Netflix, Amazon, Pinterest, Alibaba, Snapchat - what do you think these big guns have in common (other than their billions in revenue and global reach)? React! Yes, they all depend on React as their frontend to power parts of their digital experiences*.
But why is React.js, the opensource JavaScript library, such a popular choice amongst enterprises? You see, when you’re serving millions of users every day, you just cannot afford a choppy interface or an inconvenient customer journey. Every millisecond of performance and every layer of user experience matters. Else, it can be catastrophic for their business!
If you’re thinking React is just a developer's favorite JavaScript library, you’ve got to think again. React has become the foundation for building scalable, responsive, and future-ready applications, which is why Fortune 500 leaders are betting on it. Did you know Drupal Canvas (previously Experience Builder), which is an emerging low-code visual editor for the new Drupal CMS, also uses React for its front-end?
In this article, we’ll break down why React is becoming so popular among enterprises, its technical underpinnings that make it so effective, and also how React plays beautifully with Drupal to create powerful decoupled applications. You can even find real stories of Fortune 500 companies that have harnessed React to deliver richer digital experiences.
Why is React getting so popular?
No, React did not just become the go-to front-end library overnight. Back in 2011, a software developer from Facebook built a prototype of React (first called FaxJS) and deployed it in FB’s news feed. Next, Instagram adopted its usage. In 2013, FB made it public and officially open-sourced React at a JSConf, US. We all know the power of an open-source community (Drupal being a great example). From then onwards, innovation in React continued to skyrocket.
Between 2016 and 2019*, React evolved with performance upgrades, the Fiber rewrite for smoother rendering, and Hooks, which revolutionized component design. React brought real innovations. Especially its Virtual DOM concept (introduced in 2013), which efficiently updates only the parts of the UI that change. This combination of performance, a component-based model, and solid tooling made React hard not to adopt.
Ok, but why are enterprises and business leaders choosing React?
React’s popularity among enterprises is the result of a rare mix of business advantages and technical strength. It’s the kind of combination that makes both CTOs and CFOs nod in agreement.
1. React’s component-based architecture means developers build once and reuse across multiple parts of an application. So, faster speed to market.
2. React brings structure through predictable component hierarchies and tooling like Redux or TypeScript, making it easier to scale projects and teams.
3. React’s virtual DOM ensures only the parts of a page that need updating actually get refreshed.
4. With React Native, enterprises don’t have to double their engineering spend to maintain separate iOS and Android teams. Walmart famously achieved up to 95% shared code between platforms, a direct line to efficiency.
5. The global React community is massive. For enterprises, this means easier hiring, shorter onboarding, and a steady pool of developers who already know the framework.
Enough of the Why’s, let’s talk about the How - Inside React’s architecture
The real reason why React is so popular is because it solves technical challenges that turns directly into business impact. And it can achieve this because of its architecture and the way it is optimized for performance.
- Because of it’s Component-based architecture, you can break down and reuse these blocks of code across your application or website. It’s basically like Lego bricks that you can assemble as per your choice.
For example, if you’ve built a shopping cart or a login form, you can reuse them across your website without having to build it again. This means faster development cycles, less duplication, and easy maintenance. It also helps in scaling for larger teams.
- For performance, React uses a Virtual DOM (Data Object Model) - which is basically a lightweight copy of the real DOM. Because of this, it knows what part of your page actually needs updating and it will change and refresh only that part instead of the whole page.
This means faster page loads, a smoother user experience, which of course leads to happier customers.
- React’s Server-Side Rendering (SSR) feature allows the pages to load faster and get indexed faster (and better) by search engines. Another new and emerging type of component, React Server Components, can now further optimize performance by letting everything run on the server instead of the user’s browser (client). Both these features help improve SEO, customer acquisition and efficient usage of server costs.
- React is a splendid team player, as in it thrives with tools like Next.js for performance optimization and SSR, Redux or Recoil for managing complex state, GraphQL for efficient data fetching, TypeScript for type safety at scale. This way, enterprises can plug into a mature ecosystem that boasts delivery and even reduces risk.
- With React Native, you don’t need to build another app for iOS, Android and web. It enables code reuse across platforms, letting teams maintain one core codebase. This way you can lower dev costs, improve time-to-market speed and maintain consistency across devices.
Decoupling Drupal with React
Many Fortune 500 companies still rely on Drupal for its robust CMS capabilities, like content governance, security, multilingual support, and scalability. But they don’t always want Drupal handling the presentation layer. That’s where React comes in.
What is a Decoupled or Headless Drupal, you ask? A decoupled or headless setup is when Drupal handles the content in the back-end (exposing it through APIs like REST or GraphQL) and a front-end tool like React consumes this content to build lightning-fast, modern and interactive front-ends.
Drupal + React is a winning combination and enterprises like yours love it because:
- You can have Drupal’s robust editorial workflows while refreshing your front-end as needed.
- Your site performance can be boosted with React’s features like server-side rendering and the new React server components.
- You get an omnichannel delivery experience where the same Drupal content can be fed to the web, mobiles, IoT and more.
- Your front-end and back-end teams can work independently without biting each other's heads off.
Care for some real Fortune 500 React stories?
Show, don’t tell - is something team Specbee truly believes in. So let’s dive into some true stories and case studies of a few Fortune 500 companies that used React in different ways.
Facebook/Instagram
Of course, since React and React Native were built by Facebook, they had to make full use of it, right? Facebook built its Ads Manager entirely on React Native, delivering a clean, responsive UI across platforms. Soon, Instagram too leaned in and a major part of their UI features (push notifications, profile editing, etc.) were moved to React Native. This thoroughly improved speed of development and performance.
Pinterest
Pinterest moved from a legacy framework to React through a gradual migration. They swapped sections piece by piece without halting development. They built a React component library (Gestalt), to unify design and accessibility across products.
React’s efficient rendering boosted UI responsiveness, while their Progressive Web App (PWA) strategy, with virtualization, lightweight images, and smooth infinite scroll, made the mobile web faster than native.
Snapchat
Snapchat uses React to build reusable UI components for its web interfaces and taps into React Native through Snap Kit, letting developers embed features like login and creative tools in mobile apps. With Snapchat for Web, it extended core features like chat, reactions, even lenses, onto desktop, powered by modern front-end frameworks.
Netflix
Almost want to start this paragraph with a Tudum. But on a more serious note, Netflix had been using a lot of React to power many parts of their interface but then they surprisingly pulled React out of their logged-out homepage. This was because the page did not need as many personalization and heavy machinery of a React app. So they swapped it with lighter vanilla JavaScript which in fact reduced their page load time.
This doesn’t mean Netflix abandoned React. For logged-in experiences where personalization, dynamic state management, and complex UI flows matter, React still powers Netflix’s core. The lesson learnt here is that you must use tools like React where they deliver value and strip them away where they slow things down. And if you’re weighing those choices for your own digital platform, Specbee’s decoupled experts can guide you toward the right balance.
Facts & Stats References
Final thoughts
React’s component-based architecture fits naturally with how global companies want to move: modular, iterative, measurable. It gives developers the freedom to innovate while giving leadership the confidence that products can evolve without tearing the house down. The companies that treat React not as a checkbox, but as a flexible part of their strategy, are the ones who will keep winning.
Curious about how a decoupled Drupal + React architecture could work for your business? Check out our Drupal services or better yet, let’s talk!
