next-netlify-starter VS next-on-netlify

This part is really simple. Here's a great Next.js Netlify starter that was kindly prepared by the wonderful Cassidy Williams. To get up and running in a minute, click the Deploy To Netlify button on the repo and that's it, you're set. The advantage of using this starter is that:

Next.js routes can be turned into Netlify Functions which are essentially hosted as AWS Lambda functions. It's a clever way of pushing certain requirements to the server side, like calling third party APIs with keys you don't want to expose to the client. Next.js is great in this regard and plugins like netlify-plugin-nextjs and next-on-netlify let us do this really quickly but the performance left a lot to be desired.

Definitely agree!

WRT deploying Next.js apps, I typically go static first because it makes it easier, exporting it to static files

But there are some other options I've found:

Next.js on Netlify works great if you want to deploy to Netlify: https://github.com/netlify/next-on-netlify

I haven't tried this, but an option to deploy with AWS Lambda and Serverless Framework https://codedaily.io/tutorials/184/Deploy-a-NextJS-App-With-...

With sheer perseverance, the team at Netlify have been toiling to provide one-click integrations for Next.js apps. They have prepared a package called next-on-netlify(currently in beta). You can also install a separate build plugin called @netlify/plugin, which uses the above package under the hood. We are going to use the next-on-netlify for now, just to show the deployment process. So, prep your editors up! 📝

I just did some digging...it looks like Netlify are integrating that logic too, but it's not fully integrated. Maybe I'll deploy to Vercel after all to give it a try!