Frontend
Next.js
We build Next.js applications for the products that have to feel like software and rank like a page at the same time — choosing server, static or client rendering route by route, and honest about when you do not need the framework at all.
Overview
Next.js is the production framework for React. React on its own is a rendering library: it gives you a component model and leaves routing, data fetching, server rendering and performance to you. Next.js supplies exactly those missing pieces, and it does so with an opinion about where each of them belongs — which is why it has become the default way to ship a serious React application rather than a science project held together with a dozen hand-picked libraries.
The heart of the modern framework is the App Router and React Server Components. Most of your components render on the server, close to the data, and send finished HTML to the browser with no JavaScript attached; only the genuinely interactive parts — the ones marked with a client boundary — ship JS and hydrate. On top of that sits a rendering menu: static generation at build time, server rendering per request, incremental static regeneration that rebuilds a page in the background after a set interval, and plain client rendering. The framework lets you choose per route, so the marketing page and the live dashboard can live in the same codebase and each render the way it should.
We reach for Next.js when a product has to do two things that normally pull against each other: feel like an application and perform and rank like a static page. That is most public-facing web software — a SaaS marketing site with a logged-in product behind it, a content platform, a storefront, a booking flow. We are also blunt about the other side of the trade: Next.js is a large, fast-moving framework with a real learning curve and a gravitational pull toward one hosting vendor, and for a genuinely simple site there are lighter tools that will not fight you.
Best for — Public-facing web products that must be fast, interactive and search-visible at the same time — where SEO from server rendering is the deciding factor over plain React.
Why teams choose Next.js
SEO from server rendering
Pages arrive as finished HTML, so search engines and social previews get real content — the single biggest reason to pick Next.js over a plain React SPA.
Render where it fits
Static, server, incremental or client rendering chosen per route, so each page is as fast as it can be without rewriting the app.
One full-stack framework
Routing, data fetching, server actions, image and font optimisation are built in, so you assemble and maintain far less plumbing.
Why businesses choose Next.js
- It solves the one thing plain React cannot do on its own: server-rendered HTML that search engines and social previews can read, without giving up a rich, interactive front end.
- It puts the rendering decision in your hands per route, so a spike in traffic to a static marketing page and a personalised dashboard behind a login can coexist and each perform correctly.
- React Server Components and server actions let one team own the UI and its data fetching in a single codebase, removing an entire tier of hand-written API that exists only to feed the front end.
- It is the mainstream React framework with the deepest ecosystem and talent pool, so hiring, handover and the answer to almost any problem are never a bottleneck.
What we build with Next.js
The capabilities this technology is genuinely strong at — and what we most often build with it.
App Router & Server Components
Components render on the server by default and ship no client JavaScript unless a piece is genuinely interactive, so pages arrive light and fast.
Rendering per route
Static generation, server rendering, incremental static regeneration and client rendering chosen page by page — the marketing site and the app in one codebase.
File-based routing & layouts
The folder structure is the route map, with nested layouts, loading and error states, so navigation and page composition are declarative rather than wired up by hand.
Server actions
Form submissions and mutations run as server functions called straight from a component — no bespoke API endpoint just to move data from a form to the database.
Streaming & edge runtime
Pages stream to the browser in chunks as data resolves, and latency-sensitive logic runs at the edge close to the user rather than in a single region.
Image & font optimisation
Built-in components serve correctly sized, modern-format images and self-hosted fonts with no layout shift, which is real Core Web Vitals score for free.
Use cases
SaaS marketing + product
A statically rendered, fast-ranking marketing site and a server-rendered logged-in application living in one Next.js codebase and deployment.
Content & publishing platforms
Blogs, docs and editorial sites that use static generation and incremental regeneration to serve thousands of pages fast and keep them fresh from a CMS.
E-commerce storefronts
Product and category pages that must rank in search and load instantly, with per-request rendering for cart, pricing and personalised content.
React SPA rescue
Migrating an existing client-only React app to Next.js to fix slow first loads, poor SEO and the sprawl of hand-assembled routing and data-fetching libraries.
