We're not sponsored by Vercel. Nobody's paying us to say this. We just genuinely think Next.js is the best tool for most of the projects we build. Here's why.
The old way was fine — until it wasn't
A few years ago, we built a lot of WordPress sites. They worked. Clients were happy. But we kept running into the same problems: slow page loads, plugin conflicts, security patches every other week, and SEO that required five plugins just to get the basics right.
Then we moved to React SPAs (single-page applications). Better developer experience, but the SEO was a nightmare. Google could technically crawl them, but the results were inconsistent. Client-side rendering meant the page was blank until JavaScript loaded. Not great for users on slow connections in rural Sri Lanka.
Next.js solved both problems.
What Next.js actually gives us
Server-side rendering and static generation. Pages load fast because HTML is ready before the browser even opens. Google sees fully rendered content. Users see content instantly instead of a loading spinner.
Built-in SEO tools. Metadata API, sitemap generation, robots.txt, structured data — it's all native. No plugins, no workarounds.
Image optimisation. Next.js automatically converts images to WebP/AVIF, resizes them for different screens, and lazy-loads them. We don't have to think about it.
TypeScript support. Catches bugs before they reach production. Our team writes TypeScript by default, and Next.js makes that painless.
Deployment on Vercel. Push to Git, it's live in under a minute. Automatic preview deployments for every pull request. Clients can see changes before they go live.
Real performance difference
One of our restaurant clients switched from a WordPress site to Next.js. Same content, same design intent. The results:
- Page load time went from 4.2 seconds to 1.1 seconds
- Core Web Vitals went from "needs improvement" to all green
- Mobile bounce rate dropped
These aren't magic numbers — it's just what happens when you serve pre-rendered HTML instead of loading a CMS on every request.
When we don't use Next.js
We're not dogmatic about it. There are cases where Next.js isn't the right fit:
- Simple blogs with non-technical editors. If the client needs to update content daily and isn't comfortable with a CMS like Sanity or a headless setup, WordPress is still a valid choice.
- Tiny one-page landing sites. If it's genuinely a single page with no interactivity, plain HTML/CSS is perfectly fine.
- Legacy system integrations. Sometimes the existing infrastructure dictates the tech stack, and that's okay.
Why this matters for you
If you're hiring a development company, the tech stack matters more than most people think. It affects how fast your site loads, how well it ranks on Google, how easy it is to maintain, and how much it costs to add features later.
We chose Next.js because it makes all of those things easier. Not perfect — nothing is — but measurably better than the alternatives for the type of work we do.
If you're curious about whether Next.js is the right fit for your project, we're happy to chat about it. No pitch, just an honest conversation about what makes sense for your situation.