What is Next.js and what are its top alternatives?
Next.js is a popular React framework used for building server-rendered applications. Its key features include server-side rendering, static site generation, automatic code splitting, fast refresh, and TypeScript support. However, some limitations of Next.js include a steeper learning curve, potential performance issues with large-scale applications, and limited flexibility for customization.
- Gatsby: Gatsby is a static site generator that uses React for building fast websites and web applications. Key features include performance optimization, SEO-friendly, and a wide range of plugins. Pros: Excellent performance, large ecosystem of plugins. Cons: Limited dynamic content support.
- Nuxt.js: Nuxt.js is a Vue.js framework for building server-side rendered applications. Key features include automatic code splitting, server-side rendering, and static site generation. Pros: Easy to get started, powerful routing system. Cons: Limited TypeScript support.
- VuePress: VuePress is a static site generator specifically designed for Vue.js applications. It offers features like Markdown-based content, theming support, and built-in SEO optimization. Pros: Easy documentation setup, great performance. Cons: Limited customization options.
- Sapper: Sapper is a framework for building server-rendered web applications using Svelte. It provides features like server-side rendering, code splitting, and automatic prefetching. Pros: Fast performance, seamless integration with Svelte. Cons: Smaller community compared to other frameworks.
- Angular Universal: Angular Universal is a framework for building server-side rendered Angular applications. It offers features like server-side rendering, pre-rendering, and state transfer. Pros: Seamless integration with Angular, improved SEO. Cons: Steeper learning curve compared to other frameworks.
- Gridsome: Gridsome is a Vue.js framework for building static websites with GraphQL support. Key features include automatic page generation, data sourcing from various CMSs, and performance optimization. Pros: Great performance, flexible data sourcing options. Cons: Limited server-side rendering capabilities.
- SvelteKit: SvelteKit is a framework for building web applications using Svelte. It offers features like server-side rendering, file-based routing, and preloading. Pros: Easy to get started, excellent performance. Cons: Still in beta stage, may have some bugs or limitations.
- Scully: Scully is a static site generator for Angular applications that enables server-side rendering for better performance and SEO optimization. Key features include incremental static site generation, lazy loading, and Angular integration. Pros: Improved performance, SEO benefits. Cons: Limited community support compared to other frameworks.
- Hugo: Hugo is a static site generator written in Go that is known for its speed and flexibility. It offers features like fast rendering, shortcodes, and multilingual support. Pros: Blazing fast performance, flexibility in customization. Cons: Limited dynamic content handling, steep learning curve for beginners.
- Scully: Scully is a static site generator for Angular applications that enables server-side rendering for better performance and SEO optimization. Key features include incremental static site generation, lazy loading, and Angular integration. Pros: Improved performance, SEO benefits. Cons: Limited community support compared to other frameworks.
Top Alternatives to Next.js
- Create React App
Create React apps with no build configuration.
- Gatsby
Gatsby lets you build blazing fast sites with your data, whatever the source. Liberate your sites from legacy CMSs and fly into the future. ...
- Hexo
Hexo is a fast, simple and powerful blog framework. It parses your posts with Markdown or other render engine and generates static files with the beautiful theme. All of these just take seconds. ...
- LoopBack
A highly-extensible, open-source Node.js framework that enables you to create dynamic end-to-end REST APIs with little or no coding. Connect to multiple data sources, write business logic in Node.js, glue on top of your existing services and data, connect using JS, iOS & Android SDKs. ...
- React
Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project. ...
- Angular Universal
It executes on the server, generating static application pages that later get bootstrapped on the client. This means that the application generally renders more quickly, giving users a chance to view the application layout before it becomes fully interactive. ...
- React Router
React Router is a complete routing solution designed specifically for React.js. It painlessly synchronizes the components of your application with the URL, with first-class support for nesting, transitions, and server side rendering. ...
- Hugo
Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. It is optimized for speed, easy use and configurability. Hugo takes a directory with content and templates and renders them into a full html website. Hugo makes use of markdown files with front matter for meta data. ...
Next.js alternatives & related posts
- No config, easy to use2
- Maintained by React core team2
- No SSR1
related Create React App posts
I picked up an idea to develop and it was no brainer I had to go with React for the frontend. I was faced with challenges when it came to what component framework to use. I had worked extensively with Material-UI but I needed something different that would offer me wider range of well customized components (I became pretty slow at styling). I brought in Evergreen after several sampling and reads online but again, after several prototype development against Evergreen—since I was using TypeScript and I had to import custom Type, it felt exhaustive. After I validated Evergreen with the designs of the idea I was developing, I also noticed I might have to do a lot of styling. I later stumbled on Material Kit, the one specifically made for React . It was promising with beautifully crafted components, most of which fits into the designs pages I had on ground.
