Frontend
Next.js Development Company
The React framework for products that must feel like software and rank like a page, with the rendering and caching decisions made deliberately rather than inherited from a template.
Overview
Next.js is the production framework for React. React gives you a component model and stops there, leaving routing, data fetching, server rendering, bundling and performance as your problem. Next.js supplies exactly those pieces, and it supplies them with an opinion about where each belongs. That opinionation is the whole point. It is why a serious Next.js codebase looks recognisably like other Next.js codebases, and why a new engineer can find the route for a page by looking at the folder structure rather than by tracing a router configuration through four files.
The modern framework is built on the App Router and React Server Components. Components render on the server by default, close to the data, and send finished HTML with no accompanying JavaScript. Only the parts that are genuinely interactive sit behind a client boundary, ship their code to the browser and hydrate. On top of that sits a rendering menu you choose from per route rather than per application: static generation at build time, incremental static regeneration that serves a cached page and rebuilds it in the background, server rendering per request for anything personalised, and ordinary client rendering where it suits. A marketing page, a documentation section and a live dashboard can share one codebase and each render the way it should.
The other half of the framework is what surrounds rendering: nested layouts that persist across navigation, streaming so a slow section does not hold up the rest of the page, loading and error boundaries declared as files rather than wired by hand, server actions that let a form call a server function without a bespoke API endpoint, a metadata API that makes SEO tags a typed part of the route, middleware that runs before a request reaches a page, and built-in image and font handling that removes two of the most common causes of poor Core Web Vitals. Individually these are conveniences. Together they are the reason teams stop assembling a dozen libraries and adopt a framework.
We are equally clear about the cost. Next.js is large, it moves quickly, and its caching model is the single most misunderstood thing in modern web development. Teams routinely ship pages that are stale for reasons they cannot explain, or dynamic for reasons they did not intend, and then blame the framework. There is also a genuine gravitational pull toward one hosting vendor, which is manageable but must be decided with eyes open rather than discovered at the point where you want to move. We build Next.js applications that are deployable where you actually want them, with a caching strategy written down and understood rather than emergent.
Best for: Public-facing web products that must be fast, interactive and search-visible at the same time, where per-route rendering and server-side data access are the deciding advantages over plain React.
Why teams choose Next.js
Indexable pages without giving up interactivity
Pages arrive as finished HTML, so crawlers, social preview scrapers and first-time visitors all see real content immediately, while the interactive parts hydrate behind them. This is the single most common reason a team moves from a React single-page application to Next.js, and it is not a preference, it is usually a revenue argument.
Rendering chosen per route
Static, incrementally regenerated, server-rendered or client-rendered, decided page by page on the merits. A pricing page can be cached at the edge while the dashboard next to it renders per request with the user’s data, in one codebase and one deployment. No other decision in the framework has as much effect on cost and speed.
Less plumbing to write and maintain
Routing, layouts, loading and error states, data fetching, mutations, image optimisation, font handling and metadata are framework concerns rather than a shelf of libraries you selected, integrated and now own. Fewer dependencies means fewer upgrades, fewer incompatibilities and fewer decisions for the next engineer to reverse-engineer.
Server-side data access without an API tier
A Server Component can query the database directly, and a server action can write to it, so the layer of REST endpoints whose only purpose was feeding your own front end disappears. That is less code, fewer network hops and one fewer place for a type mismatch to hide.
Why businesses choose Next.js
- It solves the one thing plain React cannot do by itself: server-rendered HTML that search engines, social previews and slow devices can all read, without surrendering a rich interactive experience.
- It puts the rendering decision in your hands per route, so a heavily-visited static page and a personalised authenticated view can coexist in one deployment and each behave and cost correctly.
- Server Components and server actions let one team own the interface and its data access together, removing a tier of API code whose only reason for existing was the browser and server being different places.
- It is the mainstream React framework, which means hiring, handover, documentation and the answer to almost any question are available. For a system you intend to run for years, that is a strategic property.
- The conventions are strong enough that a codebase built by us is legible to a team who did not build it, which is precisely what you want from a consultancy engagement.
What we build with Next.js
The capabilities this technology is genuinely strong at, and what we most often build with it.
App Router and Server Components
Routes are folders, and the components inside them render on the server by default. A server component can await a database query directly and returns HTML that ships with none of its own JavaScript. Interactivity is opt-in at a client boundary. Placing that boundary well is the central design decision in a Next.js application, because it determines how much code the browser downloads and how quickly the page becomes usable. Push it as far down the tree as you can: an interactive filter control should be a client component, not the page that contains it.
