A comparison between reactive distillation (RD) and side-reactor concept (SRC) has been done using industrial examples. The industrial examples were chosen to present different types of reactions; equilibrium-limited [tert-amyl methyl ether (TAME) production] and selectivity-limited (2-methylbutene dimerization). In both cases, reactive distillation has been proved to be a good process alternative. At low internal and recycle flow rates, traditional SRC with adiabatic reactor train fails to reach similar conversions and selectivities to RD. However, optimizing the conditions in the reactor train of the side reactor concept improves the performance of the process remarkably, making it a prominent process alternative to reactive distillation.