Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Bootstrap VS Google Hosted Libraries

Compare Bootstrap VS Google Hosted Libraries and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Bootstrap logo Bootstrap

Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and JS for popular UI components and interactions

Google Hosted Libraries logo Google Hosted Libraries

A stable, reliable, high-speed, globally available content distribution network for the most popular open-source JavaScript libraries.
  • Bootstrap Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-22
  • Google Hosted Libraries Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-24

Bootstrap features and specs

  • Responsive Design
    Bootstrap's grid system ensures that webpages are responsive and adapt to different screen sizes seamlessly.
  • Pre-designed Components
    Bootstrap comes with a variety of pre-designed components like buttons, forms, modals, and navigation bars that streamline the development process.
  • Cross-browser Compatibility
    Bootstrap ensures that your website will function correctly across different browsers, reducing the time spent on debugging issues related to browser inconsistencies.
  • Extensive Documentation
    The documentation is comprehensive and well-organized, making it easier for developers to understand and implement Bootstrap features quickly.
  • Community Support
    With a large and active community, finding help and resources related to Bootstrap development is relatively easy.
  • Customizable
    Bootstrap allows you to customize the default styles and components using Sass variables, making it adaptable to any project needs.
  • CDN Support
    Bootstrap can be included via Content Delivery Networks (CDN), which can help to speed up the initial load time of your web pages.

Possible disadvantages of Bootstrap

  • Uniform Look
    Websites built with Bootstrap often look similar because many developers use the default styles and components without customization.
  • Overhead
    Including the entire Bootstrap library can add unnecessary weight to your project if you only use a small fraction of its features.
  • Learning Curve
    For beginners, the extensive set of features and classes can be overwhelming and take some time to learn.
  • Dependency on jQuery
    Older versions of Bootstrap heavily rely on jQuery, which can be a disadvantage for projects that aim to minimize dependencies.
  • Specific Structure
    Bootstrap works best when you adhere to its predefined structure and classes, which can limit flexibility for more complex or unique designs.
  • Customization Challenges
    Deep customization can be difficult and time-consuming, especially if you need to override many default styles and behaviors.
  • Performance Issues
    Using a large number of Bootstrap components can lead to performance issues, particularly on lower-end devices.

Google Hosted Libraries features and specs

  • Improved Load Speed
    Google Hosted Libraries are distributed via Google's global Content Delivery Network (CDN), which can deliver assets to users with minimal latency by caching them at data centers worldwide. This often results in faster load times compared to hosting libraries on your own server.
  • Better Caching
    Using a common source like Google Hosted Libraries means that users are more likely to have cached copies of these libraries from visiting other sites, reducing load time for returning users who have already downloaded the files.
  • Reliability
    Google's infrastructure is reliable and highly available, reducing the risk of downtime and ensuring that libraries are served to end-users efficiently and consistently.
  • Version Management
    Developers can include specific version numbers in the URLs, ensuring that their applications can easily upgrade or downgrade a library version if needed, allowing for better version control management.
  • Reduced Server Load
    Offloading the delivery of these libraries to Google reduces the bandwidth and load on your own servers, potentially lowering hosting costs and improving your site's overall performance.

Possible disadvantages of Google Hosted Libraries

  • Dependency on Third Party
    Relying on Google for serving these libraries means your application's uptime is partially dependent on a third party, which may introduce risks if Google's services experience issues.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Using Google Hosted Libraries means that user data may be shared with Google whenever these resources are fetched, which could raise privacy concerns depending on your user base and regulatory environment.
  • Limited Customization
    Because these libraries are hosted externally, there is limited opportunity to customize or modify them to fit specific project needs without hosting your own version.
  • Internet Requirement
    If a user is offline or if Google's servers are unreachable for some reason, your application may fail to load these libraries unless you have local fallbacks or entire offline support.

Bootstrap videos

Is Bootstrap Still Worth It? -- 1 Design, 2 Code Bases.

More videos:

  • Review - BOOTSTRAP Review | Best CSS Library ?
  • Review - Should you use Bootstrap?

Google Hosted Libraries videos

Why you should use Google Hosted libraries!

