Fortunately, there's a technology that, as we'll see, solves or mitigates most development-related risks while having all the ideal characteristics for developing a 3D configurator: Three.js.

In the world of web 3D, Three.js isn't just a library – it's the de facto standard that completely dominates the sector.

To understand how dominant Three.js has become, just look at some numbers:

- 108,000+ GitHub stars – GitHub is the platform where developers share and evaluate projects. For comparison, the closest competitor Babylon.js has about 9,000 and having over one hundred thousand GitHub stars is something that unites Three.js with the tools used to build the majority of existing websites today.

- 2+ million weekly npm downloads – npm is the "store" where developers download JavaScript libraries. Two million times a week, a developer somewhere in the world installs Three.js.

Three.js isn't just popular among small developers. Tech giants have chosen it for mission-critical projects:

When companies with unlimited budgets and teams of hundreds of developers choose Three.js instead of developing proprietary solutions, there's a reason. Actually, there are several.

Three.js is open-source and therefore belongs to the developer community, not to a single company. It's sponsored by dozens of different companies, which means:

Since 2010, Three.js has maintained almost perfect backward compatibility: this means that code written 10 years ago still works today. So there's no need to rewrite everything every 3-5 years as happens with other libraries: the code developed for you maintains value over time, while allowing new functionality to be added.

Beyond the above, Three.js is well-positioned to intercept the development of augmented reality between smart-glasses and AR visualization from smartphones. In fact, Three.js supports WebXR, the standard for augmented and virtual reality in browsers:

Every Three.js configurator today can be easily adapted for tomorrow's AR and can be used on new devices like Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest without having to develop dedicated apps from scratch.

Most importantly, Three.js was born for the web and optimized to work well in that environment.

Three.js needs to transfer very little information to function: its bundle size is typically under 1MB even for complex configurators. This means that with Three.js a well-optimized configurator can load in 2-3 seconds even on mobile and works optimally in normal browsers, without having to resort to devices with gaming performance.

When talking about 3D configurators, the main alternatives to Three.js are Unity WebGL and Babylon.js.

It's important to understand that both were born for gaming, not for e-commerce or web visualization, and this makes a huge difference in terms of performance and usability.

Beyond this, both are tied to the fate and especially the decisions of individual companies, with their business logic and budget objectives.

In 2023, Unity Technologies shocked the industry by changing licensing conditions overnight. Some developers found themselves with 2,400% cost increases.

But for e-commerce configurators, Unity WebGL has an even more serious problem: disastrous mobile performance. Unity itself discourages WebGL use on mobile devices because:

Babylon.js is technically solid, but it's a Microsoft project and history teaches us that large companies like Microsoft can decide on strategy changes and abandon a working project suddenly. In particular, the Redmond giant has several cases of important abandoned projects:

A configurator developed with Babylon.js will always risk losing support for its technology overnight. It would continue to work, but it would be harder to find developers to work on it and you wouldn't have new security updates or updates designed to integrate with new technologies.

The numbers speak clearly: every second of improvement in loading time leads to a significant increase in conversions. Sites that load in 1 second have a 39% conversion rate, which drops to 18% for sites that take 6 seconds.

Especially if you're developing a product to be used as e-commerce or usable directly by users to get a quote, every percentage point of lost conversion represents lost revenue.

With Three.js it's absolutely feasible to have optimal times and phased loading logic that keeps user attention high. With Unity WebGL or heavy solutions, such loading times are practically impossible and also, since Unity is developed for gaming, it loads everything at once and it's not possible to customize what happens during loading.

Three.js = JavaScript developers. And JavaScript is the world's most widespread language.

Beyond the weekly Three.js download numbers we saw above, it should be considered that a Three.js specialist isn't necessary to maintain an already developed project. 3D development with its particular loading logic, material optimization, lighting combines 3D modeling elements with coding experience and isn't trivial. Especially doing it well isn't trivial.

Conversely, maintenance of a developed project, development of new integrations and business logic is perfectly feasible by a JavaScript developer without particular Three.js experience. In Italy alone there are thousands of JavaScript/TypeScript developers and development hourly costs given the numbers tend to be competitive.

Proprietary alternatives = specialists: Conversely for other proprietary technologies (thinking especially of Unity as a key example), we find a much smaller developer pool: this leads to higher hourly costs and especially much longer times for any replacement.