StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Microframeworks
  4. Microframeworks
  5. ExpressJS vs Material UI

ExpressJS vs Material UI

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Stacks35.1K
Followers24.0K
Votes1.6K
Material-UI
Material-UI
Stacks2.7K
Followers3.7K
Votes445

ExpressJS vs Material UI: What are the differences?

Introduction

ExpressJS and Material UI are two popular tools used in web development. While ExpressJS is a server-side framework for building web applications in Node.js, Material UI is a front-end framework that provides pre-built components for creating user interfaces. Despite being used for different purposes, there are several key differences between the two.

  1. Architecture Approach: ExpressJS follows a server-side architecture approach, where the server handles HTTP requests and responses. It provides a set of middleware functions for handling routing, request processing, and response generation. On the other hand, Material UI focuses on the client-side and provides ready-made components for creating interactive user interfaces.

  2. Purpose: ExpressJS is primarily used for creating server-side applications and APIs. It enables developers to handle HTTP requests, perform database operations, and render pages on the server. In contrast, Material UI is mainly used for designing and styling user interfaces on the client-side. It offers pre-built components that adhere to the Material Design guidelines, allowing developers to create visually appealing interfaces quickly.

  3. Technology Stack: ExpressJS is built on top of Node.js and utilizes its event-driven, non-blocking I/O model. It supports various middleware and templating engines, making it flexible and adaptable to different project requirements. On the other hand, Material UI is built using React, a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It leverages React's component-based architecture and virtual DOM diffing algorithm, providing a performant and scalable framework for UI development.

  4. Level of Abstraction: ExpressJS provides a low-level interface where developers have more control over the application's code and structure. It allows fine-grained customization by exposing the underlying HTTP primitives and middleware system. In contrast, Material UI abstracts away many low-level details and provides high-level components that encapsulate common UI patterns. This abstraction simplifies the development process and promotes code reuse.

  5. Community and Ecosystem: ExpressJS has been around for a longer time and has a larger community and ecosystem. It has a vast collection of middleware, plugins, and extensions available, making it easier for developers to enhance and extend their applications. Material UI, although newer, has gained significant popularity and has an active community. It offers a range of themes, utilities, and extensions that further enhance its capabilities.

  6. Learning Curve: ExpressJS has a steeper learning curve, especially for developers who are new to server-side programming or web development. It requires understanding concepts like routing, middleware, and HTTP protocols. Material UI, on the other hand, has a more straightforward learning curve, especially for developers already familiar with React. Its component-based approach and intuitive API make it easier to grasp and start building UIs quickly.

In summary, ExpressJS and Material UI differ in their architecture approach, purpose, technology stack, level of abstraction, community and ecosystem, and learning curve. ExpressJS focuses on server-side development, while Material UI is centered around client-side UI design. Despite their differences, both tools are widely used and have their strengths in their respective domains.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on ExpressJS, Material-UI

Xinyi
Xinyi

Software Developer at DCSIL

Oct 9, 2020

Decided

As our team will be building a web application, HTML5 and CSS3 are one of the standardized combinations to implement the structure and the styling of a webpage. Material-UI comes with all sorts of predesigned web components such as buttons and dropdowns that will save us tons of development time. Since it is a component library designed for React, it suits our needs. However, we do acknowledge that predesigned components may sometimes cause pains especially when it comes to custom styling. To make our life even easier, we also adopted Tailwind CSS. It is a CSS framework providing low-level utility classes that will act as building blocks when we create custom designs.

359k views359k
Comments
Tony
Tony

Oct 21, 2020

Review

I personally like using a wholly JS stack, with TypeORM + MySql/Postgres over MongoDb + Mongoose because TypeOrm's Typescript support is much stronger. After developing large projects with Typescript, there is no going back to regular javascript (typings help catch a LOT of errors / maintains data structure !)

