One of the most frequent technical questions from clients and developers is: 'Should I build my product with standalone React (Create React App/Vite) or Next.js?' While both use React components under the hood, their architectural capabilities, rendering strategies, and SEO implications differ significantly.
Pure React renders on the client. Next.js adds Server Components, Incremental Static Regeneration and Image Optimization, plus a typed metadata API and the App Router layout system.
Use pure client-side React for an authenticated admin panel where SEO is irrelevant and all logic runs in the browser. Use Next.js for any public product, SaaS landing page, portfolio, e-commerce or content platform.
In LookADev the App Router pre-renders every project and devlog page at build time. The HTML reaches crawlers immediately and Lighthouse scores stay above 95.
In LookADev, Next.js App Router powers the entire portfolio platform, achieving high Core Web Vitals scores and pre-rendering its project case studies as static HTML.
Reference: react.dev, creating a React app.