For the record, I did go with the route of running react-static in dev mode on the server for preview (using Phusion Passenger to run it, as this was set up on

For the record, I did go with the route of running react-static in dev mode on the server for preview (using Phusion Passenger to run it, as this was set up on the server, which required an app.js file to start the server: https://gist.github.com/tomduncalf/00070fecb68a6cf35c0102c75f166a8a https://gist.github.com/tomduncalf/00070fecb68a6cf35c0102c75...). Seems to work really well. I've got another simple server at "/restart" running which touches "tmp/restart.txt" when hit which forces Phusion Passenger to restart the dev server, which forces it load the content again. Takes like 10-15 seconds to be ready to preview, client is very happy compared to the old setup which required a few mins of building to preview!