Nested layouts and route groups
Layouts wrap segments of the route tree and persist across navigation, so a sidebar, a header or a provider is not torn down and rebuilt when the user moves between pages within it. Route groups let you organise the repository without those folders appearing in the URL, and parallel and intercepting routes handle patterns such as a modal that has its own address and survives a refresh. This is the part of the framework that makes complicated navigation structures declarative rather than clever.
The rendering menu, chosen per route
Static generation for pages that are the same for everyone, served from a CDN with no compute at request time. Incremental static regeneration for content that changes occasionally, serving from cache and rebuilding in the background on a schedule or when revalidated. Server rendering per request where content depends on the user or the request. Client rendering where a page is behind a login and interaction is all that matters. We decide this route by route in design, with an explicit note about why, because it is the decision that quietly sets both your performance and your hosting bill.
Caching layers and revalidation
Next.js caches at several levels, and using it well means knowing which one you are talking about. Fetches are deduplicated within a single render. Fetched data can persist in a data cache across requests. A fully static route can be cached in its entirety. The client router keeps recently visited segments so back-navigation is instant. We set explicit revalidation on data that changes, use tag-based invalidation so publishing a piece of content refreshes exactly the routes that show it, and document the strategy so that the next person to touch it does not have to infer it from behaviour.
Streaming and Suspense boundaries
The framework can flush HTML to the browser in chunks as data resolves, so the header, navigation and static parts of a page appear immediately while a slow section shows a skeleton and streams in behind them. A loading file gives a whole route segment a boundary for free. Used deliberately, this changes the perceived speed of a data-heavy page far more than shaving kilobytes off a bundle.
Server actions and mutations
A form or a button can call a server function directly, with pending state and revalidation handled by the framework, so there is no bespoke endpoint whose only job is to receive a form post. This removes a lot of boilerplate. It also means every server action is a public endpoint in practice, so we validate and authorise inside each one rather than assuming only our own UI will ever call it.
Middleware and the edge runtime
Middleware runs before a request reaches a route, which is the right place for authentication redirects, locale and geography routing, feature flags and rewrites. It runs on every matched request, so we keep it small and cheap and resist the temptation to put business logic there. Latency-sensitive work can run at the edge close to the user, which helps when the alternative is a round trip to a single region.
Metadata, sitemaps and structured data
Titles, descriptions, canonical URLs, Open Graph tags and JSON-LD are generated as part of the route, in typed code, including dynamically per page from your data. Sitemaps and robots rules are generated files rather than hand-maintained artefacts that drift. For a product where organic search matters, having SEO markup live in the same place as the page and be impossible to forget is a structural advantage over bolting tags on afterwards.
Image, font and script handling
The image component serves correctly sized images in modern formats with reserved space so nothing shifts as they load. Fonts are self-hosted and preloaded, which removes both a third-party request and the flash of unstyled text. Third-party scripts load with an explicit strategy rather than blocking the page. These are three of the most common causes of poor Core Web Vitals scores, handled as defaults.
Deployment and self-hosting
A standalone build output runs in a container on any platform, which is how we deploy when a client wants to own their infrastructure. Doing that properly means a shared cache handler so incremental regeneration works across multiple instances, a decision about where image optimisation happens, and the usual concerns of running a Node process behind a reverse proxy and a CDN. We build for the deployment target you actually want, and we say clearly what is easier and what is harder on each.
Use cases
SaaS marketing site plus the product behind it
A fast, statically generated public site that ranks, and a server-rendered authenticated application behind the login, sharing one codebase, one design system and one deployment. This is the pattern the framework is best at and the one that most often justifies choosing it.
Content and publishing platforms
Editorial sites, documentation and knowledge bases with a large page count, generated statically from a headless CMS and revalidated by tag when an editor publishes, so pages are CDN-fast and still current within seconds of a change rather than after a redeploy.
E-commerce storefronts
Product and category pages that must rank and load instantly, cached and regenerated as the catalogue changes, alongside per-request rendering for cart, availability, personalised pricing and checkout. The split between what can be cached and what genuinely cannot is where the engineering value lies.
