The application development software industry has been on the upswing lately. According to Statista, this segment has shown a growth rate of more than 5% in recent years and this positive dynamics is expected to continue in the future. And this is hardly surprising since these tools can significantly facilitate the overall application development process.

In the area of web development, JavaScript libraries often become such a magic bullet that helps developers to bring their ideas to life with less time and effort.

JavaScript libraries are beneficial for startups that are in the early stages of software product development. Drawing an analogy with the famous words of Archimedes on the need for a lever and a place to stand for moving the world, it can be said that many startup dev teams often require app development software to achieve their coding objectives.

In this article, we’ll consider why JavaScript libraries benefit startup projects and how to obtain such tools without spending a fortune.

Reasons for Using JavaScript Libraries in Your Startup Project

Inadequate or insufficient work tools are frequently named among the most important challenges that developers experience during app building. Here it is often referred to as business-oriented software that focuses on process automation and data analytics to gain more business insights and increase efficiency.

Therefore, it is crucial to choose the right technology stack when starting a new business undertaking on the web. That’s where JavaScript libraries come into play.

There are plenty of open-source JavaScript libraries available on GitHub. These tools can help to deliver a lot of useful things absolutely free of charge. However, despite the appeal of such solutions, they have some significant drawbacks that may affect the delivery of a big project.

First and foremost, you can hardly count on the possibility to implement complex functionalities and get timely technical support with open-source libraries. With paid JavaScript libraries, you won’t have to worry about these aspects when working on your first web project.

Moreover, commercial JavaScript libraries also provide many other benefits that will be useful in the development process:

• High performance

Performance is one of the main success factors for any modern web app. That is why vendors of application development software always pay special attention to the ability of their products to process large amounts of data without any delays. They use special techniques such as smart rendering or dynamic loading to ensure a good user experience under heavy loads. With performant JavaScript libraries, developers also receive the scalability reserve required for adding extra functionalities to the app in the future.

• Enhanced customizability

Comprehensive APIs of JavaScript libraries enable dev teams to adopt a personalized approach to the user interface implementation. In other words, it is possible to customize any UI element in accordance with specific project requirements.

• Regular updates and bug fixes

New product versions are one more significant advantage of paid JavaScript libraries. They allow enriching software with new features as well as improving the current ones. Such updates contribute to the maturity and stability of their library’s codebase and help the product to stay relevant with time.

• Detailed documentation

Commercial JavaScript libraries commonly come not only with extensive functional capabilities but also with all-encompassing documentation. It helps developers to reduce the learning curve and make the most of all available features.

• Learning materials

In addition to documentation, JavaScript libraries are also frequently complemented with other useful auxiliaries such as demos, samples, tutorials, videos, etc. Thanks to that, dev teams get vivid examples of how to use this or that feature as well as step-by-step instructions on some tricky configuration or customization stages.

• Integrations with popular JavaScript frameworks and server-side technologies

It is hard to imagine a modern web application built without any front-end frameworks (React, Angular, Vue, etc.) and other technologies on the back-end such as Node.js. These tools make the lives of developers so much easier by providing the basis for a future app. Therefore, it is not surprising that well-established JavaScript libraries include integrations with popular tools from the rich JavaScript ecosystem.

• Free trial versions

As it is said, first try then trust. All reliable providers of JavaScript components always back up descriptions of their products to test them in practice. For this purpose, vendors offer short-term trial versions of their products.

As you can see, solid commercial JavaScript libraries can be a worthy long-term investment. But here comes one of the main pain points of many startups, namely, financing. Not all new businesses can afford to purchase some advanced tools, because of tight budgets and lack of investments. The ongoing political and economic crisis makes the matter even worse.

But fortunately, some vendors of application development tools are aware of the financial limitations of startups and come up with various discount programs to give them a helping hand in the early stages of their work.

Let us consider one of such juicy deals provided by the DHTMLX company.

New DHTMLX Discount Program for Startups

The DHTMLX company specializes in JavaScript UI components aimed to speed up the development of feature-packed web apps with a focus on various business activities such as project management, data analysis, and content management. Last month, the company decided to launch a new discount program specifically intended for startups.

This initiative implies a 70% discount for top DHTMLX products. The package provided by DHTMLX in this program includes the Suite library with numerous popular UI widgets as well as some sophisticated JavaScript components for project management apps such as Gantt and Scheduler.

In addition to a huge discount, dev teams can quickly solve any issues with the help of highly-qualified tech support, use all included components in SaaS projects, and take advantage of a considerable base of support materials (demos, snippets, tutorials, etc.). You can get acquainted with this program in more detail by visiting the official page of the project.

Summarizing the above, it is safe to say that JavaScript libraries can be a great addition to the technology stack of any web development team. Open-source tools can be suitable for small projects that are not aimed at obtaining material profits, while commercial libraries are great for more complex and long-term projects. Some vendors of commercial JS libraries such as DHTMLX even offer special discounts for startups to help them in the opening phases of their projects.

The article is originally published on StartupNation.