We used Python and Django as the primary backend stack. We used React or Vue for the front end, depending on which fits the client's project requirements best. Django offers a lot of things out of the box, so it was like our go-to backend framework.
A few months ago, we started a new project with a leading pharmaceutical USA-based company, and we needed to find a new solution.
I was looking for that one framework that can fulfill the basic needs, like admin panels, or authentication, and authorization, all of these basic things, while also it gives us the power of this content customization. I took a couple of days to discover what other solutions look like. I tried a couple of CMS, including Contentful and Keystone. All of them did one thing well, and then other things required a lot of manual plugging in.
Just then I came across Strapi, and I was like Wow! This is what I feel I have been looking for for years! So I created a presentation on what Strapi does; you will not believe this. The first day I woke up, did my first project on Strapi, and I put up an email to my team: "Guys, I think we have found the perfect Node.js replica of Django for our projects".
We work with one of our clients on building machine learning, serving pipelines for data scientists researching various medicines.
The product is a platform where our client keeps data about the research on compounds for different cures or vaccines. Automated machine-learning models are running in the background as well.
Another project we are working on at the moment is beshak.org. Beshak is a content-driven website about insurance. It is built with Strapi and Nuxt.js for the front end connected with this plugin. It features articles with comments and reviews, a blog, and a forum with authentication by social media logins.
For beshak.org, we needed a CMS with an admin panel where we can create content, with a lot of customization as well, because we as an agency are building the product, but the people using it aren't necessarily good with technology. So we need an admin panel, which Strapi gives out of the box.
The second thing is that a lot of time, the admin panel is only used by content publishers. But Strapi also gives us the flexibility to create collection types right from the admin panel itself with the relations and collection types and single types. So this saves a lot of time for us. Otherwise, if we start modeling the database, it will take a lot of time. Strapi manages the custom models, the migration, and the relationships, and that flexibility is what you get out of the box.
The third thing is customization: it's all very easy to do. You can modify your controllers, your services, or your model lifecycles.
Finally, the fourth benefit we have from Strapi is when a client is bootstrapping or building MVP applications, they might not have a lot of budgets because they are trying to boot up. Strapi allows getting started with the Community Edition to bootstrap an MVP quickly.
Strapi is now my go-to solution.
We have been drastically reducing our development time, without compromising any of the features.
Usually, it would take 15 days to create the models and the REST APIs. From 15 days, it has gone to a day or 2 maximum.
The second point where I can accelerate my projects is related to the skillset needed from my team. Because Strapi is built on Javascript, my front-end developers can directly create the database from the admin panel. And because they know how the backend is built, they also know which data points to access. So my development time has been cut down from 25 days to 5 days of development plus some days for testing.
So we can launch 4 projects in the same timeframe as we launched one before.