I've been building SPA apps for years with express and React. For a recent project we decided to use Next.js and self host. The biggest benefits have been 1) ha

I've been building SPA apps for years with express and React. For a recent project we decided to use Next.js and self host. The biggest benefits have been 1) having the middleware contained in the same runtime and therefore not having to set up multiple projects and hosting for each. We just build a single docker image and put it in ECS. 2) having things like routing, bundling, linting, etc. already included. There are some downsides--like I would rather have biome out of the box than prettier/eslint, but most the developers haven't really cared. There is a lot of magic and complexity under the covers that I haven't fully groked, and from that perspective I have reservations about it, especially after the recent CVE. As an example of the complexity, I had to set up Sentry, and while Sentry does have a package specifically for next.js, it was still tricky to ensure we were capturing errors with appropriate context in every possible spot. It's possible as our project matures we'll hit some roadblocks that will make us question our decision to use next.js and self host, but overall our dev team has been productive with it.