of course, there are cases where the complexity of Universal App may be justified. In particular 1 if your app's content need's to be indexed by Google, it is valuable to be able to control the HTML that Google sees. Rendering server side allows you to do this. - Instagram chief says that they're still find it usefully for SEO 2 if you're at the point when every millisecond of page loads causes a measurable decrease in revenue, server-side rendering can make things appear on your's screens faster. 3 if you have important users whose device is too underpowered to support Javascript, Universal may be your only option In short , universal apps make sense when they solve a real problem. tHEY ARE NOT THE GOAL IN ANDS OF THEMSELVES