SPA vs MPA

SPA

Websites that are built with single-page applications (SPAs) only consist of one single page. Basically, when the user is surfing the website mostly wherever he chooses to press – he remains on the same platform. What SPAs are so great about, is that the page does not reload during its use and does not rely on navigating through different websites. If you have been on platforms like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, GitHub and so on, you have already met the best examples of SPA. It is one of its’ greatest features that when the page loads, only data is sent back-and-forth, and the website executes everything within itself rather than going through servers every time.

MPA

Different from SPAs, multi-page applications (MPAs) are complex websites. To put it more simply, it is a traditional web application that reloads the entire page whenever the user interacts with the website. Each time that the data is exchanged, the application makes a request from the server to display different information in the browser. The main reason why it differs so much from the single-page applications, MPAs take time to execute the information exchanges, meaning that the user experience can be harmed if the servers connect slowly or the internet connection is poor. If you want to see an example of how multi-page applications work, head over to the websites like Amazon, eBay, or every other traditional website. You’ll notice that each time you press on the website, you’re being redirecting to another page. MPA sites consist of many micro-websites and subsections to distribute content across the platform.

Hybrid

Hybrid - MPA, and SPA combined. In the Hybrid app, each page has to be compiled and could share some resources. Every page has own JS routing like wizards or subcomponents. Data is loaded both during page load and AJAX.

SPA vs MPA vs Hybrid

Ideal for

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
Ideal for a company with a single product to get a real-time experience without page refresh.	Ideal for a large company that offers a wide variety of products, if you need a lot of user interaction and technical features in your app, large e-commerce stores and marketplaces like eBay, huge web portals. Ideal for websites that have a lot of content (such as news portals) and require flawless SEO.	Ideal for a situation where is required both MPA and SPA.

General Summary

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
Pros: Sleek UX Speed Offline functionality Mobile adaptability Decoupled Backend and Frontend	Pros: Simple SEO Fast launch Many existed boxed solutions Works without javascript Wide options for security configuration	Pros: Mix from SPA + MPA
Cons: SEO JavaScript Dependency Memory leaks	Cons: Slowness due to the full page reload Coupled Backend and Frontend Complex Development process	Cons: Mix from SPA + MPA

Speed

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
MEDIUM SPA is quite fast, as most resources (HTML+CSS+Scripts) are only loaded once throughout the lifespan of the application. Only data is transmitted back and forth and no full page refreshes are occurring as the user navigates through the application At the same time SPA can be slow due to client-side rendering. Before your browser can render the page, it has to load bulky JS frameworks. This could take a while, especially for the large application. But after the first render, SPAs become much faster than MPAs. Fortunately, there are ways to speed up the SPA initialization such as loading assets dynamically, minimizing the scripts, etc	SLOW MPA is much slow from User Experience perspective as the browser must reload the entire page from scratch whenever the user wants to access new data or moves to a different part of the website.	MEDIUM+ Keep the best experience from both approaches (SPA and MPA)

Scalability

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
In SPAs, the business logic is built into separate components that are easy to develop and maintain. But making changes to the app’s architecture is a whole other story. A single feature may consist of several components and altering a commonly used element can affect other parts of the application. That’s why you have to take into account the future changes to the SPA’s functionality during the planning stage. If you have a clear vision of where your application is heading, the developers will be able to factor in the possible changes before the architecture is set in stone.	With the traditional approach (MPA), the application’s functionality is spread over multiple pages. You can gradually add content and expand the page count. It’s also relatively easy to alter a part of your MPA without affecting the other pages. If you want, for example, to change the application’s framework, you can do it page by page until the whole MPA is redesigned.	// SPA

Offline functionality

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
After the initial request, single-page web apps cache all the data they receive from a server and store it locally. This way, SPAs can continue to function even if the Internet connection fails. When the application connects back to the network, it synchronizes the local data with the server and restores the full functionality.	-	// SPA

Memory Leaks

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
Memory leaks in JavaScript can even cause a powerful system to slow down. Event listeners used in SPAs can cause a loss of available memory on the user devices. Since your app is essentially a single page that never reloads, memory leaks get worse the longer SPA runs. If you don’t pay enough attention to this problem during development, it can lead to significant slowdowns and quickly drain the device’s battery.	Not actual because of continues reloading a page.	// SPA

