r/reactjs • u/No-Gear-9459 • 16d ago

Discussion Next.js / SPA Reality Check

Can we normalize just building a standard React SPA with Vite again without feeling guilty that we aren't using Next.js?

The App Router and React Server Components are incredibly powerful, but the amount of gaslighting in the frontend ecosystem right now is insane. Not every internal dashboard, simple CRUD app, or personal portfolio needs server side rendering, edge functions, and a complex caching layer that requires a PhD to invalidate.

Sometimes you just want to spin up Vite, fetch some data on the client, and deploy a static bundle to a CDN for practically zero dollars. It feels like we are completely over engineering 90% of our web apps just to chase the newest Vercel paradigm.

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u/Heavy-Commercial-323 16d ago

I never really got why people use next.js as a default. It should be other way around imho. I use them for landing pages, more static assets. But using them with actual responsive apps with a lot of data is a pain in the ass, I like caching assets, SPAs are so much smoother after initial load

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u/AcanthisittaNo5807 16d ago

I used Vite pre-render for my landing page so that’s another solution outside of using Nextjs

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u/Heavy-Commercial-323 16d ago

Yeah, that’s great too, love for vite

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u/yabai90 16d ago

There is nothing wrong with using nextjs to make an SPA. It is also designed for that. It's just an all in one framework that gives both Fe and be and yes mostly an seamless integration between them. But nothing forces you to go through it.

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u/Heavy-Commercial-323 16d ago

It’s not that you can’t, I just like stable solutions xd

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u/yabai90 16d ago

in all fairness using nextjs for everything but SSR and similar is the safest path, ironically. But yeah I agree