Programmatic and location-based page sets
Large families of related pages generated from structured data, where static generation and a well-chosen revalidation strategy make a big page count viable, and where the metadata and sitemap generation being part of the route prevents the drift that kills these projects.
Booking, application and onboarding journeys
Multi-step flows that begin on an indexed landing page and continue into an interactive, stateful process, where the entry point needs SEO and the journey needs application behaviour, and server actions keep the form handling simple.
Migrating a React single-page application
Moving a client-rendered React app to Next.js because first loads are slow, nothing is indexable, and the hand-assembled stack of routing, data fetching and state libraries has become a maintenance burden. We do this incrementally, route by route, rather than as a rewrite.
Rescuing a Next.js project that is behaving oddly
Pages that will not update, routes that render dynamically and cost more than they should, hydration errors nobody can reproduce, or a build that has become the slowest step in the pipeline. These are diagnosable problems with specific causes, and the cause is usually the caching model or a misplaced client boundary.
When Next.js is the right choice
- Right when the product has to be both an application and a set of public pages that rank. A SaaS product with a marketing site in front of it, a storefront, a content platform with a logged-in area, a booking journey that starts on an indexed landing page. Next.js is the mainstream answer to that combination and there is no serious competitor for it in the React world.
- Right when first-load performance is a business concern rather than a vanity metric. Server rendering plus streaming means users get meaningful content before the JavaScript arrives, which matters most on mid-range phones and poor connections, which is to say for most of the traffic that people are surprised to discover they have.
- Right when you want your front end and its data access in one codebase. Server Components read from the database or an internal service directly, and server actions handle mutations, which removes an entire tier of API endpoints that existed only to shuttle data to the browser. For a team that owns both sides, that is a real reduction in surface area.
- Right when you have a large number of content pages that need to be fast and fresh. Static generation with incremental regeneration and tag-based revalidation lets you serve thousands of pages from cache and update individual ones when the source changes, without a full rebuild and redeploy.
- Wrong for a brochure site of a handful of pages that never change. A static site generator or hand-written HTML is lighter to build, cheaper to host, quicker to hand over and has no build tooling to keep current. The framework will not hurt you here, but you will be paying for machinery you never use.
- Wrong for a purely internal tool behind a login with no SEO requirement and no first-load pressure. A plain React application with a client-side router and a build tool such as Vite is simpler, avoids the server and client component distinction entirely, and gives you a faster development loop. Choosing Next.js there buys learning curve and deployment complexity for benefits that do not apply.
- Wrong when the team has no appetite for the mental model. Server Components, the client boundary and the caching layers are not incidental details, they are the framework. A team that treats every component as a client component, because that is what makes the errors go away, ends up with a slower application than a plain React one and a deployment that costs more to run.
Next.js: pros and cons
Strengths
- The best available balance of interactivity and first-load performance in the React ecosystem, with server rendering that makes pages genuinely indexable rather than theoretically crawlable.
- Rendering strategy is a per-route decision, so performance and hosting cost are tuned page by page instead of being an application-wide compromise.
- Server Components and server actions collapse the front end and its data access into a single codebase, removing glue endpoints and the type drift that comes with them.
- Streaming and Suspense boundaries mean a slow query in one part of a page does not block the rest of it from reaching the user.
- Built-in image and font optimisation, automatic code splitting and a typed metadata API deliver a large part of good Core Web Vitals and correct SEO markup as a default state rather than a pre-launch project.
- File-based routing with nested layouts makes navigation structure obvious from the repository, which is worth more than it sounds during handover and onboarding.
- The deepest ecosystem and talent pool of any React framework, so hiring, handover and finding an answer to an obscure problem are rarely bottlenecks.
Trade-offs
- The caching model is genuinely difficult. Between request-level memoisation, the data cache, the full route cache and the client-side router cache, there are several layers with different lifetimes and different invalidation rules, and the defaults have changed between major versions. Most Next.js problems we are called in to fix are caching problems wearing a disguise: a page that will not update after a content change, a page that renders dynamically and costs a fortune because one call opted it out of static generation, or a navigation that shows stale data because the router cache served it. Understanding these layers is not optional and it is not quick.
- It is framework lock-in, and honest people should call it that. Server Components, server actions, the file-based routing conventions and the framework-specific data primitives are Next.js APIs, not React ones. Moving a substantial App Router application to another framework is a rewrite of everything above the component level. That is an acceptable trade for what you get, but it should be a decision rather than a discovery.