Coupling

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
SPA is strongly decoupled meaning that front-end and back-end are separate. Single-page applications use APIs developed by server-side developers to read and display data. Decoupling of front-end/back-end development makes it easier to find bugs in your codebase. It’s also easier to integrate new APIs and alter the ways in which data enters the SPA framework and flows into different systems. All without affecting the UI.	Frontend and backend development are tightly coupled. All coding is usually housed under one project.	// MPA

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
SPA isn’t very SEO-friendly. It’s primarily because the majority of single-page applications are run on JavaScript, which most search engines do not support. Web pages are indexed through “crawling” or “spidering”. Search engine crawlers download the page’s HTML files which makes static HTML web-pages are easier to rank. In the last couple of years, Google has become much better at indexing JavaScript. Still, Google admits it sometimes can’t properly index single-page applications. Not to mention that other search engines haven’t yet achieved the same SPA-crawling prowess. Article for SPA SEO optimization: https://snipcart.com/spa-seo	MPA enables better website positioning as each page can be optimized for a different keyword. Also, meta tags can be included on every page – this positively impacts Google rankings.	// MPA

Mobile Adaptivity

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
SPAs are significantly easier to port from web to mobile. You can generally use the same backend code both for the web and iOS/Android versions of your app or easily transform our app to PWA. SPA UI is much closer to that of native apps. This means you won’t have to change much design-wise when adapting your SPA to mobile.	-	Can be adapted for any device base on User-Agent information

Security

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
All you have to do to keep your page safe is secure data endpoints which is much faster but not necessarily safer. SPA’s are more prone to hacker attacks, as they run on JavaScript which doesn’t perform code compilation making it more vulnerable to malware. Compared to the “traditional” application, SPA is less secure. Due to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), it enables attackers to inject client-side scripts into the web application by other users. You can secure your data endpoints and separate the JS that gets downloaded by a client into multiple isolated pieces. This way, attackers won’t be able to access all your code at once.	Maintaining security may become a real challenge because developers have to secure each separate page.	// SPA

Maintainability

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
The development is simplified and streamlined. There is no need to write code to render pages on the server. It is much easier to get started because you can usually kick off development from a file file://URI, without using any server at all. Ready-made libraries and frameworks provide powerful tools for developing web applications. The project can work in parallel back-end and front-end developers. Thanks to a clear separation they will not interfere with each other. Decoupling of front-end/back-end development makes it easier to find bugs in your codebase. It’s also easier to integrate new APIs and alter the ways in which data enters the SPA framework and flows into different systems. All without affecting the UI. It’s much easier to debug single-page applications with Chrome. You can see the whole code at once, observe the network operations and inspect page elements together with the associated data.	The development becomes quite complex. The developer needs to use frameworks for either client and server-side. This results in a long time of application development. Testing gets rigorous, as there are no clear distinctions between User Interface and data.	// MPA + SPA

JavaScript Dependency

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
SPA lives and breathes JavaScript, which can be problematic. More search engines started to support JavaScript but with varying results. The level of support highly depends on the JS framework used. If the app is run on a browser with disabled JavaScript, it can cause problems with app functionality which might result in higher bounce rates and lower conversion. JavaScript reliance also contributes to its problems with SEO optimization and security issues.	MPA’s can be built without any JavaScript dependency.	Isomorphic rendering/server-side rendering, you can render the page on the server already. When the initial render is on the server and can be cached, disabling JS would not be a concern for getting a rendered page. Theoretically, that’s right. Obviously, you can render on the server-side. But lack of JS can be a concern for other functionalities. Lots of things can be done in HTML & CSS but from experience, it would be hell to do it this way instead of use JavaScript

Deployment

SPA	MPA	Hybrid
A single page application is super-simple to deploy: it's really just one index.html file, with a CSS bundle and a Javascript bundle. These 3 static files can be uploaded to any static content server like Apache, Nginx, Amazon S3 or Firebase Hosting.	Deployment and configuration could be complicated and depend on the boxed solution and technology stack. For example, Magento deployment for an e-commerce web application or Elgg for social networks.	// MPA