AdonisJS is a great server-side framework built on Express. It’s opinionated way of doing things just makes sense, clears up the initial development problems, and makes development & maintenance easier.

I have completed ~3 projects on AdonisJS so far after switching roles to a web application developer last year. After using FeathersJS, Laravel and a bit of .NET, I find myself increasingly becoming comfortable with what AdonisJS can offer.

Here’s why you should use AdonisJS (my opinions - I am often wrong) -

1. You need a functioning Javascript back-end today
2. You need a framework that is developer-friendly, provides a comprehensive set of features, and allows easy customization
3. You are creating a data-driven application or an application that relies on backend to a fair degree
4. You are switching from other structured frameworks like Laravel or .NET, and want a comparable framework
5. You need your team to follow an uniform code structure that is already decided for you. Adonis’s structure is clean, and super functional
6. Small footprint back-end that is fast - without compromising on features
7. Make your life easier with scaffolding tools that generate Controllers, Models, Seeds & Factories and the like
8. Great documentation
9. Easy unit tests
10. Easy migrations across environments

Digging deeper -

1. A fully-featured, fast ORM in Lucid. This is the layer that abstracts database from your server logic - you want it to be stable, fast, and error-free
2. Great dependency management using IOC containers and service providers
3. A fast validation provider
4. Redis support out of the box
5. A great command line tool (Ace) that works really well
6. Add-ons like scheduler, ACL, Persona that sit on top of Adonis and some of the well-known libraries encourage you to fully leverage the power of block-building enabled in Node

You may not want AdonisJS right now if -

1. You have money to spend and don’t quite care about the back-end. You are better off using something like Firestore. If you are that - stop reading now and get back to your clicking.
2. You are looking for seamless GraphQL support. Yes, there are extensions that integrate the older Apollo v1. But then, there are other frameworks that box everything together in a nice package
3. You need a beautiful full-stack application in a single package. The right question to ask yourself - which decade are you from and where were you all these days? Btw, Adonis does provide a front-end - I am not a fan of Edge, but that’s only me.
4. You want CMS features delivered out of the box. You are better off looking at something like StrapiJS
5. You are looking for the cutting edge features delivered to you at a rapid pace. There appears to be a lot of onus on stability - a good trait but hard to be found in smaller frameworks. AdonisJS community is smaller but active nevertheless.
6. You need ‘official’ enterprise support. Your team can solve all the problems they encounter and the community is great

Alternatives -

1. NestJS - if you want a larger community, more add-ons, and GraphQL support. On the flip side, it lacks structure, it is not as ‘clean’ (subjective) as AdonisJS, and documentation is not as good. There are discussions about making GraphQL a first-class citizen in next major version, but I can’t confirm or deny that.
2. .NET Core and Blazor - If you are looking at web-assembly future. And yes - this is full-stack in one package. I was eating my words around ~2015, and then again will be doing that somewhere around ~2020. Not a pretty sight.