Development with Next.js
Next.js is an open-source framework for React that simplifies and optimizes the development of modern web applications. Built by Vercel, it combines multiple rendering methods such as Server-Side Rendering (SSR), Static Site Generation (SSG), and Client-Side Rendering (CSR) within a single, flexible framework. This makes it an excellent choice for both SEO-optimized websites and high-performance web applications.
Next.js is particularly attractive for businesses and development teams looking to build scalable, fast, and low-maintenance applications. Major companies like Twitch, TikTok, Uber, and Notion rely on it in production, solidifying its reputation as one of the most popular frameworks for modern web development.
Why Next.js?
Web development has evolved significantly in recent years. While traditional Single-Page Applications (SPAs) often rely on Client-Side Rendering (CSR), they face limitations in SEO, load times, and initial performance.
Next.js addresses these challenges by combining different rendering strategies and offering a flexible architecture with built-in optimizations. But what does this mean in practice for developers and businesses?
What Makes Next.js Stand Out?
Benefits
Next.js significantly reduces setup and development overhead by providing many essential features out of the box. Developers don’t need to manually configure routing, code-splitting, API handling, or image optimization, everything works seamlessly from the start.
Additionally, Fast Refresh ensures that code changes are immediately reflected without losing the application state. The tight TypeScript integration helps catch errors early, ultimately reducing long-term maintenance costs. This automation leads to faster development cycles, more stable code, and improved scalability for large projects.
Next.js improves SEO and performance by offering multiple rendering strategies, which can be applied depending on the use case. These include:
- SSR (Server-Side Rendering): Content is generated on the server for each request, making it ideal for data-intensive applications with frequent updates.
- SSG (Static Site Generation): Pages are pre-built at build time, ensuring high performance - perfect for blogs, documentation, and marketing sites aiming for top performance scores.
- ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration): Enables background updates for static pages without requiring a full rebuild, making it optimal for content management systems.
- CSR (Client-Side Rendering): Content is fully rendered in the browser, best suited for interactive dashboards and single-page applications.
This approach results in faster load times, improved visibility, and fewer crawling & indexing issues - a crucial advantage for e-commerce, blogs, and content-driven platforms.
Next.js integrates numerous automatic performance optimizations that reduce load times and enhance the user experience. These include:
- Automatic Code-Splitting: Only the necessary code for a page is loaded, rather than the entire application.
- On-Demand Loading: JavaScript bundles are loaded only when they are needed.
- Link Prefetching: Internal links (
next/link) are automatically preloaded when they appear in the viewport, enabling faster navigation. - Automatic Image Optimization (
next/image): Images are dynamically delivered in modern formats (WebP, AVIF), scaled appropriately, and only loaded when visible. - Font Optimization (
next/font): Web fonts are loaded asynchronously to reduce Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). - Smart Caching: Next.js intelligently caches content in the browser and at the edge to minimize unnecessary network requests.
Additionally, Next.js supports various rendering strategies (SSR, SSG, ISR, CSR), which can be applied strategically to optimize performance.
Next.js is natively optimized for Edge Computing and Serverless architectures, eliminating the need for complex server scaling or load balancing. It seamlessly integrates with Vercel, AWS Lambda, and Cloudflare Workers, allowing applications to scale effortlessly.
With built-in API routes, Next.js enables backend functionality directly within the application, often removing the need for a separate backend. This reduces infrastructure costs, accelerates deployments, and simplifies maintenance, making it an ideal choice for businesses looking for efficient and scalable web applications.
Next.js is actively developed and remains at the forefront of web technology, thanks to its close integration with Vercel. Developers benefit from:
- Regular performance improvements & new features
- A large open-source community with extensive extensions & plugins
- Seamless integrations with modern tools like GraphQL, Headless CMS, and Serverless Functions
This combination makes Next.js a long-term, stable choice for web applications, ensuring continued innovation, strong community support, and future-proof scalability.
