Conflux Group 🩷 Next.js

Next.js is a React framework maintained by Vercel. React on its own is a library for building interfaces; Next.js is the structure around it—routing, rendering, data loading, image handling, and build tooling—so a team isn't assembling those decisions from scratch on every project. The reason we reach for it rather than a bare React setup comes down to Next.js being a complete, packaged solution.

What we build with Next.js

• Headless CMS front ends — a Next.js site reading from Craft CMS, WordPress, Payload, or Shopify, so your team keeps the editing experience they know while the front end goes its own way
• Marketing sites that need real interactivity — configurators, calculators, filtered directories, and search that would be awkward bolted onto a traditional CMS theme
• Web applications — dashboards, portals, and internal tools where the interface carries genuine state
• Storefronts on a headless commerce backend — when Shopify's own theming isn't flexible enough for the experience you want
• Front ends over an existing API — including Laravel backends we've built, which is a pairing we use often
• Rebuilds of slow React apps — moving a client-rendered app onto server rendering, usually the single biggest performance win available

Why Next.js

Rendering you can choose per page. Static generation for the pages that rarely change, server rendering for the ones that do, client rendering for the parts that genuinely need it. Most frameworks make you pick one strategy for the whole site. This is the feature that makes Next.js worth the complexity.

Performance defaults that hold up. Automatic code splitting, image optimization, and font handling are built in rather than bolted on. You start from a fast baseline instead of clawing your way back to one.

SEO that actually works. Because pages are rendered on the server, search engines and AI assistants get real HTML. That's not a small detail—it's the reason so many React rebuilds quietly lose their organic traffic, and the reason we won't build a public site as a client-rendered app.

A large, well-supported ecosystem. Next.js is among the most widely used React frameworks, which means the problem you hit has usually been hit before, and hiring your next developer isn't a search for a specialist.

When Next.js isn't the answer

We're not dogmatic about this, and we'd rather say it up front than three months in.

If your site is made of simple content pages, a blog, and a contact form, Next.js is more machinery than the job needs. A well-built WordPress or Craft CMS site will be less expensive to build, less expensive to maintain, and easier for your team to run without a developer on call. Adding a decoupled front end means two systems to deploy and keep in step, and that cost is real.

Next.js earns its keep when the interface is doing something a CMS theme can't do comfortably, when you're serving multiple front ends from one content source, or when you've already got a React codebase and a team that knows it. If none of those describe your project, we'll tell you.