When Next.js is the right choice
- Right when you need an app-like front end that also has to rank in search — server rendering gives crawlers finished HTML rather than an empty shell
- Right when first-load performance and SEO are both non-negotiable, and you want static, server and client rendering available per route in one codebase
- Right when you want the front end and its data fetching in one full-stack framework — server components and server actions cut out a whole tier of glue API
- Wrong for a brochure site of a few static pages, where a static-site generator or plain HTML is lighter and simpler to run
- Wrong for a purely internal tool behind a login with no SEO concern, where plain React (or Vite) avoids the server-component learning curve for no lost benefit
Next.js: pros and cons
Strengths
- Best-in-class balance of interactivity and first-load performance, with server rendering that makes pages genuinely indexable
- React Server Components and server actions collapse the front end and its data layer into one framework, removing glue code
- Rendering is chosen per route — static, server, ISR or client — so performance is tuned page by page, not app-wide
- Batteries included: file-based routing, streaming, edge runtime, and automatic image and font optimisation ship in the box
Trade-offs
- Steeper learning curve than plain React — the server/client component boundary and caching model take real time to internalise
- A fast release cadence: major shifts like the App Router mean the framework you learn this year is not quite the one you used last year
- Strong gravitational pull toward Vercel hosting; it runs elsewhere, but some features are smoothest on that platform, which is a lock-in risk to weigh
- Genuine overkill for a small static site, where its structure and build tooling add weight and moving parts for little gain
App Router & rendering architecture
The architecture of a modern Next.js app is a deliberate split between server and client. Under the App Router, components are Server Components by default: they run on the server, can reach directly into the database or an API, and render to HTML that ships without any component JavaScript attached. Interactivity is opt-in — a component marked as a client component is the boundary where JavaScript is sent and hydration happens. Getting that boundary in the right place is the central design decision, because it is what determines how much JavaScript a user downloads and how fast the page becomes interactive.
Around that boundary sits the rendering strategy, and we choose it per route rather than for the app as a whole. Pages that are the same for everyone are statically generated at build time and served from a CDN. Pages that change slowly use incremental static regeneration, serving a cached page and rebuilding it in the background on a schedule. Pages that are personalised or depend on the request render on the server per request. Truly interactive, private views can render on the client. Data fetching lives in the server components themselves, and mutations run through server actions, so there is no separate API tier existing purely to shuttle data to the front end. The result is an architecture where each page pays only for the rendering it actually needs.
Performance & Core Web Vitals
Next.js earns its performance mainly by sending less JavaScript. Because Server Components render to HTML on the server and never ship their own code, a page is meaningful and often interactive before much JS has downloaded — which is exactly what Largest Contentful Paint and Interaction to Next Paint measure. Streaming reinforces this: the framework flushes HTML to the browser in chunks as data resolves, so a slow query in one section does not hold up the rest of the page. We treat the client bundle as a budget, keep the server/client boundary tight, and measure real field data rather than trusting a lab score.
The built-in optimisations do a lot of quiet work here. The image component serves correctly sized, modern-format images with reserved space so nothing shifts as they load; the font system self-hosts and preloads fonts to kill the flash of unstyled text; automatic code splitting means a route only loads the JavaScript it uses. Layered on top we add caching at the right level — static where possible, ISR where content changes slowly, request-time only where it must be — and the edge runtime for logic that benefits from running close to the user. The point is to make good Core Web Vitals the default state of the app, not a retrofit before launch.
Security
The most useful security property of the App Router is that server code stays on the server. Data fetching, secrets and business logic live in Server Components and server actions that never cross into the client bundle, so an API key or a query cannot leak simply because it was in a component. We are disciplined about the boundary: anything passed to a client component is data a user can see, and server actions are treated as public endpoints — every one validates and authorises its input rather than trusting that the UI only calls it the intended way.
Beyond the framework it is the web fundamentals done consistently. Authentication and authorisation are enforced on the server for every protected route and mutation, not hidden behind a client-side redirect that a determined user can skip; inputs are validated with a schema at the trust boundary; and the dependency tree — often the largest attack surface in any JavaScript project — is locked, scanned in the pipeline and kept lean. Security headers and a content security policy ship as part of the config, not as an afterthought once something goes wrong.
Scalability
The cheapest way to scale is to not compute per request at all, and Next.js leans into that. Statically generated and incrementally regenerated pages are served from a CDN, so a traffic spike to your most-visited pages is absorbed by cache infrastructure rather than by your servers — a launch or a viral moment costs cache bandwidth, not a scramble for capacity. That alone handles the read-heavy public surface of most products.
