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New marketing site, torn between Astro and Next.js for an SMB company site.

For a purely static SMB site (home, services, blog, contact) Astro is often the right call: smaller bundles, simpler mental model, zero JS by default. Next.js earns its weight only once you have dynamic parts: dashboards, login, server actions, AI features.

Try this first

  1. 1Pin scope honestly: are you staying a marketing site with a blog and a contact form, or will a customer portal or tool sit behind it. Your future plan decides, not just today's.
  2. 2Astro: content collections for blog and cases (Markdown or MDX), partial hydration via islands for the few interactive bits (menu, form). Build output is static HTML, so any cheap host or Vercel/Netlify works.
  3. 3Next.js (App Router): heavier, but you get server components, server actions, Cache Components and easy API routes. For a site likely to grow a logged-in area, that is the more honest starting point.
  4. 4Tailwind, MDX, sitemap and hreflang plugins work in either stack. Difference sits in JS payload and deploy strategy, not in styling or content.
  5. 5Pick the CMS layer separately: Sanity, Contentful, Storyblok or Payload work with both. Do not let the framework dictate where your content lives.
  6. 6Run a speed test on real content: build one representative page in each framework, measure bundle size and LCP. Per case the right pick is usually obvious.

When to bring us in

Building serverless functions, AI streaming, complex caching or authentication? Pick Next.js. Building a purely static brand site with a few islands? Pick Astro and save months of maintenance.

See also

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