Why I Chose Next.js Static Export Over SSR for a Content-Heavy Site

When building BabyNamePick , I had a choice: server-side rendering (SSR) or static export. I went with output: "export" in Next.js, and here's why that was the right call. The Use Case BabyNamePick is a baby name discovery tool with: 2,000+ name entries across 46 cultural origins 125+ blog posts 26 letter index pages 50+ category pages An AI name generator (client-side API call) Total: ~3,400 pages. All content is deterministic — the same data produces the same pages every time. Why Static Won 1. Hosting Cost: $0 Static files on Vercel's free tier. No server compute, no cold starts, no scaling concerns. For a side project that might take months to generate revenue, this matters. 2. Performance Every page is pre-built HTML. Time to First Byte is essentially CDN latency — typically under 50ms. No server rendering, no database queries, no waiting. Lighthouse scores (typical page): - Performance: 95-100 - Accessibility: 95-100 - Best Practices: 100 - SEO: 100 3. Reliability Static files do