A major problem of Material Kit for me is it isn't written in TypeScript and there isn't any plans to support its TypeScript version. I rolled up my sleeve and started converting their components to TypeScript and if you'll ask me, I am still on it.
In summary, I used the Create React App with TypeScript support and I am spending some time converting Material Kit to TypeScript before I start developing against it. All of these components are going to be hosted on Bit.
If you feel I am crazy or I have gotten something wrong, I'll be willing to listen to your opinion. Also, if you want to have a share of whatever TypeScript version of Material Kit I end up coming up with, let me know.
I'm working as one of the engineering leads in RunaHR. As our platform is a Saas, we thought It'd be good to have an API (We chose Ruby and Rails for this) and a SPA (built with React and Redux ) connected. We started the SPA with Create React App since It's pretty easy to start.
We use Jest as the testing framework and react-testing-library to test React components. In Rails we make tests using RSpec.
Our main database is PostgreSQL, but we also use MongoDB to store some type of data. We started to use Redis for cache and other time sensitive operations.
We have a couple of extra projects: One is an Employee app built with React Native and the other is an internal back office dashboard built with Next.js for the client and Python in the backend side.
Since we have different frontend apps we have found useful to have Bit to document visual components and utils in JavaScript.
Gatsby
- Generated websites are super fast28
- Fast16
- GraphQL15
- Progressive Web Apps generation10
- Easy to connect with lots of CMS via official plugins9
- Reusable components (React)9
- Allows to use markdown files as articles7
- Static-sites5
- All the benefits of a static website + React+GraphQL5
- Images5
- List of starters as base for new project4
- Easy to connect with Drupal via official plugin3
- Open source3
- Gitlab pages integration1
- Incremental Build1
- No ssr7
- Documentation isn't complete.4
- Very slow builds3
- Flash of unstyled content issues2
- For-profit2
- Slow builds2
- Plugin driven development1
- Difficult maintenance1
- Problematic between develop and build commands1
- Too many dependencies1
- Difficult debugging1
related Gatsby posts
I was building a personal project that I needed to store items in a real time database. I am more comfortable with my Frontend skills than my backend so I didn't want to spend time building out anything in Ruby or Go.
I stumbled on Firebase by #Google, and it was really all I needed. It had realtime data, an area for storing file uploads and best of all for the amount of data I needed it was free!
I built out my application using tools I was familiar with, React for the framework, Redux.js to manage my state across components, and styled-components for the styling.
Now as this was a project I was just working on in my free time for fun I didn't really want to pay for hosting. I did some research and I found Netlify. I had actually seen them at #ReactRally the year before and deployed a Gatsby site to Netlify already.
Netlify was very easy to setup and link to my GitHub account you select a repo and pretty much with very little configuration you have a live site that will deploy every time you push to master.
With the selection of these tools I was able to build out my application, connect it to a realtime database, and deploy to a live environment all with $0 spent.
If you're looking to build out a small app I suggest giving these tools a go as you can get your idea out into the real world for absolutely no cost.
A few months ago we decided to move our whole static website (www.algolia.com) to a new stack. At the time we were using a website generator called Middleman, written in Ruby. As a team of only front-end developers we didn't feel very comfortable with the language itself, and the time it took to build was not satisfying. We decided to move to Gatsby to take advantage of its use of React , as well as its incredibly high performances in terms of build and page rendering.
- Ease of deployment18
- Uses NodeJS and npm13
- Easy GitHub Pages publishing12
- Powerful templating10
- Useful tools and plugins7
- Easy intergrating with js4
- Open source3
- Blazing Fast3
related Hexo posts
- Need a nodejs ReST-API, DB, AAA, Swagger? Then loopback11
- Easy Database Migration9
- Code generator6
- The future of API's4
- GraphQL2
- Typescript1
- Community is slow7
- Backward compatibility1
related LoopBack posts
We undertook the task of building a manufacturing ERP for small branded manufacturers. We needed to build a lot, fast with a small team, and have clear focus on product delivery. We chose JavaScript / Node.js ( React + LoopBack full stack) , Heroku and Heroku Postgres (also Heroku Redis ) . This decision has guided us to picking other key technologies. It has granted us high pace of product delivery and service availability while operating with a small team.
We have an existing (Apis only) Rails backend, that by default follows the MVC pattern, (at peaks of 700 requests a second). I am tasked with making the same (read-heavy) application in any JavaScript framework. I was advised to follow the MVC structure. So I am considering these 3 ( Sails.js, LoopBack, NestJS). I get that sails is closest to rails, but that's not particularly a priority.
