Technology · 02 Front-End Platforms
React, Next.js, Vue, Svelte, Angular, Astro and WordPress each earn a place on our shortlist for different jobs. Here is how we choose one for a corporate site, member portal, store or dashboard, and what each choice costs the team that maintains it.
Updated September 2026 You own everything Reply within one business day
OlDevs, a full-stack studio in Vancouver, picks front-end platforms by who will maintain the site, not by what is fashionable.React with Next.js is the default for portals and dashboards, Astro or WordPress for content-led corporate sites, and Vue, Svelte or Angular when a client's team already works in them. Every build ships in TypeScript, meets WCAG 2.2 AA and is measured against Core Web Vitals before launch.
Key facts
02 · Front-End Platforms
Each card says when the platform is the right call and what it will cost you in upkeep, hiring and hosting once the launch is behind you.
The right choice for member portals, dashboards and stores that mix public pages with logged-in features. Server Components keep the JavaScript payload small and data fetching close to the database. The cost later: Next.js moves fast, so budget for a framework upgrade about once a year and a Node-capable host.
A good fit when your in-house developers already know Vue, or when you want a gentler learning curve than React for a mid-sized web app. Nuxt supplies routing, server rendering and modules out of the box. The cost later: a smaller hiring pool in Canada than React, so plan for training when the team turns over.
Best for interactive marketing sites, kiosks and lightweight tools where bundle size and animation smoothness matter more than a deep library ecosystem. Runes make state simple to reason about. The cost later: fewer off-the-shelf components, so data grids and rich editors take longer to build and maintain.
The sensible pick for large internal applications in organisations that already standardise on it, where strict structure, dependency injection and long support windows outweigh flexibility. The cost later: heavier tooling, a steeper path for developers coming from React, and two major versions a year to track.
Our first recommendation for corporate sites, campaign pages and documentation where content changes weekly and interactivity stops at forms, search and a few widgets. Astro ships almost no JavaScript by default, so Core Web Vitals come easily. The cost later: editors need a headless CMS or Git workflow.
Right when a marketing team wants to edit pages without a developer, or when the site needs the plugin ecosystem for events, memberships or bilingual EN/FR content. We build custom themes and widgets rather than stacking plugins. The cost later: monthly updates, hardening and performance work a static site never needs.
Stack
Concrete tools, current at the time of writing; confirmed for your project at scoping.
Frameworks
Language and tooling
Styling and components
Quality and testing
WordPress
Delivery
What changed
What moved in this area and what it means for your build.
Early 2025
Actions, the use hook and stable Server Components changed how forms and data loading are written. Clients get less client-side code, but older React libraries need checking before an upgrade.
Jan 2025
The engine is faster and configured through CSS variables instead of a JavaScript file. Design tokens live in one place, which makes brand changes cheaper; v3 projects need a guided migration.
2025
Explicit reactivity through runes made larger Svelte apps easier to maintain, closing the gap with React. Svelte is now credible beyond marketing sites and small tools.
2025
Signal-based reactivity and zoneless change detection matured across the 2025 releases, making Angular apps lighter and easier to profile. Existing apps can adopt them gradually.
Late 2025
Faster builds and dev reloads, with continued investment in the App Router and caching controls. Clients still on the Pages Router should plan a migration.
2026
With current Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox shipping WebGPU on their main platforms, browser-based 3D and on-device machine learning rarely need a fallback path. Use it only when the product needs it.
How we choose
If your organisation has developers, we build in what they already know, even if we would pick differently for ourselves. If it has none, we favour the largest hiring pool in Canada and the least ceremony to update.
Daily edits by a marketing team point to WordPress or a headless CMS with visual previews. Content that changes a few times a quarter is cheaper as a static Astro build.
Public pages want static output and caching. Logged-in features want server rendering, sessions and data fetching built in, which is where Next.js, Nuxt and SvelteKit earn their keep.
Government, association and health clients often need Canadian hosting. That rules some managed platforms in or out before we discuss frameworks, and decides whether we ship a static bundle or a Node runtime.
Every framework charges an annual tax of upgrades. We estimate it honestly: React and Next.js move quickly, Angular is predictable but heavy, WordPress needs monthly attention, a static site barely any.
WCAG 2.2 AA and passing Core Web Vitals are not negotiable, so we exclude anything that makes them hard: heavy page builders, client-only rendering for content pages, or component libraries with poor keyboard support.
Who it's for
Whether the audience is a customer, a member, a citizen, or your own team, the choice has to hold up under real use.
A corporate site usually splits into a content-led public site and one or two logged-in tools. We often pair Astro or WordPress for the public side with a Next.js portal for investors, customers or careers, sharing one design system.
Member directories, event registration, bilingual EN/FR pages and strict accessibility obligations. WordPress with custom widgets or a Next.js portal, hosted in Canada, with WCAG 2.2 AA verified page by page.
Dozens of location pages that must stay on brand while franchisees update hours, offers and staff. A design system with locked components, generated location pages and a light editing role does the job.
Speed to a working demo matters most, so we start with Next.js, TypeScript and Tailwind, ship a build every week, and keep the front-end thin enough for a founding engineer to take over without a rewrite.
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ExploreFAQ
For most corporate sites we recommend Astro when a small team manages content through a CMS, or WordPress with a custom theme when marketing edits pages visually every day. Both produce fast, accessible pages. We only reach for React or Vue when the site contains real application features such as a customer portal or product configurator.
Often, yes. Next.js is excellent for applications but adds a Node runtime, a build pipeline and yearly upgrades that a brochure site never uses. If the site is mostly text, images and forms, a static Astro build or WordPress is cheaper to run and easier to hand over. We will tell you when the simpler option is better.
Yes, when it is the right tool. We write custom themes and Elementor widgets rather than assembling a site from dozens of plugins, so the result stays fast and editable. Marketing teams that publish daily without a developer, and organisations with bilingual EN/FR content, are the usual reasons we choose it.
Accessibility is designed in, not audited on at the end. We use component libraries with proper keyboard and screen-reader support, test every template with axe-core and manual keyboard passes, check colour contrast in the design system, and verify focus management in modals, menus and page transitions. Our report lists each criterion and how it was met.
Core Web Vitals are Google's three field metrics: Largest Contentful Paint for loading, Interaction to Next Paint for responsiveness, and Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability. They influence search ranking and how the site feels. Frameworks that ship little JavaScript, such as Astro, pass easily; heavy client-side apps need more careful work.
Yes. We build in React, Vue, Svelte and Angular, and recommend whichever your team maintains most comfortably. Our job is to leave you with code your people can own, so we follow your conventions, linting and repository structure rather than imposing ours, and document anything that departs from framework defaults.
Rarely for a typical site, and we will say so. WebAssembly earns its place when you need an existing C++ or Rust engine in the browser, such as a CAD viewer or media encoder. WebGPU matters for 3D configurators and on-device machine learning. A progressive web app makes sense when field staff need offline access without an app-store release.
Let’s connect
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