

The Medium app is using Node.js with Nginx for load balancing and improving performance and speed. The main app servers are written in Node.js.

Medium serves as the blog host and get 25 million unique readers every month with tens of thousands of post published each week.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a famous professional networking platform and a subsidiary of Microsoft. It is one of the most used platforms by job seekers, professionals, employers, and recruiters in more than 200 countries.

To serve millions of users concurrently, you will require a tech stack that is secure, reliable, and scalable. Node.js perfectly fit their requirements and offered great performance and speed to worldwide LinkedIn users.

Trello:

Available in 21 languages, Trello is a task management and online collaborative tool useful for planning (business and personal purposes), software project management, accounting, and other task management.

As per one official blog mentioning the Trello Tech Stack, the server side of Trello is built with Node.js. Due to an active developer community and great performance, the Trello team had picked up Node.js to gain the benefits of the event-driven, non-blocking architecture of Node.js.

Yandex:

Yandex is a Russian multinational corporation with over 70 internet-related products and services. It is the largest technology company in Russia and the largest Russian search engine with over 52% of market share. Yandex uses Node.js for several API libraries.

IMDB:

IMDb is an online database that contains information related to films, games, television programs along with ratings and reviews. It offers A to Z information for each movie/show including cast and crew, biographies, trivia, ratings, and summaries.

BBC:

BBC stands for British Broadcasting Corporation. It is one of the oldest and largest broadcast group in the world by a number of employees. It employs more than 35,000 professionals for its numerous media services.

BBC used Node.js to power Sport, iPlayer, and to build a new homepage. They have used it for several other development tools and servers.

GoDaddy:

GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar and web hosting company. As of June 2020, it has more than 20 million customers and over 7000 employees across the globe. GoDaddy’s website builder platform and backend are built with Node.js to handle traffic more effectively, deliver exceptional performance, and release new updates faster.

NASA:

NASA is an independent agency of the US federal government and dedicated to aeronautics and space research programs. NASA picked Node.js to build API-driven Node.js enterprise architecture to move spacesuits related data to a cloud database. They have also created the microservice architecture along with the goal of moving legacy apps to the modern environment. This resulted in faster data accessibility and this is how Node.js is used to break down the data barriers for the world’s leading space agency.

eBay:

eBay is one of the leading American e-commerce corporations and it is one of the well-known success stories of the dot-com bubble. It deals with B2B and B2C customers through its website and app.

eBay’s first application was built with Node.js and there were few internal tools and servers that used Node.js. Now, it uses Node.js for eBay API libraries.

Groupon:

When you hear the term ‘discount’, the first name that strikes in your mind is Groupon. It is a world-famous eCommerce marketplace application that works with third-party services and merchants to offer deals, discounts, activities, and travel.

As of the second quarter of 2020, Groupon had 38.1 million unique customers who had bought at least one of Groupon’s deals during the trailing 12 months. Source: Statista.com

The Groupon engineering team decided to move to Node.js from Ruby in 2015. At that time, customers were increasing and the company was planning to expand globally. They have used Node.js for their frontend, some backend purposes, and the entire web layer is built in Node.js.

Walmart:

Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation operating in 27 countries across the world. It is a chain of hypermarkets, department stores, and grocery stores. Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue, according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2019. With 11, 510 stores (as of October 2020) and 2.2 million employees, it owns a dominant position in the worldwide retail market.

To fulfill the expectations of such a retail giant, the tech stack is required to be able to handle fluctuating demands, deliver a seamless experience, and keep up with the changes. They have used Node.js for the server-side as well as for the client-side of an application.

Yahoo:

Yahoo is considered as one of the pioneers of an early internet era with a range of services like a search engine, advertising, email, video sharing, social media, and many others. It was one of the most-visited news and media websites globally in 2016.

Yahoo embraced Node.js to achieve scalability and leverage JavaScript expertise. Yahoo became the part of Node.js foundation in 2016.

Amazon Web Services:

It is a subsidiary of Amazon and a widely-used on-demand cloud computing platform and APIs to companies, government bodies, and individuals on a pay-as-you-go basis. It has made it very easier to access on-demand servers and services. It equips everyone with the ability to build quickly and cheaply.

AWS uses many tech stacks and there are many languages and tools but Amazon majorly uses Java and JavaScript.

Microsoft:

This name doesn’t need any introduction. It is the world’s leading tech giant primarily associated with developing, selling, licensing, and manufacturing a range of software and hardware.

Microsoft heavily uses Node.js and JavaScript in Azure and many other products. JavaScript’s ease of use and powerful community helped them achieve performance, speed, and scalability.

SAP:

SAP is a German multinational software corporation famous for its ERP and enterprise software to manage business processes and customers. It is the world’s third-largest publicly-traded software company.

SAP used Node.js in its strategic SAP HANA platform.

Rakuten:

Rakuten is a Japanese eCommerce and online retail company and is referred to as “the Amazon of Japan”. It is a prominent tech company that operates in 29 countries and regions offering many services ranging from banking to fintech, media, and communication. It reportedly uses Node.js in their backend to make digital presence smoother and accessible.

Summing It Up:

When you observe the above-mentioned companies, one thing is common – all these organizations able to employ the best talent and use robust tech stacks to deliver a great experience. They have chosen Node.js to accomplish this. Being open-source software, Node.js continues to grow with support from developers and JavaScripts enthusiasts from all over the world. There are many more such companies that use Node.js for different reasons including UI development.

Good Read: Node.js And Fortune 500 Companies: Fewer Efforts, More Rewards

Node.js is worth trying to see how Node.js makes it easier to scale and develop. The disadvantages of Node.js include asynchronous architecture (sometimes becomes a problem), difficulty to debug and test, and high space requirement. Despite these, 179,875 websites are using Node.js according to SimilarTech and there are many more on the list. We hope this post gives you the confidence of using Node.js if you are considering it for your next project.

It’s a feature-rich environment and yes it is all about JavaScript! Isn’t it?