- Components832
- Virtual dom673
- Performance578
- Simplicity508
- Composable442
- Data flow186
- Declarative166
- Isn't an mvc framework128
- Reactive updates120
- Explicit app state115
- JSX50
- Learn once, write everywhere29
- Easy to Use22
- Uni-directional data flow21
- Works great with Flux Architecture17
- Great perfomance11
- Javascript10
- Built by Facebook9
- TypeScript support8
- Server Side Rendering6
- Speed6
- Feels like the 90s5
- Excellent Documentation5
- Props5
- Functional5
- Easy as Lego5
- Closer to standard JavaScript and HTML than others5
- Cross-platform5
- Easy to start5
- Hooks5
- Awesome5
- Scalable5
- Super easy4
- Allows creating single page applications4
- Server side views4
- Sdfsdfsdf4
- Start simple4
- Strong Community4
- Fancy third party tools4
- Scales super well4
- Has arrow functions3
- Beautiful and Neat Component Management3
- Just the View of MVC3
- Simple, easy to reason about and makes you productive3
- Fast evolving3
- SSR3
- Great migration pathway for older systems3
- Rich ecosystem3
- Simple3
- Has functional components3
- Every decision architecture wise makes sense3
- Very gentle learning curve3
- Split your UI into components with one true state2
- Image upload2
- Permissively-licensed2
- Fragments2
- Sharable2
- Recharts2
- HTML-like2
- React hooks1
- Datatables1
- Requires discipline to keep architecture organized41
- No predefined way to structure your app30
- Need to be familiar with lots of third party packages29
- JSX13
- Not enterprise friendly10
- One-way binding only6
- State consistency with backend neglected3
- Bad Documentation3
- Error boundary is needed2
- Paradigms change too fast2
related React posts
I was building a personal project that I needed to store items in a real time database. I am more comfortable with my Frontend skills than my backend so I didn't want to spend time building out anything in Ruby or Go.
I stumbled on Firebase by #Google, and it was really all I needed. It had realtime data, an area for storing file uploads and best of all for the amount of data I needed it was free!
I built out my application using tools I was familiar with, React for the framework, Redux.js to manage my state across components, and styled-components for the styling.
Now as this was a project I was just working on in my free time for fun I didn't really want to pay for hosting. I did some research and I found Netlify. I had actually seen them at #ReactRally the year before and deployed a Gatsby site to Netlify already.
Netlify was very easy to setup and link to my GitHub account you select a repo and pretty much with very little configuration you have a live site that will deploy every time you push to master.
With the selection of these tools I was able to build out my application, connect it to a realtime database, and deploy to a live environment all with $0 spent.
If you're looking to build out a small app I suggest giving these tools a go as you can get your idea out into the real world for absolutely no cost.
Your tech stack is solid for building a real-time messaging project.
React and React Native are excellent choices for the frontend, especially if you want to have both web and mobile versions of your application share code.
ExpressJS is an unopinionated framework that affords you the flexibility to use it's features at your term, which is a good start. However, I would recommend you explore Sails.js as well. Sails.js is built on top of Express.js and it provides additional features out of the box, especially the Websocket integration that your project requires.
Don't forget to set up Graphql codegen, this would improve your dev experience (Add Typescript, if you can too).
I don't know much about databases but you might want to consider using NO-SQL. I used Firebase real-time db and aws dynamo db on a few of my personal projects and I love they're easy to work with and offer more flexibility for a chat application.
- Typescript7
- Complete Framework5
- Server rendering and code splitting5
- Static site generator4
- Dynamic rendering4
- Same existing code base for both SPA and SSR4
- Easy setup3
- SEO3
- Well documented1
related Angular Universal posts
- Because there's not alternative14
related React Router posts
I'm planning to create a web application and also a mobile application to provide a very good shopping experience to the end customers. Shortly, my application will be aggregate the product details from difference sources and giving a clear picture to the user that when and where to buy that product with best in Quality and cost.
I have planned to develop this in many milestones for adding N number of features and I have picked my first part to complete the core part (aggregate the product details from different sources).
As per my work experience and knowledge, I have chosen the followings stacks to this mission.
UI: I would like to develop this application using React, React Router and React Native since I'm a little bit familiar on this and also most importantly these will help on developing both web and mobile apps. In addition, I'm gonna use the stacks JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Mobile, Bootstrap wherever required.
