Single Page Application (SPA)

SPA (Single Page Application) is an app where users can interact while remaining on the same page. It gained traction in the 2010s because of frameworks like React.js, Angular.js, and Vue.js. Facebook (React.js), YouTube (Angular.js), Alibaba (Vue.js), etc. are typical examples of SPAs.

Moreover, it’s recommended to build SPAs when you want high interactivity, live updates, and a great user experience. Because here, only the part with which the user interacts will be updated, the rest of the page remains unchanged.

Further, in SPAs, there’s not much load on the server. Because SPAs use APIs to get data from the server, instead of reloading the whole page every time a request is made. But despite all this. There are also cons of SPA. One of the biggest is that since it has only one PAGE, it’s challenging to do its SEO. It also doesn’t have compatibility with old browsers. At times, there are also memory leak problems in SPA. And since SPAs are loaded at the same time. At the start, they might take a lot of time to load.

Multi-Page Application (MPA)

MPA (Multi-Page Application) is an app with multiple pages in it. It’s a traditional way of app development. E-commerce websites such as Amazon and eBay are examples of MPAs, where clicking on a product takes you to a different page. Additionally, in MPA every page is reloaded first and only then the user can read or see the content of the page. MPA also contains a huge number of HTML pages.

Moreover, it’s recommended to build MPAs if there’s not much need for client-side processing. Additionally, if you neither need high interactivity nor real-time updates, then go for MPA.

Now, what are the pros of MPAs? Well, MPAs are claimed to be best for SEO because here each page has a different URL. This means every page can be individually indexed. And due to its multiple pages, it’s far easier to do authentication and authorization. They also have faster load time because once a page is loaded fully, the user can read the content at once.

We will see later why this doesn’t happen in SPA. Now, what are the cons of MPAs? Well, its biggest disadvantage is poor user experience. Because in MPA, every page has to fully reload before the user can read the page content. Also, due to the great number of pages, more time is required to build MPAs. At times, this also leads to more bugs and errors in codes. Additionally, with more page reload requests, there’s a high load on the server.