Struts has a number of significant advantages over the standard servlet and JSP APIs alone, due to its complexity it has some serious drawbacks as well.
Bigger Learning Curve:
To use MVC with the standard RequestDispatcher, you need to be comfortable with the standard JSP and servlet APIs. To use MVC with Struts, you have to be comfortable with the standard JSP and servlet APIs and a large and elaborate framework that is almost equal in size to the core system. This drawback is especially significant with smaller projects, near-term deadlines, and less experienced developers; you could spend as much time learning Struts as building your actual system.
Worse Documentation:
Compared to the standard servlet and JSP APIs, Struts has fewer online resources, and many first-time users find the online Apache documentation confusing and poorly organized. There are also fewer books on Apache Struts than on standard servlets and JSP.
Less Transparent:
With Struts applications, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than with normal Java-based Web applications. As a result, Struts applications are:
Harder to understand
Harder to benchmark and optimize
Rigid Approach:
The flip side of the benefit that Struts encourages a consistent approach to MVC is that Struts makes it difficult (but by no means impossible) to use other approaches.
