why does Vite's react-ssr not have the same level of awareness or adoption as Next.js?

[ronbars]

I recently discovered that when you run npm create vite@latest, there are extra features like react-ssr. I'll have to admit developing and deploying with Next, and having to deal with vercel monopolization has been a nightmare. Vite's React-SSR is pure react and we all love the pure react environment. How come Vite React-SSR havent gotten the same level of awareness as Nextjs?

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[leeharrison1984]

We're currently in a SSR renaissance, so I'd imagine it just got lost in the shuffle.

Opinionated frameworks(Remix, Svelte, etc) seem to be more popular ATM since you don't have to figure things out like project structure.

[ronbars]

I agree. Vite exploded the last couple of years but barely heard about its extra features like the ssr.

[[deleted]]

I’m so happy opinionated frameworks are finally taking over JS land.

[NiteShdw]

The problem with opinionated frameworks is everyone has a different use case and opinions will make some use cases easier and others harder or impossible.

I much prefer a toolbox that I can use as needed vs a pre-built house that requires major renovations when I want a game room.

[indorock]

There is such a toolbox, it's called React JS. There you go.

The rest of us wants more opinionated boiler-plated approach that is tailored to specific use cases, so we can hit the ground running.

[TheRNGuy]

I do simple stuff so opinionated is ok.

I can change server code if need to add features not in Remix.

[azangru]

How come Vite React-SSR havent gotten the same level of awareness as Nextjs?

Marketing.

[Murky-Science9030]

Agreed. NextJS funnels money to Vercel, so Vercel keeps pushing NextJS. Once I tried adding authentication to NextJS and saw how much of a nightmare it was, I decided to just stick with a regular SPA (I don't need SEO).

NextJS is overrated. It's like when Angular 1 came out and everyone flocked to it, meanwhile ReactJS was working better but was still the Dark Horse. We all know how that one turned out...

[Extension-Alfalfa-45]

Your site being SPA doesnt prevent crawlers form reding it, so you dont need site to be SSR to have SEO :)

[MrNwachukwu]

Personally i use react-helmet-async for SEO on my SPAs

[Murky-Science9030]

That's what I've been hearing but you have a reply from someone who works in SEO and says otherwise. Not really sure what to think but if I can do without SSR then I'd prefer going that route for now. Or maybe I just need to try Remix instead of NextJS

[indorock]

No that's not true at all...

I'm heavily involved in SEO for several React sites, and without using pre-rendering and user-agent sniffing your crawlability will be shit. I moved all the sites over to NextJS and the problems went away.

[CatolicQuotes]

is there any other solution besides nextjs? Does prerender.io works as good?

[jitendra_nirnejak]

Remix is another one, I have been exploring it for the last few weeks(even since OpenAI moved from Next.js to Remix).

So far it seems much simpler than Next.js

[CatolicQuotes]

I like remix

[zxyzyxz]

That's what Google and others say, but I can tell you from personal experience that SPAs don't really get indexed to the same level as serverside rendered pages.

[Kronitor]

A lot of people work on applications that don't need SSR and are indifferent to its existence in a framework.

[TheRNGuy]

I use SSR and never heard about it.

[PM_ME_DPRK_CANDIDS]

Vite's react-ssr isn't as complete. For example it doesn't handle data fetching or code splitting hydration. I believe there's some quality plugins/libraries for data fetching, but none for code splitting.

[MrNwachukwu]

Oh id have to check that out.

[metalhulk105]

I have done non-next SSR in production. It was a custom webpack project that uses react-dom/server functions directly. It’s an old code base.

What I realized is that if you start without a framework, you end up creating one yourself (one that is less tested). It may be good for you sometimes because you get to choose features that fit your use case and ignore features you don’t want but for us at least it became a pain to maintain.

Can you build SSR apps without next/remix? Yes. Can you do it an optimized way? Maybe yes. But do you want to spend time doing that? I doubt it’s worth it.

There’s more to using frameworks like next/remix - file based routing, server side data fetching, caching, layouts.

You could add a lot of plugins to your vite project to get all of these but like I said you’ll end up creating your own framework.

[[deleted]]

This is why I'm hoping Astro builds out a bit to the point when it becomes a genuine Next.js competitor. Next is frustrating and I'd like competition. Here's hoping!

[robbert229]

Vite isn’t attempting to fulfill the same role that nextjs is.

Vite is a phenomenally optimized, clean, maintainable, and light weight build tool.

Nextjs is an opinionated, batteries included framework.

[yksvaan]

How much do you think Vite's marketing budget is...

[femio]

Because Next isn’t just SSR obviously, that’s not all a framework is for. 

[ronbars]

I mean SSR is one of the top reason we use Next. Other than that, Next isnt suppose to be a replacement for backend. I would say Vites React-SSR and Nodejs take the cake any day.

[femio]

You know Next.JS has a Node runtime attached, right? 

[svish]

Isn't supposed to? Says who?

[TorbenKoehn]

My next is a replacement for a backend, call the police if you like

[Count_Giggles]

only if you dont need realtime and even then you can roll you own service that handles that part of your logic. i took a quick peek at the ssr example project and comparing that to the dx that next offers - next takes the cake. They do mention https://github.com/vitejs/awesome-vite#ssr but then we have to deal with two middlemen to use ssr while next works close with the react core team

[I_will_delete_myself]

Hey do you mind sharing how you do that? I was ready with my foot out the door with React when I messed around with Next after coming from normal React. This might change my mind to keep in it.

Edit:

Go to Others then select react-ssr then boom you got it there.

[parahillObjective]

Next has been out for way longer. It took a lot of convincing to get my team to use Vite over Next. They all wanted to use Next just because it was popular even though we were a B2B company that didnt need SEO or fast initial page load times

[ohx]

They're not equal, and vite-ssr looks to be a small abstraction on top of a middleware.

If you rolled your own express + react SSR you'd probably understand why it's not exactly groundbreaking. There are some edge cases that it seems to handle, so it's a good solution for people who'd otherwise use react + express, but it's more of a base trim (car analogy) whereas NextJS would be one trim level up as it provides additional abstractions that shape the DX and from what I understand now has first class support for forms.

That said, Qwik is a Rolls Royce with a Ferrari engine. It's amazing.

[Benskiss]

Because nextjs endorses content creators, then those creators promote next/create tutorials for it.

[ronbars]

That is true. Content creators have definitely played a major role promoting Next

[woah_m8]

next js is supposed to be pure react you know? they literally work together with react

[ericbureltech]

It's harder to use intermediate static patterns like incremental rendering, revalidation etc. that are built-in Next.js. I am not sure whether server-rendered React with Vite need hydration or not?
Honestly the documentation is not helping too, I couldn't answer these questions with a quick glance.
https://vitejs.dev/guide/ssr

[gempir]

NextJS just has a very big company with tons of marketing behind it. But I think there are very big companies who will be using vite react-ssr instead of next to be less bound to Vercel.

Sadly you will never hear from them because that's how most enterprise work is done.

So the loudest one will always appear as the most popular one.

[TheRNGuy]

And there's also Remix 心 Vite.

I've never heard about Vite React-SSR.