- There is a real pull toward one hosting platform. Next.js is built by Vercel and the newest capabilities land there first and work most smoothly there. It self-hosts perfectly well in a container, but incremental regeneration across multiple instances needs a shared cache, image optimisation needs thought about where it runs and what it costs, and a few features involve more configuration off-platform. None of this is a blocker. All of it is work you should know about before you choose.
- The learning curve is steeper than plain React and the errors are less forgiving. The server and client boundary catches everyone at first: a hook in a server component, a function passed as a prop across the boundary, a library that assumes the browser exists. Engineers who are strong in React are not automatically productive here, and pretending otherwise leads to codebases where everything is marked as a client component and the framework’s main advantage has been switched off.
- The release cadence is fast and the framework has changed direction before. The move from the Pages Router to the App Router was a substantial rethink, caching defaults have shifted between versions, and APIs have gone from experimental to stable to superseded. Upgrades need planning and testing rather than a version bump on a Friday.
- Third-party library compatibility is an ongoing friction. Plenty of popular React packages assume a browser and must be isolated behind a client boundary or dynamically imported, and some are simply awkward inside a Server Components tree. This is improving steadily but it still shapes library choices in a way plain React does not.
- Dynamic rendering has an operating cost that static output does not. Every request that renders on the server is compute you pay for, and a page accidentally opted out of static generation can multiply hosting bills quietly. This is why we treat the rendering strategy as an architecture decision with a cost model attached, not as a default to accept.
- Build times grow with the number of statically generated pages. A site with a very large page count needs a deliberate strategy, generating the important routes at build and the long tail on demand, or builds become the slowest part of your delivery pipeline.
App Router and rendering architecture
The architecture of a modern Next.js application is a deliberate split between what runs on the server and what runs in the browser. Under the App Router, components are Server Components unless declared otherwise: they execute on the server, can reach directly into a database or internal service, and render to HTML that ships without their own JavaScript. A client component is a boundary, and everything imported below it becomes client code too. Placing those boundaries is the design decision that governs bundle size, time to interactive and how much of the framework’s advantage you actually receive.
The practical rule is to push the boundary down. A page that contains one interactive control should not itself be a client component; the control should be. Data should be fetched in the server component that needs it rather than lifted to a single top-level fetch and drilled downward, because fetches are deduplicated within a render and colocating them keeps components independently movable. Anything passed across the boundary must be serialisable, which is a constraint worth designing around early rather than fighting with each time it bites.
Around the boundary sits the rendering strategy, chosen per route. Pages identical for every visitor are generated at build time and served from a CDN, so a traffic spike costs cache bandwidth and nothing else. Pages that change occasionally use incremental regeneration with an explicit revalidation period or a tag that content publishing can invalidate. Pages that depend on the request, the session or personalised data render per request. We record the decision and the reason for each route family, because the difference between a page being static and dynamic is often a single call inside a component several levels down, and without a written intent nobody notices when it changes.
Data access and mutation live in the same codebase as the interface. Server Components query directly, server actions write, and where an API genuinely needs to exist for third parties or for a mobile client we build it as a deliberate product rather than as scaffolding for our own front end. That said, we keep a clean separation between the framework and the domain: business logic sits in plain, testable modules that Next.js calls into, not scattered through route files. That discipline is what keeps the application portable in the ways that matter and testable without booting a framework.
Performance and Core Web Vitals
Next.js earns its performance principally by shipping less JavaScript and by sending HTML earlier. Server Components render on the server and never send their own code, so a page can be visually complete and largely usable before the client bundle has finished arriving, which is exactly what Largest Contentful Paint measures. Streaming compounds this: HTML flushes in chunks as data resolves, so one slow query behind a Suspense boundary delays its own section rather than the whole page. We treat the client bundle as a budget with a number attached and review it as the application grows, because bundles grow through many small additions that nobody notices individually.
The built-in optimisations do a great deal of quiet work. Correctly sized, modern-format images with reserved dimensions remove the two most common causes of layout shift. Self-hosted, preloaded fonts remove a render-blocking third-party request and the flash of unstyled text. Automatic code splitting means a route loads the code that route uses. Third-party scripts load with an explicit strategy rather than blocking the main thread by default. Getting these right early makes good Core Web Vitals the resting state of the application rather than a fortnight of remediation before launch.
