I have been writing node apps for a few years. If your app is traditional and you want to use structured database no problem use something like Laravel. With express you need to roll everything yourself and a fullstack solution like sails.js is not mature enough (plus focuses a lot on switching the type of database you store data in, which is weird to me. So for structured, traditional web apps without real time functionality and nothing too crazy/custom Laravel or Rails or Django are better bets.