What is SSR vs SSG?

SSR (Server-Side Rendering) generates HTML on each request. When a user visits your page, the server runs your code, fetches data, builds the HTML, and sends it. The page is always fresh but every request costs compute time.

SSG (Static Site Generation) generates HTML at build time. Every page is pre-built as an HTML file before any user visits. When a request comes in, the server just sends the file — no computation, no database queries, no API calls. Response time is typically under 50ms.

ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration) combines both: pages are statically generated but can be refreshed on a schedule or on-demand. You get SSG performance with the ability to update content without rebuilding the entire site.

For most B2B websites, the right answer is SSG with ISR. Your marketing pages, blog posts, and service pages don't change every second — they change when your team updates content. Pre-build everything, revalidate every hour, and you get near-instant page loads with fresh content.

SSR makes sense for: personalized dashboards, real-time data, authenticated pages, and anything that's different per user. Don't use SSR for marketing pages — it's wasteful.