The startup scene in Mohali's IT Park and across the Chandigarh tech corridor overwhelmingly gravitates toward React. And for good reason — React's ecosystem is massive, developers are readily available, and component-based architecture scales well. But the question "React or Next.js" comes up in nearly every discovery session we run.
Here's the practical answer: if you're building a dashboard, admin panel, or any tool where SEO doesn't matter and your users are authenticated, plain React (with Vite) is the right choice. It's simpler, faster to set up, and doesn't carry the server-side complexity.
If you're building anything public-facing — a marketing site, e-commerce store, blog, or any page that needs to rank on Google — Next.js is the clear winner. Server-side rendering, automatic code splitting, image optimization, and built-in routing give you performance and SEO advantages that are expensive to replicate in plain React.
The talent pool in Mohali is comfortable with both. Most React developers can work with Next.js with minimal ramp-up. The framework choice should be driven by your product requirements, not by developer preference.
At Ethersofts, we default to Next.js for public-facing products and React (Vite) for internal tools. This website you're reading is built with Next.js — and it loads in under 1.2 seconds.