A Quantitative Study on the Performance and Scalability of Jamstack in Comparison to a Monolithic Web Architecture

Abstract

Although the monolithic web architecture is still widely used and dominant today, developers are always actively seeking ways to deliver static content in ways that give greater performance, while using fewer moving parts and which requires far less maintenance. This is where the Jamstack web architecture comes in. Not only does it promise faster site performance, but also increased security and scalability, as well as making it more fun to develop and create for. Whilst this has been proven many times already in different publications, the real question still looms: How much faster and scalable is Jamstack?

The aim of this research study was not only limited to gathering more quantitative data on the performance and scalability of the Jamstack web architecture, but also to compare it to the monolithic web architecture of WordPress and analysis how much better the Jamstack architecture is in terms of performance and scalability.

To test and evaluate the performance and scalability of the two web architectures, a total of eight Linux-based virtualised environments were tested, half of which were created using Jamstack and the other WordPress. These environments were then deployed on different virtualisation technologies, WSL2 and VM, using the different web servers, such as Apache and NGINX, from the software stacks of LAMP and LEMP.

In summary, the research findings suggest that the Jamstack web architecture provided clear performance benefits when serving its content statically, especially under heavier loads, compared to the monolithic web architecture of WordPress.