Technology Comparison

SSR vs SSG / ISR - Which Should You Use?

Comparing SSR and SSG / ISR for your next project. Honest analysis of performance, ecosystem, and suitability for Australian businesses.

50+

Businesses Served

150+

Integrations Available

98%

Client Retention

under 2 seconds

Average Load Time

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Our Development Capabilities

Custom-built solutions for your specific business needs.

CI/CD and DevOps

Automated testing, continuous integration, and deployment pipelines that keep your application reliable and easy to update.

Performance Engineering

Server-side rendering, code splitting, and caching strategies that deliver sub-second load times at scale.

Data Dashboards and Reporting

Custom analytics dashboards that give your team real-time visibility into business metrics and KPIs.

Cloud-Native Architecture

Applications designed for scalability and reliability on modern cloud infrastructure. Auto-scaling, CDN, and edge deployment.

Quick Comparison

Side-by-side comparison to help you decide.

Criterion	SSR	SSG
When HTML is generated	SSR: at request time, every request, on the server	SSG: at build time; ISR: at build time, then revalidated on a schedule
Personalisation	SSR: full per-request personalisation (auth, user data, geolocation)	SSG/ISR: no per-request personalisation without client-side hydration
Time to First Byte (TTFB)	SSR: slower - server must compute before sending bytes	SSG/ISR: near-instant - pre-built HTML served from CDN
Content freshness	SSR: always current - reads from database on every request	SSG: stale until rebuild; ISR: stale-while-revalidate based on revalidate interval
Build time (large content set)	SSR: no build time - all pages generated at runtime	SSG: grows with page count; ISR: only builds seeded pages, rest generated on demand
Infrastructure cost	SSR: compute cost for every page view	SSG/ISR: CDN caches most requests; compute only on cache miss

Our Verdict

Use SSG/ISR for content that is the same for all users (marketing pages, blog posts, documentation, product pages). Use SSR for pages that must be personalised per user or that depend on data that must be current at the moment of render (dashboards, accounts, search results). In Next.js, ISR is the pragmatic middle ground for content sites: pages are pre-built and served from CDN, but stale pages are regenerated in the background after the revalidate window. Use SSR only when personalisation or real-time data is genuinely required - the infrastructure cost and TTFB penalty are real.

Choose SSR when:

✓ SSR: user-authenticated pages where content differs per viewer
✓ SSR: real-time data (stock prices, live inventory, dynamic pricing) must be current on render
✓ SSR: pages that cannot be pre-built (infinite combinations of filter states)

Choose SSG when:

✓ SSG: marketing site, blog, documentation - content same for all users
✓ ISR: e-commerce product pages - mostly static but update periodically
✓ SSG/ISR: performance is critical and CDN-level caching is the optimisation

Frequently Asked Questions

Most projects deliver a working prototype in 2 weeks and complete within 4-8 weeks. Complex applications may take longer. We deliver in phases so you see value quickly.

It depends on your project requirements. SSR and SSG / ISR each have strengths. Our detailed comparison above covers the trade-offs to help you decide.

Absolutely. You get 3 months of hands-on support after launch. For ongoing development, we offer flexible retainer packages tailored to your needs.

Yes. We integrate with 150+ business tools and can build custom connectors for specialist software. Your new application will work seamlessly with your existing tech stack.

Every project is scoped individually based on complexity, integrations, and feature requirements. Most projects fall within our standard tiers. Book a free assessment to get a transparent, fixed-price quote.

We primarily build with Next.js, React, TypeScript, and Node.js. We also work with Python, PostgreSQL, and various cloud platforms. We choose the best technology for your specific requirements.