Where rendering genuinely has to happen per request, the server layer is stateless and scales horizontally: more replicas behind a load balancer, or serverless and edge functions that scale with demand and cost nothing when idle. Session and shared state live in the database or Redis, not in a process, so any instance can serve any request. We are candid that some of this scales most smoothly on Vercel, which the framework is built by; it runs perfectly well on a container platform or another cloud, and we will design the deployment around where you actually want to host rather than assuming the default.
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 it is the decision the whole app is shaped by. Route by route we decide what is static, what regenerates, what renders per request and what is client-only, and where each server/client boundary sits — those choices drive performance, cost and SEO, and they are far cheaper to get right at the start than to unpick later. TypeScript is on from the first commit; across a full-stack framework where the same types can flow from database to server component to client, it removes a whole category of bugs for free.
From there it is short cycles against working software, deployed to a preview environment on every change so the team and the client can see and feel real pages rather than review a description of them. We wire in Core Web Vitals measurement, error tracking and structured logging from the start, so performance and production behaviour are visible as the app grows rather than discovered under load. And we deliberately avoid over-adopting the newest framework feature the week it ships — we use the stable, proven parts of Next.js and let the bleeding edge prove itself on someone else’s deadline.
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
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 bugs, the regeneration edge cases and the 3am incident — so we design the rendering and deployment for production, not just a fast demo.
The right rendering, honestly chosen
We pick static, server, ISR or client per route on the merits, and we will tell you when Next.js is more than your site needs rather than sell you the framework anyway.
Senior, end to end
The engineers who decide your architecture are the ones who write it — no junior hand-off after the sale, on a framework where the early decisions are the ones that matter most.
Typical timeline
- 01
Discovery
1–2 weeks to map the routes, decide the rendering strategy per surface, and pin down the SEO and performance targets.
- 02
Architecture
1 week to set the App Router structure, server/client boundaries, data-fetching approach and deployment target.
- 03
Build
Short cycles against working software on preview deployments; a first production-ready surface live in weeks.
- 04
Optimise & operate
Core Web Vitals tuning, caching, observability and iteration as real users and search traffic arrive.
How pricing works
- We do not publish a day rate for Next.js work, because the cost is driven by the product, not the framework. A statically generated content site is a very different engagement from a full-stack application with authentication, a database and a personalised, server-rendered app behind the login.
- The drivers we price against are the number and complexity of rendered surfaces, how much of the app is genuinely interactive versus static content, the data and integration work behind it, and whether we are building fresh or migrating an existing React SPA. A migration in particular is scoped against the state of the current codebase, which we assess before quoting.
- Most engagements begin with a short paid discovery phase, so the estimate reflects your real rendering, data and SEO requirements rather than an average pulled from thin air.
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?
The deciding factor is almost always server rendering. A plain React SPA ships an empty HTML shell and builds 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 staying just as interactive where it matters. If your app is internal, behind a login and has no SEO concern, plain React is often the simpler, lighter choice — and we will say so.
Can you migrate our existing React app to Next.js?
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons teams come to us. We assess the current codebase first — routing, data fetching, state and where the client-only rendering is hurting you — then migrate incrementally rather than rewriting from scratch: moving routes into the App Router, shifting data fetching to Server Components, and converting hand-assembled libraries to the framework’s built-ins. The usual payoff is faster first loads, real SEO and far less plumbing to maintain.
What is the difference between SSR, SSG and ISR, and which do we need?
Static generation (SSG) builds a page once at deploy time and serves it from a CDN — ideal for content that is the same for everyone. Incremental static regeneration (ISR) does the same but rebuilds the page in the background on a schedule, so it stays fresh without a full redeploy. Server rendering (SSR) builds the page per request, which you need for anything personalised or request-dependent. Most real apps use a mix, and choosing the right one per route is a core part of what we do in discovery.
Does using Next.js lock us into hosting on Vercel?
No, though it is a fair concern. Vercel builds Next.js, and some features are smoothest on their platform, which creates a genuine pull in that direction. But Next.js runs perfectly well in a Docker container on any cloud, on AWS, or on your own infrastructure. We design the deployment around where you actually want to host and are explicit about any feature that would be harder off Vercel, so the decision is yours and made with eyes open.
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 even plain HTML is lighter, cheaper to run and simpler to hand over. Next.js earns its complexity when you need real interactivity, server-rendered SEO and a mix 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.
Building on Next.js?
A technical conversation with the engineers who would do the work. If we are not the right fit, we will say so on the call.