My typical case is needing a backend for an API layer (and also pages I just don't want to fuss with SPAs for - data-heavy admin pages and such where it's a bun

My typical case is needing a backend for an API layer (and also pages I just don't want to fuss with SPAs for - data-heavy admin pages and such where it's a bunch of wasted effort and boilerplate to do in SPA form). With the alternatives above you get that integrated in dev environments all the way through minified in production.