Beyond that it is caching, and caching is where the real numbers are. A statically generated page served from a CDN is the fastest and cheapest thing a web application can do, so the work is in identifying how much of a product can legitimately be static or incrementally regenerated, and making sure nothing accidentally opts a route out of it. We check what is actually being generated at build, watch for the calls that force dynamic rendering, and set revalidation deliberately. The last piece is measurement from real users rather than a laboratory score on a fast laptop, because field data on mid-range phones is the only performance number that corresponds to your actual visitors.
Security
The most useful security property of the App Router is that server code stays on the server. Data access, secrets, tokens and business rules live in Server Components and server actions that are never bundled for the browser, so a database credential cannot leak simply because it was referenced in a component file. That is a genuine improvement on the single-page application pattern, where everything the front end knows is readable by anyone who opens the bundle. It also creates a new discipline to hold: anything passed from a server component to a client component is data the user can read, so we are careful about handing whole records across the boundary when the interface needs three fields.
Server actions deserve particular care because they look like function calls and behave like public endpoints. Anyone can invoke one with any payload once they know it exists; the fact that your interface only calls it from a particular form is not a control. Every action we write validates its input against a schema and checks authorisation on the server, on the assumption that it will be called by something hostile rather than by our own button. The same applies to route handlers and to anything reachable by URL.
The rest is web fundamentals applied consistently. Authentication and authorisation are enforced on the server for every protected route and mutation, not by a client-side redirect a determined user can bypass. Middleware is useful for coarse routing decisions but is not a substitute for checking authorisation where the data is actually read. A content security policy and the usual security headers ship as part of the configuration rather than as a post-incident retrofit, and we make sure the policy is real rather than permissive enough to be decorative. Dependencies are locked, scanned in the pipeline and kept deliberately few, because in any JavaScript project the dependency tree is the largest attack surface you did not write.
Scalability
The cheapest request is the one your servers never see, and Next.js is built to lean on that. Statically generated and incrementally regenerated pages are served from a CDN, so a launch, a campaign or an unexpected mention costs cache bandwidth rather than a scramble for capacity. For the read-heavy public surface of most products, that alone is the scaling story, and it is why the rendering strategy is a capacity decision as much as a performance one.
Where rendering genuinely must happen per request, the server layer is stateless and scales horizontally: more container replicas behind a load balancer, or serverless functions that scale with demand and cost nothing idle. Session and shared state live in the database or in Redis rather than in a process, so any instance can serve any request. The usual real bottleneck at that point is not Next.js at all, it is the database behind it, which is why we pay attention to query patterns, connection pooling and caching at the data layer as part of the same design rather than as a separate exercise.
Self-hosting at scale has specifics worth stating plainly. Incremental regeneration across several instances needs a shared cache handler, or each instance keeps its own idea of what is current and users see different versions depending on which one they hit. Image optimisation is compute, and where it runs affects both latency and cost. Build times need managing once the statically generated page count is large, typically by generating the important routes at build and letting the long tail render on demand and then cache. None of this is exotic, but all of it is the difference between a deployment that scales and one that surprises you. We design it against where you actually intend to host, and we are candid that some of it is smoother on the platform the framework’s authors run.
Next.js integrations & ecosystem
The technologies we most often pair with it. Each links to how we work with it.
How we build Next.js applications
We start with the rendering plan, because the whole application is shaped by it. Route family by route family we decide what is static, what regenerates and on what trigger, what renders per request and why, and where the server and client boundaries sit. We write it down. That document is the thing that stops a page silently becoming dynamic six months later because someone read a header inside a component, and it is the thing that makes the hosting cost predictable rather than emergent.
TypeScript is on from the first commit and it is not negotiable on a framework where the same types flow from database query to server component to client component. The full-stack shape of Next.js is precisely where a shared type surface pays best: change a field and the compiler shows you every render, every action and every form that depended on it, rather than letting the mismatch appear as an undefined value in production.
Then it is short cycles against working software, deployed to a preview environment on every change so you can look at real pages on a real URL instead of reviewing a description of them. We wire in Core Web Vitals measurement from real users, error tracking and structured logging early, so performance and production behaviour are visible while the application is small enough to fix cheaply.
We are deliberately conservative about new framework features. Next.js ships quickly and not everything that arrives is ready for a system somebody has to run for the next three years. We use the stable, proven parts, keep an eye on what is stabilising, and let the bleeding edge prove itself on somebody else’s deadline. Where we do adopt something new, it is because it removes complexity rather than because it is new. That posture is also why our upgrade advice tends to be planned and tested rather than eager.
