Why we still pick Next.js for marketing sites in 2026

We get this question every month — usually from a founder who's just been pitched on Astro, Webflow, or "let's just do it in plain HTML, how hard can it be?"

The answer is always: it depends, but Next.js still wins more often than not. Here's how we think about it.

The short version

Pick Next.js when you want:

• A real React component model you can grow into an app
• Image, font, and script optimisation that just works
• App Router server components for fast TTFB without ditching React DX
• Easy paths to add MDX, an API, auth, or i18n later

Pick something else when:

• You will never need a single line of dynamic behaviour (vanilla HTML or Astro is leaner)
• The site is fully editorial and the team lives inside a CMS (Webflow / Framer)
• Your team only writes PHP, Ruby, or Go (use what you know)

Why it keeps winning for us

1. The "marketing site → product" pipeline is real

Half our marketing site clients come back six months later with: "we need a portal," "we need login," "we need a dashboard." Starting in Next.js means we just add routes. Starting in Webflow means we rebuild.

2. Performance budgets are easy to hit

Out of the box you get:

• Automatic font subsetting via next/font
• AVIF/WebP via next/image with lazy loading and the right sizes
• Route-level code splitting

We routinely land Lighthouse scores above 95 without manual tuning.

3. Server components changed the calculus

For a marketing site, the App Router lets us render most pages as pure server components — zero JS to the client for content that doesn't need it. The only place we ship JS is interactive bits (mobile nav, contact form, embeds).

This wasn't true two years ago. It is now.

Where it bites

• Build times on large content sets need attention — incremental static regeneration or partial prerendering helps
• MDX with custom components can get hairy if you over-engineer it; start with gray-matter + remark until you actually need MDX
• Vercel pricing at scale can surprise; for high-traffic content sites we deploy to AWS via OpenNext or self-host

What we'd build today

If you came to us tomorrow with a marketing site brief, we'd build it with:

• Next.js 15 App Router
• Tailwind CSS for styling
• Sanity or markdown for content (depending on the team)
• Vercel or Cloudflare Pages for hosting

It's not flashy. It just ships, performs, and grows with you.

Want us to do this for you? Get in touch — we can usually quote within a day.