People often ask me why I build all my websites with Next.js rather than WordPress or a page builder. The answer fits in two words everyone wants without always knowing what they imply: fast and found. Here is, concretely, what this stack changes — and what it doesn't.

A site generated ahead of time, not built on every visit

A classic WordPress site builds each page at the moment someone asks for it: the server queries the database, assembles the theme, runs the plugins, then sends the result. Every visit costs computing time, and that time shows in the browser.

Next.js does the opposite. At deployment, it generates every page once and for all, as HTML files ready to serve. When a visitor arrives, there is nothing to compute: the file already exists. This is called static generation, and it is why a well-built Next.js site loads in a few hundred milliseconds.

For content that changes (a blog, a catalogue), Next.js can regenerate a page on demand, in the background, without ever making the visitor wait. You keep the speed of static and the freshness of dynamic.

Served from the network, next to the visitor

Vercel, the hosting platform built by the creators of Next.js, distributes those files across a global network of servers. A visitor in Madrid is served from Madrid, a visitor in Brussels from Brussels. Physical distance still matters in 2026: every round trip between the browser and a distant server adds tens of milliseconds.

Google measures this speed through the Core Web Vitals — how quickly the main content appears, visual stability, responsiveness to interaction. They are ranking signals, but above all experience signals: a site that appears instantly keeps its visitors. On my own applications, which total several thousand pages in twelve languages, this architecture delivers load times I never managed to get from a traditional CMS.

Images that weigh what they should

Images are the number one cause of slowness on the web. Next.js handles them automatically: it converts them to modern formats (AVIF, WebP), resizes them for the screen requesting them — a phone doesn't receive the image meant for a 27-inch monitor — and only loads the ones in view.

On WordPress, getting the same result takes one or two plugins, configuration, and constant vigilance. Here, it is the default behaviour.

Search rankings are decided in the code

This is the point I find most underestimated. Technical SEO is dozens of details: a title tag and a description per page, clean URLs, canonical tags, Schema.org structured data telling Google what the page is (an article, a service, an FAQ, a local business), hreflang tags linking the language versions, an exact sitemap, sharing images for social networks.

With Next.js, all of this is written in the code, page by page, with complete control. I know exactly what is sent to Google, and I can check it automatically on every deployment. For a multilingual site, it is the difference between three versions competing with each other and three versions reinforcing each other.

Fewer things that break

An average WordPress site carries fifteen or so plugins, each with its updates, security holes and potential conflicts. A static Next.js site has no exposed database, no admin panel to protect, no plugins to update. The attack surface is tiny. And if nobody touches the site for a year, it still works exactly the same way.

What it costs

For a business website or a blog, Vercel hosting is free for personal use and costs $20 a month for a business site, in your name, with no middleman. No theme licence, no page-builder subscription, no premium plugin to renew. The cost concentrates where it creates value: design and development. I break down the figures in How much does a website cost in 2026?.

Why I no longer build WordPress sites

I am not dogmatic: WordPress still makes sense when a team publishes a lot of content, often, without a developer, such as a media outlet with ten writers or an association updating its calendar every week. If your project is one of those, I'll tell you so frankly, and I'm not the right person for it: I no longer build WordPress sites.

For a freelancer, a small business, a practice, an application with a members' area or payments — that is, most of the projects I'm entrusted with — Next.js and Vercel give a faster, safer, better-ranked site that is cheaper to keep alive. It is the only stack I deliver today.

In short

A fast, well-ranked website is not a matter of plugins or settings: it is a matter of architecture. Generate the pages ahead of time, serve them as close as possible to the visitor, optimise every image, write the metadata precisely, reduce what can break. Next.js and Vercel make all of this natural. The rest — the quality of the content, the clarity of the message, patience — remains to be done, and that is where we work together.

Why Next.js and Vercel for a website that has to be fast and rank well