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Tailwind CSS VS Gridsome

Compare Tailwind CSS VS Gridsome and see what are their differences

Tailwind CSS logo Tailwind CSS

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

Gridsome logo Gridsome

Gridsome is a free & open source Vue.js-powered framework for building websites & apps that are fast by default 🚀.
  • Tailwind CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13
  • Gridsome Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-15

Tailwind CSS features and specs

  • Utility-First Approach
    Tailwind CSS uses a utility-first approach, promoting the use of small, reusable utility classes to style elements directly in your markup. This can lead to more readable and maintainable HTML.
  • Customization
    The framework is highly customizable. You can easily configure its default theme, add your extensions, and create custom utilities. Tailwind’s config file allows for deep customization of all aspects of the framework.
  • Consistent Design
    Using utility classes ensures design consistency because the same classes will apply the same styles globally.
  • Responsive Design
    Tailwind CSS has excellent built-in support for responsive design. You can easily apply different styles for different screen sizes using responsive utility variants.
  • Performance
    Tailwind purges unused CSS in production, resulting in smaller final output files and improved performance.
  • Integrates Well with Frameworks
    Tailwind CSS integrates smoothly with modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular.
  • JIT Compiler
    The Just-in-Time (JIT) mode in Tailwind CSS generates styles on-demand, reducing the development build sizes and speeding up the development process.

Possible disadvantages of Tailwind CSS

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For developers coming from traditional CSS or other CSS frameworks, getting used to Tailwind's utility-first approach may take some time.
  • HTML Congestion
    Due to the utility-first approach, HTML files can get filled with numerous utility classes, making it look cluttered and harder to read.
  • Initial Setup
    Setting up Tailwind CSS initially can be complex, especially for beginners. Configuration settings and integrations with build tools can be confusing.
  • Verbosity
    Some developers find the inline utility classes verbose, particularly when complex styles are required, which can lead to bloated template files.
  • Limited Abstractions
    Tailwind doesn't provide higher-level abstractions such as components out of the box, like other frameworks (e.g., Bootstrap) do. Developers need to build and maintain these abstractions themselves.
  • Dependency Tailoring
    While Tailwind aims to be minimalistic, it may enforce some dependencies or build tool integrations that could be unnecessary for very simple projects.

Gridsome features and specs

  • Performance
    Gridsome generates static sites that are highly optimized and fast. Since the sites are pre-rendered and served as static files, they load quickly, which is beneficial for user experience and SEO.
  • Scalability
    Static sites generated by Gridsome can easily scale to handle high traffic loads without the need for complex server-side infrastructure, making it ideal for websites with fluctuating traffic.
  • GraphQL Integration
    Gridsome uses GraphQL to query data from various sources, providing a unified and efficient way to fetch and manage data, and allowing developers to request only the data they need.
  • Vue.js Ecosystem
    As a framework built on top of Vue.js, Gridsome allows developers to leverage the powerful features and community support of Vue, including components, libraries, and tools.
  • SEO Friendly
    Gridsome supports pre-rendering and dynamic routing, which help in creating SEO-optimized websites that are easy for search engines to index.

Possible disadvantages of Gridsome

  • Build Time
    For large sites with extensive content, the build times can be significant, potentially impacting deployment speed and productivity when making frequent changes.
  • Limited Interactivity
    Since Gridsome generates static pages, implementing highly dynamic or real-time features requires additional client-side development, potentially increasing complexity.
  • Plugin Ecosystem
    Compared to more mature static site generators or full-fledged frameworks, Gridsome's plugin ecosystem is relatively smaller, which might limit out-of-the-box functionalities.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers new to Vue.js or GraphQL might face a steeper learning curve when initially adopting Gridsome, requiring time to become productive.
  • Community Size
    Gridsome's community is smaller compared to other popular frameworks, which might impact the availability of resources, support, and third-party contributions.

Analysis of Gridsome

Overall verdict

  • Gridsome is a strong choice for developers familiar with Vue.js who want to build static sites with enhanced performance and flexibility. Its modern development experience and robust feature set position it as a viable alternative to traditional CMS or server-side rendered options, particularly for projects prioritizing speed and security.

Why this product is good

  • Gridsome is a popular static site generator that leverages the power of Vue.js to build fast, secure, and scalable websites. It offers a smooth integration with various CMSs and APIs, providing flexibility in how content is sourced and displayed. Developers appreciate its GraphQL layer, which allows for querying content in an intuitive and efficient way. Gridsome's focus on performance through code-splitting, lazy loading, and prefetching makes it an attractive choice for building high-performing sites.

Recommended for

  • Developers familiar with Vue.js
  • Projects requiring fast and optimized static sites
  • Websites sourcing content from various APIs or CMSs
  • SEO-focused projects thanks to its pre-rendering capabilities
  • Developers seeking a modern development workflow with features like hot-reloading and GraphQL

Tailwind CSS videos

Why I Don't Like Tailwind CSS

More videos:

  • Review - Vanilla CSS vs Bootstrap vs Tailwind CSS - Which one should you choose?
  • Review - Get Started with Tailwind CSS in 15 Minutes

Gridsome videos

What is Gridsome Static Site Generation

More videos:

  • Review - Nuxt.js vs VuePress: Battle For The Best Blog App // Nuxt vs Gridsome
  • Tutorial - How to build a movie review website with GRIDSOME and STATICMAN

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tailwind CSS and Gridsome)
Developer Tools
98 98%
2% 2
Design Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Blogging
0 0%
100% 100
CSS Framework
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Tailwind CSS and Gridsome

Tailwind CSS Reviews

  1. Awesome framework

    I use it in all my current projects. It's easy to start and very customisable. Love it so much! I improved the speed of development 2x times by using Tailwind.


