"Limiting the backend stack to what browsers support is not great" Node.js shares the same language but that's about it. In the Node.js backend you have access

"Limiting the backend stack to what browsers support is not great" Node.js shares the same language but that's about it. In the Node.js backend you have access to modules like lovell/sharp with optimized c code (libvips) for image processing. There really isn't much you can't do. With pm2 it is easy to spin up say 8 instances of Next.js utilizing all available cores. In my experience there is barely a distinction between client and server side rendered components. getServerSideProps() or getInitialProps(), even though not perfect allow you to either call your backend code directly or call an API with the session cookie as a parameter.