{"id":31533,"date":"2025-08-25T10:56:58","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T09:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=31533"},"modified":"2025-08-25T10:56:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T09:56:58","slug":"betting-on-the-future-of-frontend-at-intercom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/betting-on-the-future-of-frontend-at-intercom\/","title":{"rendered":"Betting on the future of frontend at Intercom"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Intercom, we\u2019ve never been afraid to make big, pragmatic bets in pursuit of building the best products and the best environment for our engineers to thrive.<\/p>\n

Over the past two years, we\u2019ve made one of the most significant shifts in our frontend engineering practice: moving our core frontend from Ember to React.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a decision we took lightly. When Intercom rebuilt its main application in 2014, Ember was the perfect choice. Its strong opinions and \u201cbatteries-included\u201d approach aligned beautifully with how we liked to build: move fast, make decisions once, and focus our energy on solving customer problems rather than endlessly debating architecture. Intercom went on to become one of the largest active Ember applications in the world, with more than two million lines of code and 100,000+ pull requests merged.<\/p>\n

But by 2023 local builds stretched beyond 90 seconds, and we were stuck on older framework versions, which subsequently blocked us from adopting the new build tools. We loved being part of the Ember community, working with all its talented people, and contributing to the Embroider Initiative<\/a>. But something had to change for us.<\/p>\n

Choosing a new path<\/h2>\n

We approached the problem with the same discipline we bring to product decisions. We convened workshops, ran health checks, and set explicit trigger conditions. By mid-2023, too many of those triggers had fired and we had to consider what was best for us. So, we committed to finding a new path.<\/p>\n

We first set out a clear vision for what we wanted in a framework, aligning on criteria that matched our engineering principles because after all, we weren\u2019t changing the tech stack for the sake of it, but to accelerate our organization. We called this project \u201cThe Future of Frontend.\u201d<\/p>\n

After evaluation and experimentation, React quickly emerged as the right choice. It wasn\u2019t about hype. React was already a core technology<\/a> at Intercom (powering Messenger, Help Center, and our marketing site), it has an enormous ecosystem, strong documentation, and widespread familiarity internally and across the industry. Most importantly, it integrates seamlessly with the AI-driven developer tools that are central to our future.<\/p>\n

Where we are today<\/h2>\n

Fast forward to today, and our \u201cFuture of Frontend\u201d project is well underway. React is now the default for new UI development at Intercom. The results speak for themselves:<\/p>\n