Next.js allows API routes to be defined directly within the application, often eliminating the need for a separate backend. This reduces infrastructure costs, simplifies the architecture, and enables faster, low-maintenance deployments.
Each API file is automatically treated as an endpoint, allowing backend functions such as authentication, database queries, and webhooks to be seamlessly integrated into Next.js.
- Backend logic without separate infrastructure: A lightweight solution for smaller backends and custom business logic.
- Serverless execution: Automatically scales on platforms like Vercel, AWS Lambda, or Google Cloud Functions.
- Automatic scaling: Dynamically adapts to traffic without manual configuration.
- Flexible API handling: Supports REST and GraphQL with methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.
Next.js provides an efficient and streamlined solution for projects that frequently interact with headless CMS or external APIs. By combining frontend and a simple backend within a single codebase, it minimizes development effort and simplifies maintenance, making it ideal for modern web and SaaS applications.
Drawbacks
Next.js offers a lot of possibilities, but that can be a challenge for developers.
SSR, SSG, ISR, or CSR - when should you use which strategy? Poor decisions can lead to slow builds, unnecessary API requests, or poor performance. While small projects are easy to get started with, large codebases quickly become complex.
Teams that have only worked with Client-Side Rendering (CSR) or simple SPAs before often need some time to get up to speed and fully leverage Next.js.
Next.js is constantly evolving, which drives innovation but also introduces frequent changes that can impact existing projects.
New features, such as the App Router with React Server Components, often require a shift in development approach, sometimes forcing teams to restructure their codebase. The community has also raised concerns about certain features being labeled as "stable" despite still feeling unfinished or evolving.
For teams making long-term architectural decisions, the fast-paced development of Next.js can be both an advantage and a potential risk. Carefully evaluating stability vs. innovation is crucial before committing to the framework.
Despite its many performance optimizations, Next.js can sometimes demand more resources than traditional SSR or SSG solutions.
- SSR can become a bottleneck under heavy load, as each request requires server-side processing.
- Large projects with many pages may experience long build times, especially when generating numerous static pages.
- Development environments (Hot Reload) can slow down significantly in large Next.js projects, affecting productivity.
While Edge Rendering and ISR can mitigate some of these issues, it's important to assess whether Next.js is truly the best fit for a given use case, especially when handling massive amounts of dynamic content or extremely high traffic.
While Next.js can technically be hosted anywhere, it is heavily optimized for Vercel, which offers the best performance, scaling, and seamless integration.
- Hosting on AWS, Google Cloud, or other providers often requires additional setup and configuration to match Vercel’s capabilities.
- SSR & ISR can be more complex outside of Vercel, as many platforms lack native Next.js infrastructure support.
- Projects like OpenNext and Coolify have emerged to bridge this gap, indicating that alternative hosting solutions still face challenges.
For teams aiming to stay independent from Vercel, additional effort may be required to set up and optimize infrastructure for Next.js deployments.
Our Conclusion as an Agency
As an agency, we develop scalable, high-performance, and efficiently implemented web applications. Next.js reaches its full potential, especially when combined with Payload CMS, as it allows frontend, CMS, and backend to be managed within a single codebase and deployed together. This eliminates the need for separate backend infrastructure, significantly accelerating and simplifying the development process.
Next.js is particularly well-suited for projects where:
- SEO and performance are critical: SSG, ISR, and SSR ensure fast load times and better indexing.
- Rendering flexibility is required: Static and dynamic content can be combined based on the use case.
- Development efficiency is a priority: Automated optimizations and an exceptional developer experience enable rapid iterations.
- Scalability without infrastructure overhead is needed: Edge rendering and a serverless architecture allow the application to grow effortlessly.
- CMS and app backend should be seamlessly integrated: Next.js with Payload CMS creates an efficient full-stack solution without separate backend management.
However, Next.js requires a deeper technical understanding, as much of its functionality works "magically" in the background. For smaller or purely static projects, leaner alternatives may sometimes be the better choice.