The service behind it
Delivered throughCustom Software DevelopmentWhat we build with Next.js
The disciplines this technology most often shows up in, from a first build to taking over and stabilising an existing one.
How we deliver
- 01
Discover
We map the system, the constraints and the business it serves, including the parts nobody documented.
Architecture brief
- 02
Architect
Decisions get made, written down and defended before a line of production code exists.
Decision records
- 03
Build
Short cycles against working software. You see progress in the product, not in a status deck.
Shipping increments
- 04
Operate
Monitoring, incident response and iteration. The system is alive, so the engagement is too.
Runbooks & SLOs
Weighing up Next.js?
A short call with engineers who build in it and operate the result. If Next.js is the wrong tool for what you are doing, we would rather tell you now than bill you later.
Industries we use Next.js in
Domain knowledge changes what gets built. A few of the sectors we know before the first meeting.
Also in Frontend
Why teams choose us for Next.js
We operate what we build
We stay on for the caching edge cases, the regeneration that did not fire, and the incident at three in the morning. That is why we design the rendering and deployment for production reality rather than for a fast demo on a fast laptop.
The caching model, understood and written down
Most Next.js problems we are asked to fix are caching problems. We treat the strategy as an explicit, documented design decision per route rather than something that emerges from defaults, which is the difference between an application you can reason about and one that surprises you after a content change.
Deployable where you want it
We build for the hosting you actually want, including a container on your own infrastructure, and we are upfront about which framework features involve extra work off the vendor platform. You make that decision with the facts rather than discovering them during a migration.
Senior, end to end
The engineers who decide your architecture write it. There is no handover to a junior team after the sale, on a framework where the early decisions about boundaries, rendering and caching are the ones that determine everything afterwards.
Typical timeline
- 01
Discovery
One to two weeks mapping the routes, deciding the rendering and caching strategy per route family, agreeing the SEO and performance targets, and confirming the deployment target, because self-hosting and platform hosting shape some decisions differently.
- 02
Architecture and foundations
About a week setting the App Router structure, the server and client boundaries, the data access approach, TypeScript configuration, the metadata and sitemap approach, and preview deployments so every change is reviewable on a real URL.
- 03
Build
Short cycles against working software, with a genuinely production-ready surface live early and the rest following feature by feature. Core Web Vitals and bundle size are watched during the build rather than measured at the end.
- 04
Hardening
Verifying which routes are actually static, confirming revalidation behaves as designed, tightening security headers and the content security policy, load testing anything that renders per request, and closing accessibility gaps.
- 05
Launch and operate
Going live with real-user monitoring, error tracking and logging in place, then tuning caching and performance as real traffic and search behaviour arrive, and supporting upgrades on a planned cadence.
How pricing works
- Engagements normally begin with a short paid discovery. We map the routes, agree the rendering and caching strategy, pin down the SEO and performance targets, and look at the data behind the pages. That produces an architecture and an estimate grounded in your product. It is chargeable because the analysis is the valuable part, and because an estimate produced without it is a guess with a decimal point.
- Fixed-scope delivery suits a defined build: a marketing site with a defined page set, a specific application, a migration from an existing React codebase whose current state we have assessed. We quote once the scope is genuinely understood rather than quoting early and renegotiating later.
- Monthly senior engagement suits products that keep evolving, where you want continuity, accumulated context and the same engineers who built the thing continuing to build it, rather than a fixed deliverable and a handover.
- Focused work is priced by the assessment: a Core Web Vitals investigation, a caching and rendering audit for an application behaving unpredictably, a hosting cost review where dynamic rendering has crept in, or an upgrade across a major version.
- Third-party costs are billed to your own accounts, unmarked-up. Hosting, CDN, a headless CMS, error tracking, analytics and any commercial licences are contracts you hold at the price the vendor charges. We will recommend what the product needs and tell you honestly where the platform choice affects the bill, and we take no margin on anyone else’s software.
Hire Next.js engineers
Need Next.js capacity on your own team? We embed named senior engineers into your existing team (reporting to your leads, working in your rituals), so you add capacity without a hiring cycle.
Hire Next.js engineersCommon questions
Why choose Next.js over plain React?