More videos:

  • Review - Google Hosted Libraries

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Bootstrap and Google Hosted Libraries)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
CDN
0 0%
100% 100
Design Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Bootstrap and Google Hosted Libraries

Bootstrap Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Bootstrap alternatives are a suite of different tools and frameworks that web developers and designers employ for creating dynamic, responsive websites and applications. These tools, like Bootstrap itself, offer pre-written code for different elements of a website - from typography and buttons to navigation bars and image carousels - but each has its unique features and...
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
UIKit is a modular front-end framework like Bootstrap and a Bootstrap competitor designed to develop fast and powerful web interfaces. You can utilize it with HTML or JavaScript based on your preference. It offers built-in support for right-to-left languages and includes an extensive library of components. This framework like Bootstrap provides a convenient solution for...
Source: coursesity.com
9 Best Bootstrap Alternatives | Best Frontend Frameworks [2024]
The only downside it has as compared to Bootstrap and Foundation is it is only a CSS framework, which means no JavaScript. So you will have to write your own JavaScript or Jquery to toggle your dropdowns or perform other basic interactionhttps://bulma.io/s of the sort. Overall it is a great alternative to Bootstrap, which is also being updated very frequently.
Source: hackr.io
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
Bootstrap is one of the most popular CSS frameworks globally and received instant popularity because of its responsive design. It was also the first framework that gave priority to mobile devices. With Bootstrap, there is no need for a separate design for mobile viewing. You just need to add the necessary classes, and the website will adapt to the screen size based on the...
Source: hackr.io
15 Best CSS Frameworks: Professional Bootstrap and Foundation Alternatives
This is why Bootstrap is by far the most popular framework on the market. All developers have heard of Bootstrap, and more than 80% of them say they are happy using it.

Google Hosted Libraries Reviews

We have no reviews of Google Hosted Libraries yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Bootstrap seems to be a lot more popular than Google Hosted Libraries. While we know about 362 links to Bootstrap, we've tracked only 7 mentions of Google Hosted Libraries. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Bootstrap mentions (362)

  • How to Build a Blog with Laravel (& Send Slack Notifications)
    This will show the posts passed from the controller in a row of cards. Please notice that you are linking to Bootstrap’s CDN for easy styling. If there are no posts, a message on a card saying that there are no posts will be shown. - Source: dev.to / 22 days ago
  • Overengineered Anchor Links
    Yeah, good point. It's kinda common to have a big footer. Examples: https://getbootstrap.com/, https://stake.us/ (casino) That way on desktop you could get away with a 50vh margin under the content and then another 50vh for the footer. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • The 3 Best Python Frameworks To Build UIs for AI Apps
    FastHTML allows developers to build modern web applications entirely in Python without touching JavaScript or React. As its name implies, it is quicker to begin with FastHTML. However, it does not have pre-built UI components and styling. Getting the best out of this framework requires the knowledge of HTMX and UI styling using CSS libraries like Tailwind and Bootstrap. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Tailwind CSS vs. Bootstrap: Which Framework is Better for Your Project?
    Bootstrap is one of the oldest and most established CSS frameworks, originally developed by Twitter in 2011. It takes a component-based approach to web development, providing a comprehensive collection of ready-to-use UI elements and prebuilt components. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • How I Vibe-Coded an App to Explore GitHub Topics and Trending Repositories
    For the frontend, I had no prior experience, so I relied entirely on Claude's capabilities. 🙏 Claude generated the entire frontend in pure JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and even added Bootstrap to it. This not only saved me a significant amount of time but also made my application responsive and visually appealing. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
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Google Hosted Libraries mentions (7)

  • Unpkg CDN down causing dependent website outages
    I'd imagine for many developers, the probability of something like Google's Hosted Libraries (https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries) going down or being hacked is far, far lower than the probability of their own site hosting having a problem. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Developers.google.com — The Google Hosted Libraries is a content distribution network for the most popular Open Source JavaScript libraries. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Closure Compiler, JSDOC, Polymer, Lit and apps script
    To make things worse, I can't even find about Polymer or Lit on this list: Https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Apps Script Observable
    I am looking in the hosted libraries: https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries And found that they have Indefinite Observable, the thing is, as far I know Promisses don't work with apps script web app. But Observables work? Source: over 2 years ago
  • Public CDN's aren't useful anymore
    Public CDN’s were supposed to help page speed, but things have changed in 2019. Services like Google Fonts, Cloudflare’s cdnjs, jsDelivr and Google Hosted Libraries may not help make sites load faster anymore. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Bootstrap and Google Hosted Libraries, you can also consider the following products

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.

cdnjs - An open source community driven JS/CSS CDN.

Materialize CSS - A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design

Yandex CDN - Разработчики сайтов могут загружать различные JavaScript-фреймворки и библиотеки с открытым исходным кодом с серверов Яндекса по постоянным ссылкам.

Bulma - Bulma is an open source CSS framework based on Flexbox and built with Sass. It's 100% responsive, fully modular, and available for free.

jsDelivr - A free, fast, and reliable Open Source CDN for npm and GitHub with the largest network and best performance from all OSS CDNs. Serving 100 billion requests per month.