22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Tailwind CSS comes with features such as responsive design, customizability, hover, focus, and active states out of the box. These enable developers to build sophisticated, interactive interfaces with ease. When it comes to integrations, Tailwind CSS can be integrated with popular front-end frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, enhancing its utility across different...
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
If you want to learn the valuable skill of Tailwind CSS, we highly recommend taking the "Tailwind CSS From Scratch" course by Brad Traversy on Udemy. In this introductory course, you will build great-looking layouts quickly and efficiently using Tailwind CSS utility classes.
Source: coursesity.com
10 Best Free React UI Libraries in 2023
TailwindCSS is a utility-first CSS framework designed to build modern and beautiful websites in no time. Here, utility class names define what to do. Each utility class comes with pre-defined CSS properties.
11 Best Material UI Alternatives
Tailwind CSS promotes a modular approach to styling, where devs can combine classes to create unique and responsive designs. It offers utilities for layout, typography, colors, spacing, and more, allowing developers to create consistent and visually appealing interfaces with minimal effort.
Source: www.uxpin.com
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
Tailwind enables faster development of the front-end. Instead of a default theme or built-in UI components, you’d get pre-designed widget menus and utility classes to build your website. Tailwind has modular components, and if you make changes in one place, other parts of your code won’t get impacted. Tailwind requires the least amount of learning and is easy to use. You can...
Source: hackr.io

Gridsome Reviews

Top 10 Next.js Alternatives You Can Try
To build your web pages with ultra-performance, Gridsome offers you instant hot-reloading for any code change. This framework allows you to get asset optimization and progressive images that you can use with perfect page speed scores. Notably, this Next.js alternative can manage thousands to millions of hits without slowing your workflow.
20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
Gridsome is to Vue.js what Gatsby is to React. A static site generation darling, it merges Vue with GraphQL and a suite of top-notch developer delights. It’s striking the perfect chord for devs digging data-driven JAMstack websites that are built to impress.
10 static site generators to watch in 2021
Gridsome is a Vue.js-powered framework for building static generated websites & apps. Leading with the phrase “fast by default”, Gridsome generates an HTML and also a JSON file for every page of your site and then uses progressive enhancement to add some client-side utilities to give you things like link pre-fetching based on the when links come into view, code splitting,...
Source: www.netlify.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind CSS seems to be a lot more popular than Gridsome. While we know about 1016 links to Tailwind CSS, we've tracked only 22 mentions of Gridsome. 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.

Tailwind CSS mentions (1016)

  • MailPlanet🌍: Visualize email origins on a global map
    Styling: Tailwind CSS (Assumed, common with Next.js). - Source: dev.to / 2 days ago
  • How to add markdown to a Next.js project
    This article assumes the reader is a developer that knows their way around Markdown, TypeScript, React.js, and [Next.js] https://nextjs.org/). Familiarity with Tailwind-css would also be useful. - Source: dev.to / 18 days ago
  • SonicScan - A Music Fingerprinting and Identification App
    Then I learned Tauri and used my favourite frontend framework SolidJS with TailwindCSS and DaisyUI to build the UI with MotionOne to add animations and Tauri to build the desktop/web/android/ios app. - Source: dev.to / 19 days ago
  • Top 5 Free React UI Libraries to Use in 2025
    Shadcn/ui contains a set of beautifully designed and accessible components, and it works seamlessly with major React frameworks. It’s open-source and has amassed 85.5k (and counting) GitHub stars. It’s built on the shoulders of giants — Radix UI and Tailwind CSS, making it one of the best to work with. Unlike many other UI libraries, the components are not just installed as npm modules, they’re downloaded into... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Tailwind vs Linaria: Performance Investigation
    We're going to investigate the difference in performance between Tailwind and Linaria. Tailwind, you already know. And Linaria has been getting quite a lot of traction since styled components went into maintenance mode recently. We'll cover why Linaria is a good choice for this comparison a bit further. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
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Gridsome mentions (22)

  • How Bun can help to revive a Gridsome project
    This website is built with Gridsome — one of the oldest static site generators, which is practically not maintained anymore. It causes some troubles for working with websites based on it, specifically the necessity to use Node.js v14 which is quite obsolete and poorly supported on all the public deployment platforms, including Netlify. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • My Sixth Year as a Bootstrapped Founder
    Thanks for reading! The web tech stack is actually one of my biggest regrets. It's a static site generator called Gridsome[0] that the maintainers abandoned about three months after I used it to launch the TinyPilot website. At the time I made the TinyPilot site, I was very excited about Vue, so a Vue-based SSG seemed great. Since then, I've come to find SPAs and most frontend frameworks to be way too much... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • How To Choose the Best Static Site Generator and Deploy it to Kinsta for Free
    Nuxt.js and Gridsome are tailor-made for Vue.js developers. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Top ten popular static site generators (SSG) in 2023
    Gridsome — Jamstack SSG tool for Vue developers. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Will anyone hire a 33 yo newbie?
    Node is basically back-end Javascript. While powerful alone, almost exclusively you will use a back-end framework like Next.js or Gatsby when using React, and then maybe Nuxt or Gridsome in Vue. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Tailwind CSS and Gridsome, you can also consider the following products

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

GatsbyJS - Blazing-fast static site generator for React

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.

Nuxt.js - Nuxt.js presets all the configuration needed to make your development of a Vue.js application enjoyable. It's a perfect static site generator.

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

Doxygen - Generate documentation from source code