Server rendering, almost always. A plain React application ships a near-empty HTML document and constructs the page in the browser, which is slow on first load and gives search engines and social previews nothing to read. Next.js renders on the server, so pages arrive as finished HTML that is fast and indexable while remaining fully interactive where it matters. The secondary reasons are that routing, data fetching, mutations, image handling and metadata come with the framework rather than as a shelf of libraries you assembled and now maintain. If your product is internal, behind a login and has no SEO concern, plain React with a client-side router is simpler and we will say so.
What is the difference between static generation, incremental regeneration and server rendering, and which do we need?
Static generation builds a page once at deploy time and serves it from a CDN, which is ideal for anything identical for every visitor. Incremental static regeneration does the same but rebuilds the page in the background, either on a schedule or when you invalidate a tag, so content stays fresh without a redeploy. Server rendering builds the page per request, which you need for anything personalised or dependent on the session. Almost every real product uses a mixture, and deciding which applies to each route family is one of the main things discovery is for, because it sets both your speed and your hosting cost.
Why does our Next.js page not update when we change the content?
This is the most common question we get, and the answer is nearly always the caching model. The page may be statically generated with no revalidation configured, so it is serving what was built at deploy time. The data may be sitting in the data cache with a longer lifetime than you expected. The client-side router cache may be serving a recently visited version on navigation even though a fresh request would be current. Or a revalidation tag exists but nothing is actually triggering it when your CMS publishes. Diagnosing it means working out which layer is holding the old version, which is quick when you know the layers and maddening when you do not.
Does using Next.js lock us into hosting on Vercel?
No, but the concern is fair and we would rather address it directly. Vercel builds Next.js, new features land there first and the platform integration is genuinely smooth. The framework also produces a standalone build that runs in a container on any cloud or your own servers, which we do regularly. Self-hosting has specifics: incremental regeneration across multiple instances needs a shared cache handler, image optimisation needs a decision about where it runs, and a few features take more configuration. We design the deployment around where you want to host and tell you plainly what is harder off-platform, so the choice is yours and made with the facts.
Can you migrate our existing React application to Next.js?
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons teams come to us. We assess the current codebase first, looking at routing, data fetching, state management and specifically where client-only rendering is costing you, then migrate incrementally rather than rewriting. Routes move into the App Router in priority order, data fetching moves into Server Components, and hand-assembled libraries are replaced by framework built-ins where that genuinely simplifies things. The typical payoff is faster first loads, pages that are actually indexable, and noticeably less plumbing to maintain. The typical risk is doing it all at once, which is why we do not.
Is Next.js overkill for a simple website?
Often, yes, and we will tell you when it is. For a handful of static pages with no application behind them, a static site generator or plain HTML is lighter, cheaper to run, has no build tooling to keep current and is simpler for whoever inherits it. Next.js earns its complexity when you need real interactivity, server-rendered search visibility and a mixture of rendering strategies in one product. Choosing the tool that fits the job rather than the one that is fashionable is part of what you are hiring us for.
How hard is the App Router for a team that knows React?
Harder than most expect, and the difficulty is conceptual rather than syntactic. The server and client boundary is the sticking point: hooks and browser APIs do not exist in server components, values crossing the boundary must be serialisable, and some familiar libraries assume a browser. Teams that are struggling typically respond by marking everything as a client component, which makes the errors stop and switches off the framework’s main advantage at the same time. Expect a genuine ramp-up of weeks, not days, and expect it to be worth it. Where we build for a team that will take the codebase over, we make the boundary conventions explicit and document them.
How do you keep hosting costs under control?
By deciding rendering deliberately and then verifying it. Static and incrementally regenerated pages are served from cache and cost almost nothing per request, while dynamic rendering is compute you pay for on every visit. Costs usually creep because a route that was designed to be static quietly became dynamic, often through a single call inside a nested component that reads request data. We check what the build actually generates, treat an unexpected dynamic route as a defect rather than a detail, and keep the rendering intent documented so the next change is a decision rather than an accident.
Building on Next.js?
Tell us what you are building and where it is stuck. A senior engineer reads it and gives you an honest read on whether Next.js is the right fit for the problem, or what we would reach for instead.
- 01A senior engineer reads it. Not a form queue, and not an account manager.
- 02We reply either with questions or with a straight answer that we are not the right fit.
- 03If it looks like a fit, a technical call with the person who would actually run the delivery.
- 04Then scope, effort and risk in writing, before anyone signs anything.