PWA vs. SPA: what are the differences?

Single Page Applications, as the word suggests, are applications that consist of 1 page. This page is always rendered with dynamic content. Examples of SPAs that everyone knows: YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, Google Maps, ...

When you open an SPA, all the code is loaded immediately. When you then click through to the website, only the new data is loaded, the rest of the page is not refreshed. As a result, no unnecessary time is lost when loading a page and thus it is more pleasant for a visitor to browse.

In a previous blog, we explained in detail about PWAs. You can read it back here/wat-is-een-pwa-en-waarom-heeft-mijn-bedrijf-dit-nodig. In short, it boils down to the following: PWAs are websites that appear to work like an app on a mobile device. Because a PWA just runs in the browser, but works like a mobile app, it is a good alternative to native apps.

We'll get right to the point: The differences between PWA and SPA have actually become minimal. In the past, there were more differences between a PWA and an SPA. We list the main differences and current developments.

Speed

The biggest difference between a PWA or SPA was pageload. With an SPA, it sometimes took up to 10 seconds to load everything, while with a PWA it was sometimes only 1 second. But technology doesn't stand still! Meanwhile, the differences between the two are minimal. A PWA does have the ability to cache all or part of the files in the user's browser, which means they may not have to wait for data from the server. But that doesn't make a PWA faster or slower than an SPA. Just recently, we built a super-fast SPA for PizzaHut (Case: PizzaHut).Here we used Next.js to boost the speed.

Why? Next.js allows you to do server-side rendering. Server-side rendering is a rendering method, which generates a static HTML on the server, so that a browser gets the fully rendered HTML page. Because the browser gets the HTML through the server, it does not have to wait for all the scripts to load before rendering the page. As a result, the website content appears very quickly and the content becomes dynamic as soon as the scripts are available.

UX

Both an SPA and a PWA have a much more user-friendly user interface than most regular websites. Both an SPA and a PWA work well on all platforms and feel very native on mobile devices. But off course, this is fairly subjective because the UX of a Web application depends on many more things.

Security

PWA must adhere to much stricter security protocols than SPA. For example, a PWA must always run on the HTTPS protocol. But at Tailr, we believe that these standards should simply always be applied. Whether you're building a PWA, SPA or regular website, web security is always a top priority!

SEO

Google takes several elements into account for a good SEO score, like speed and usability. So, because a PWA scored better on these than an SPA in the past, this had implications for the SEO score. But as you could read above, that problem has now been almost completely eliminated for SPAs. In particular, it has become easier because static HTML is available through server-side rendering. This allows the search robot to index the Web page more easily.

Again, your website's SEO score depends on much more than just pagespeed. Do you have a super-fast website, but irrelevant content? Then your SEO score will be lower than a slightly slower website that answers its target audience's questions.

Cost

Every project is different and so are cost prices. In general, an SPA is cheaper to build than a PWA, because the latter requires more developer work. But do you already have an SPA, for example, that you want to turn into a PWA? Then it is perfectly possible by extending the SPA to a PWA. This then requires configuring a PWA manifest a a service worker. This additional cost is acceptable, so a PWA is not necessarily much more expensive than an SPA.

The differences between an SPA and a PWA are minimal. You shouldn't look at these topics as different concepts but rather as complementary. Depending on the needs of your business, one may be better than the other.

Want to build a Web application? Then both SPA and PWA (or the combination of both) are good choices when you want a web application that is very accessible.

Still having doubts or questions? Ask us your questions and our experts will be happy to help you make the choice!