Service: I have planned to use Java as the main business layer language as I have 7+ years of experience on this I believe I can do better work using Java than other languages. In addition, I'm thinking to use the stacks Node.js.
Database and ORM: I'm gonna pick MySQL as DB and Hibernate as ORM since I have a piece of good knowledge and also work experience on this combination.
Search Engine: I need to deal with a large amount of product data and it's in-detailed info to provide enough details to end user at the same time I need to focus on the performance area too. so I have decided to use Solr as a search engine for product search and suggestions. In addition, I'm thinking to replace Solr by Elasticsearch once explored/reviewed enough about Elasticsearch.
Host: As of now, my plan to complete the application with decent features first and deploy it in a free hosting environment like Docker and Heroku and then once it is stable then I have planned to use the AWS products Amazon S3, EC2, Amazon RDS and Amazon Route 53. I'm not sure about Microsoft Azure that what is the specialty in it than Heroku and Amazon EC2 Container Service. Anyhow, I will do explore these once again and pick the best suite one for my requirement once I reached this level.
Build and Repositories: I have decided to choose Apache Maven and Git as these are my favorites and also so popular on respectively build and repositories.
Additional Utilities :) - I would like to choose Codacy for code review as their Startup plan will be very helpful to this application. I'm already experienced with Google CheckStyle and SonarQube even I'm looking something on Codacy.
Happy Coding! Suggestions are welcome! :)
Thanks, Ganesa
I just finished tweaking styles details of my hobby project MovieGeeks (https://moviegeeks.co/): The minimalist Online Movie Catalog
This time I want to share my thoughts on the Tech-Stack I decided to use on the Frontend: React, React Router, Material-UI and React-Apollo:
React is by far the Front-End "framework" with the biggest community. Some of the newest features like Suspense and Hooks makes it even more awesome and gives you even more power to write clean UI's
Material UI is a very solid and stable set of react components that not only look good, but also are easy to use and customize. This was my first time using this library and I am very happy with the result
React-Apollo in my opinion is the best GraphQL client for a React application. Easy to use and understand and it gives you awesome features out of the box like cache. With libraries like react-apollo-hooks you can even use it with the hooks api which makes the code cleaner and easier to follow.
Any feedback is much appreciated :)
- Lightning fast47
- Single Executable29
- Easy setup26
- Great development community24
- Open source23
- Write in golang13
- Not HTML only - JSON, RSS8
- Hacker mindset8
- LiveReload built in7
- Gitlab pages integration4
- Easy to customize themes4
- Very fast builds4
- Well documented3
- Fast builds3
- Easy to learn3
- No Plugins/Extensions4
- Template syntax not friendly2
- Quick builds1
related Hugo posts
There’s no doubt WordPress is a great CMS, which is very user friendly. When we started the company, our blog wasn’t really our top priority, and it ended up being hosted on a fairly obscure server within our setup, which didn’t really change much until recently when things become harder to manage and make significant updates.
As our marketing team increased, the amount of traffic that found us through our content marketing increased. We found ourselves struggling to maintain our Wordpress install given the amount of theme updates, plugins and security patches needing to be applied. Our biggest driver to find an alternative solution however was just how slow Wordpress is at serving content to the end user. I know there will be die hard fans out there with ways to set things up that mean WordPress sites can load quickly, but we needed something a lot more streamlined.
We could see in our own Real User Monitoring tool that many users were experiencing page load speeds of over five seconds, even longer in worst case scenarios. Hugo is an open source static site generator that has enabled us to reduce load times by over 500% and make our blog far more maintainable across the whole team.
The Raygun marketing site runs on a .NET CMS called N2 but we plan to swap that out with Hugo as well in future.
#StaticSiteGenerators #SelfHostedBloggingCms #SupportSalesAndMarketing
Earlier this year, I migrated my personal website (dzello.com) from Jekyll to Hugo. My goal with the migration was to make the development environment as pleasant as possible and to make it really easy to add new types of content. For example, I knew I wanted to add a consulting page and some portfolio-style pages to show off talks I had given and projects I had worked on.
I had heard about how fast Hugo was, so I tried it out with my content after using a simple migration tool. The results were impressive - the startup and rebuild times were in milliseconds, making the process of iterating on content or design less cumbersome. Then I started to see how I could use Hugo to create new page types and was very impressed by the flexibility of the content model. It took me a few days to really understand where content should go with Hugo, but then I felt very confident that I could create many different types of pages - even multiple blogs if I wanted - using a consistent syntax and with full control of the layouts and the URLs.
After about 6 months, I've been very happy with the results of the migration. The dev environment is light and fast and I feel at ease adding new pages and sections to the site.