Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Bootstrap VS Material Dashboard

Compare Bootstrap VS Material Dashboard and see what are their differences

Bootstrap logo Bootstrap

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

Material Dashboard logo Material Dashboard

A free bootstrap admin built on top of Material Kit
  • Bootstrap Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-22
  • Material Dashboard Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-09

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.

Material Dashboard features and specs

  • User-friendly Design
    Material Dashboard adopts the Material Design principles, which offer a clean and intuitive user interface, making it easier for users to navigate and interact with the dashboard elements.
  • Responsive Layout
    The dashboard is fully responsive, ensuring it performs well and looks good across various devices and screen sizes, enhancing the usability for mobile users.
  • Rich Feature Set
    Material Dashboard comes with a wide range of components and plugins such as charts, forms, and tables, which can cater to different application needs and improve functionality.
  • Customizability
    It provides customization options allowing developers to easily tweak styles and components to fit the specific requirements of their projects.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, Material Dashboard is freely available and can be used for commercial projects without any licensing costs, with a supportive community for assistance.

Possible disadvantages of Material Dashboard

  • Dependency on Material Design
    Since the dashboard heavily relies on Material Design, any updates or changes to these guidelines may require significant adjustments in the dashboard layout and components.
  • Potential Overhead
    For smaller projects, the plethora of features and components might be overkill, introducing unnecessary complexity and overhead in the development process.
  • Learning Curve
    New users might experience a learning curve in understanding and effectively utilizing all the features and components provided, particularly if they are unfamiliar with Material Design.
  • Limited Native Themes
    While highly customizable, the dashboard offers limited native themes, which might require additional effort to create a unique aesthetic without extensive custom styling.
  • Performance Concerns
    Including numerous third-party plugins and features might lead to performance issues if not managed properly, potentially affecting the loading times and responsiveness of the application.

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?

Material Dashboard videos

No Material Dashboard videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Bootstrap and Material Dashboard)
Developer Tools
96 96%
4% 4
Design Tools
94 94%
6% 6
CSS Framework
100 100%
0% 0
Web App
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Bootstrap and Material Dashboard. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

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

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.

Material Dashboard Reviews

We have no reviews of Material Dashboard yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Bootstrap seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 362 times since March 2021. 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 / 18 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 / about 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
View more

Material Dashboard mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Material Dashboard yet. Tracking of Material Dashboard recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Bootstrap and Material Dashboard, you can also consider the following products

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

Dashboard UI Kit - A modern & responsive dashboard UI kit for designers.

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

Infinity Dashboard - A beautiful way to keep track of anything you want 📊

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.

Stripe Dashboard - Activate the preview of the refreshed Dashboard now