Sticking with a javascript stack will allow you to share certain aspects of your application between front and backend. For example: one particularly common feature is to validate API call data and form entry data. Both of these are the same data shape typically (aside from pagination, metadata, etc), and can benefit from a single schema for validation. I use Yup to define this schema, then in the front and back end I can utilize this definition instead of rewriting the same logic in two different languages.

Same goes for certain utility functions such as data structure typings, decryption, encryption, sanitizing inputs, formatting of data, and other utilities. No point of writing these in two languages when both frontend and backend will use them. It will also help reduce developer work load, due to less tests / code to work with.

The only thing you must ensure in your import chain the frontend never imports any secret variables or sensitive logic used by the backend, as that will get bundled into your application. All shared imports should be individual modules

If you want to go one step further, next.js is basically create react app with server side rendering (SSR). This would allow you to skip the annoying step of configuring separate backend and frontend build tools. Might be worth exploring depending on your skill level.

812 views812
Comments
Abigail
Abigail

Dec 10, 2019

Decided

Fonts and typography are fun. Material Design is a framework (developed by Google) that basically geeks out on how to assemble your typographical elements together into a design language. If you're into fonts and typography, it's fantastic. It provides a theming engine, reusable components, and can pull different user interfaces together under a common design paradigm. I'd highly recommend looking into Borries Schwesinger's book "The Form Book" if you're going to be working with Material UI or are otherwise new to component design.

https://www.amazon.com/Form-Book-Creating-Printed-Online/dp/0500515085

767k views767k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Material-UI
Material-UI

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

Material UI is a library of React UI components that implements Google's Material Design.

Robust routing;HTTP helpers (redirection, caching, etc);View system supporting 14+ template engines;Content negotiation;Focus on high performance;Executable for generating applications quickly;High test coverage
Tables; Forms; Snackbars; Buttons; Theming
Statistics
Stacks
35.1K
Stacks
2.7K
Followers
24.0K
Followers
3.7K
Votes
1.6K
Votes
445
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 381
    Simple
  • 336
    Node.js
  • 244
    Javascript
  • 193
    High performance
  • 152
    Robust routing
Cons
  • 27
    Not python
  • 17
    Overrated
  • 14
    No multithreading
  • 9
    Javascript
  • 5
    Not fast
Pros
  • 141
    React
  • 82
    Material Design
  • 60
    Ui components
  • 30
    CSS framework
  • 26
    Component
Cons
  • 36
    Hard to learn. Bad documentation
  • 29
    Hard to customize
  • 22
    Hard to understand Docs
  • 9
    Bad performance
  • 7
    For editable table component need to use material-table
Integrations
Node.js
Node.js
React
React
Emotion
Emotion
Next.js
Next.js
styled-components
styled-components
Node.js
Node.js

What are some alternatives to ExpressJS, Material-UI?

Bootstrap

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

Foundation

Foundation

Foundation is the most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. You can quickly prototype and build sites or apps that work on any kind of device with Foundation, which includes layout constructs (like a fully responsive grid), elements and best practices.

Semantic UI

Semantic UI

Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.

Materialize

Materialize

A CSS Framework based on material design.

Material Design for Angular

Material Design for Angular

Material Design is a specification for a unified system of visual, motion, and interaction design that adapts across different devices. Our goal is to deliver a lean, lightweight set of AngularJS-native UI elements that implement the material design system for use in Angular SPAs.

Blazor

Blazor

Blazor is a .NET web framework that runs in any browser. You author Blazor apps using C#/Razor and HTML.

Quasar Framework

Quasar Framework

Build responsive Single Page Apps, SSR Apps, PWAs, Hybrid Mobile Apps and Electron Apps, all using the same codebase!, powered with Vue.

Nuxt.js

Nuxt.js

Nuxt.js presets all the configuration needed to make your development of a Vue.js application enjoyable. You can use Nuxt.js for SSR, SPA, Static Generated, PWA and more.

Django REST framework

Django REST framework

It is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

Sails.js

Sails.js

Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase