What is a Hyva?
Today, I will introduce the topic of one of the frontends used on Magento. More specifically, I will write why Hyva is, in my opinion, the best choice for most Magento projects.
What is Hyva?
What Magento front-ends are available?
Magento front-end performance problems
Hyva – the fastest Magento front-end
How much does Hyva cost?
What do online stores put on Hyva look like?
How does Hyva compare to other technologies?
Summary – What is a Hyva?
As always, at the very beginning, there is a simple answer to this business question. Hyva is a type of Magento frontend that is extremely fast. In the ratings on Google PageSpeed, you can easily get ratings of 90 on mobile and above 95 on desktop.
On the other hand, this front-end is very simple, making coding and Magento maintenance costs low.
Let’s start with what front-ends were available in Magento at the very beginning of its existence.
As Magento 2.0 was created, a so-called standard Magento 2 theme was available, which was called Luma. That was in 2015, and even then, Luma was (no question) obsolete and so outdated that nowadays, taking into account Google PageSpeed ratings, it turns out that it is difficult to get (even after a lot of optimization) better ratings on Google PageSpeed than, for example, about 80 points on a desktop and about 40-45 on mobile devices.
More and more e-commerce executives and Magento 2 owners were wondering how to deal with the old Luma theme. Magento is a great engine and very scalable, but the front end did not meet the current user and Google’s requirements. Consequently, the topic of PWA headless came up.
Solutions such as Vue Storefront, PWA Studio, and Scandi PWA began to replace Magento’s standard front-end, Luma. They introduced separating the front end from the back end, becoming so-called headless solutions. In short, the “head” in the form of a PWA communicated with the Magento backend and was a separate application.
The feature everyone was looking out for was the tremendous speed of these applications and the “user experience,” which was supposed to resemble having an app. While the second of these goals was achieved, unfortunately, it’s hard to find a great e-commerce implementation with a Magento back-end, a front-end built on any of these headless solutions that is incredibly fast. Interestingly, data from The HTTP Archive, for example, shows that it’s very difficult to build a PWA solution that would rank well with Google (more difficult than on Luma).
I once even asked a question about this topic on LinkedIn but received no response. No one wanted to share their experiences with e-commerce built on PWA Studio, View Store Front, or Scandi PWA, which would be incredibly fast. This best shows how difficult it is to find such implementations.
Additionally, the biggest drawback of PWA solutions has come out over time. The initial PWA coding and maintenance cost is several times higher than the cost of maintaining a Magento front-end on Luma.
This poses a significant problem because if we are thinking about a business that is perhaps just at the stage of scaling up or even at the beginning of its journey to be a great e-commerce business, it would be best to avoid the large maintenance costs of e-commerce technology.
Thus, we had two paths to choose from. We had a choice between Luma or PWA.
Of course, there were templates built on Luma, which are even slower than Luma itself. Total drama.
On the other hand, PWAs began to emerge, which were a kind of ready-made PWA template. The problem with them is that such a design is hard to transfer between agencies. So you become doomed to work with that particular software house (that is, you experience the so-called vendor lock-in).
In response to the situation, Hyva was created in 2020.
Hyva is a new front-end, not a derivative of Luma, but a completely new solution. It primarily uses Tailwind CSS and Alpine JS technologies. Thanks to a significant slimming down compared to Luma, Hyva is incredibly fast.
It offers impressive results on Google PageSpeed, and, with that, its advantage is that even inexperienced programmers are able to program Hyva-based frontends and do so flawlessly.
In addition, the cost and time to code a single Hyva feature compared to Luma or PWA is significantly lower.
As you know, Magento uses knockout.js, which is used in the checkout process. The current system is unfortunate, difficult to rebuild, and complicated, and the cost of modifying the ordering process in Magento is very high. Hyva has plans to create its version of the ordering process (in fact, it’s already available in October 2023).
Hyva is a paid solution. The cost is 1000 EUR. For this 1000 EUR, you get a lifetime license. All Hyva updates that come in the future will be available.
In addition to the license costs, there are also coding costs. Here comes the surprise: Hyva is much cheaper to code than PWA, and what’s more, it is also cheaper than Luma. Currently, we estimate, based on projects already completed on Hyva and conversations with other software houses, that the cost of implementing an individual graphic design, that is, creating a completely customized online store, is between 500 and 800 hours of programmer labor.
What’s interesting about Hyva is that if you’re thinking about a business to operate in different geographic markets, where a geographic market is a combination of currency and language, and you plan to enter, for example, a dozen, several or dozens of different markets, Hyva is a perfect solution.
However, it is important to note that Hyva cannot be used with older versions of Magento than version 2.3. Hyva’s compatibility with Magento from version 2.3.3. Interestingly, Hyva works with the paid version – Adobe Commerce and Magento 2 Open Source, also called Community Edition.
The obvious question is, has anyone already set up a store on Hyva?
Yes.
To confirm my words, I will introduce you to a few online stores that operate on this platform. First of all, you should visit Hyvy’s website, where in the “showcases” section, there is a list of sample stores that have been created on this platform. As you can see, there are quite a few of them, and they are not small stores.
For example, we have:
More than 1,000 stores are already using Hyva and every month, this number increases by about 50
Finally, here’s an interesting fact. Go to this chart and see how PWA vs. Hyva vs Luma compares in terms of passing the Core Web Vitals required.
I believe that in terms of an introduction to the topic, you are already equipped with solid knowledge and know what Hyva is.
Hyva is a kind of frontend that we can use in Magento 2, characterized by amazing speed. We can count on scores of more than 95 points on desktop and more than 90 points on mobile devices.
On the other hand, Hyva is very simple and easy to code, so the cost of maintaining a Hyva-based frontend is lower than PWA or the already outdated Luma.
If you are wondering which frontend to choose for Magento 2 or you already have Magento 2, and your problem is poor performance in Google PageSpeed, hey, why not contact me? We will discuss your situation in detail and propose an action plan, which, in your case, would most likely lead to an improvement in Google PageSpeed results.
