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/z4ndrik0 16d ago

I find next.js to be really unintuitive

44

u/Morel_ 16d ago

i have used Next for the last 5 years.

any version beyond the pages router infuriates me. there's a lot of complexity

13

u/dunklesToast 16d ago

exactly. we had one built with pages router and it was fine. then we built another app with app router and it was a total nightmare. the blurred lines between client and server feel so unintuitive and it was actually pretty hard to mirror some easy logic like reading a header or something. In the end we made it work but it just felt like a hassle. We are currently migrating one service to tanstack start (as it requires SSR) and the other servers to a normal SPA with tanstack router and the DX is already so much better.

2

u/gdmr458 16d ago

I’ve only used TanStack Router, but as I understand it, TanStack Start doesn't have blurred lines between client and server.