MEAN vs MERN? Your Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Stack

Are you facing difficulty in understanding which technology you should choose for your web development ideas? Have you been thrown an unknown term by a development company? Comparative studies of the two most prominent technology stacks for web app development called MEAN and MERN will give you a basic understanding of which is best for your web development ideas.

Readers may find many articles and notes on this topic online, but not all of them are written to give the actual core of the technology and what to choose. This guide is a no-fluff and no-nonsense it aims to provide concise but clear ideas on both technology stacks so that readers can gain knowledge to talk with their respective development teams and learn  MEAN vs MERN. 

What is a Tech Stack?

A tech stack represents the combination of the software tools, frameworks, libraries, and programming languages used to create a web or mobile application. It’s one very important choice because it will affect how fast you’ll be developing the application, its performance, scalability, and maintenance.

A typical tech stack has three main parts:

• Frontend: The client side with which users interact.
• Backend: The server side in which real application processing goes on with business logic.
• Database: A system that stores and retrieves data.

MEAN Stack: What is it and Components

MEAN is an acronym for MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js. It’s an open-source JavaScript-based stack for developing vigorous and scalable web applications. Below is a breakdown of MEAN components:

• MongoDB: NoSQL database that puts data in JSON-like documents. It utilizes flexible usage of data without formal schemes, hence perfectly suited for dealing with large quantities of unorganized data.
• Express.js: Web application framework for Node.js. It serves to simplify the development process for web applications and APIs due to a thin layer of basic web app features.
• Angular: Front-end framework developed by Google to create dynamic, single-page applications (SPAs) and to take a more modular approach towards web development.
• Node.js: A runtime environment for server-side applications built upon Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. This allows you to use JavaScript on the server, so that you can write client- and server-side code using a consistent language.

Benefits of MEAN Stack

Most importantly, MEAN stack allows the developers to use the same language to develop both the frontend and the backend. This minimizes the need to constantly switch between languages.

• Scalability: MEAN stack applications are easily scalable in both horizontal and vertical directions, which is critical for most growing businesses.
• High Speed and Performance: As Node.js works in a non-blocking, asynchronous fashion, it’s very well suited for the applications that have high concurrency, such as real-time applications.
• Low Cost: As MEAN components are all open-source, it means they are free to use. That saves development cost at the initial stages. It also allows for a unified codebase that will cut down on time and resources required in the development stage.
• Strong Community Support: There is an enormous amount of communities attached to every component of MEAN, and they are constantly improving them and offering very thorough documentation and resources.

Disadvantages of MEAN Stack

• Steeper Learning Curve: Angular, being one of the core components of the MEAN stack, is hard to master due to its rich feature set and modular approach, which is scary for the beginners.

• SEO Limitation: Given that Angular is designed for SPAs, it can also be more challenging to optimize for SEO as well compared to traditional applications without requiring extra SSR in comparison.
• Less Backend Flexibility: Express.js, although strong, may also have less flexibility than some other backend frameworks that could limit complicated applications.

MERN Stack: Overview and Components

The MERN stack comprises MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node.js. Similar to MEAN, MERN is a JavaScript-based stack except in one major difference: React replaces Angular for the frontend. Let’s break down the components:

• MongoDB: Just as it was the case of MEAN, MongoDB constitutes a database that allows flexible and scalable storage of data in a document-oriented model.
• Express.js: Same lightweight back-end framework that is part of the MEAN stack. This gives both API and web application development in a very simplified way.
• React: A JavaScript library developed by Facebook for building user interfaces. The core philosophy behind React involves creating reusable UI components in view of complex interfaces through a component-based architecture.
• Node.js: Same as in MEAN. Node.js is used as a server-side execution tool for running JavaScript code. This allows developers to create highly scalable applications.

MERN Stack Benefits

Component-Based Architecture

React helps a developer build reusable UI components, which means improved code maintainability and scalability. This will also make very large applications easier to handle by breaking them down into smaller, more manageable pieces.

Faster Development and SEO-Friendly

The virtual DOM of React increases performance by only updating parts of the UI that have changed, making it faster in rendering and much smoother to the user. React will prove to be more SEO-friendly than Angular in case of server-side rendering or other libraries like Next.js can make it improve indexing by the search engines.

Wide Adoption

React has a huge community and thus is very widely adopted in the industry which means finding developers and resources for troubleshooting or improving your application with ease.

Disadvantages of the MERN Stack

Not a Full Framework:

Like Angular, React is not a full-fledged framework but rather a library. This means that developers have to resort to additional libraries or tools for state management (like Redux) and routing (like React Router).

State Management Complexity: 

As you grow your application, state management across your components will grow harder to keep track of, particularly for larger apps. Solutions like Redux do exist, but it adds complexity to your development.

Learning Curve for SSR: 

While SEO is really important, using server side rendering with React might be a steeper learning curve compared to using Angular’s built-in server side capabilities

MEAN vs MERN: What’s the Difference?

What’s the main difference between the MEAN and MERN stacks? Behind them lies the same MongoDB, Express.js, and Node.js. The biggest difference between the two is the frontend framework: Angular in the case of MEAN versus React in the case of MERN.

1. Front-end Framework

Angular (MEAN): Angular is a full-fledged and structured approach to development. Angular has more built-in functionalities out of the box, so it’s a good choice for developers who are comfortable with a full-fledged framework.

React (MERN): It’s a flexible, lightweight library built directly on UI component building and thus provides a great deal of flexibility and customization but requires extra libraries like state management and routing features.

2. Learning Curve

MEAN: The presence of Angular makes the learning curve more sharp, particularly for beginners who might get lost in the ecosystem of Angular.

MERN: MERN is easier to learn and adopt because of React’s simpler syntax and component-based architecture, especially for developers with experience using JavaScript.

3. Performance

MEAN: Angular is mostly dependent on two-way data binding, which can consume a lot of resources and impact performance in very large applications.

MERN: React’s virtual DOM, combined with one-way data binding, makes the same render both much more efficient in rendering complex UIs, giving MERN a performance advantage with highly dynamic applications.

4. Flexibility

MEAN: Angular is less flexible than other alternatives, that is, less flexible in architecture; due to its opinionated architecture, it can be counted both on the positive side (standardization) and the negative side (no self-customization).

MERN: The flexibility of which tools or libraries you are going to use is higher when you opt for React due to its unopinionated nature.

MEAN vs MERN: What Should You Choose?

Both MEAN and MERN are high-power options for building modern web applications. The decision between them often depends on the needs of your project and the experience of your team.

Choose MEAN if:

• You need a full-featured framework like Angular that provides a standardized approach to building applications.
• Team is comfortable with TypeScript, which is commonly used by Angular.
• You are more used to two-way data binding when handling form data and UI state.

Choose MERN if:

• You need a flexible, module based approach where you decide which additional tools to use.
• You must have front-end rendering with higher performance and efficiency using the virtual DOM of React.
• Your project must be scalable with great performance for real-time or dynamic applications.

Conclusion: MEAN vs MERN?

Both the MEAN and MERN stacks have great benefits for building powerful web applications with impressive scalability. If you are still unsure about your preferred stack and you need professional help for your project, we recommend you to proceed with WitArist.

Understanding both MEAN and MERN stacks in-depth enables the professional team at WitArist to assist you in the assessment of the requirements of your project and suggest the right one for the best outcome. Whether it is an enterprise-level application or a really dynamic web platform, WitArist can offer pertinent support that will help you become successful.