But I don't think there is a drop-in replacement for ALL that Next does. The strength of Next is in packaging together what would otherwise be like twenty different packages and servers (especially if you make use of all the Vercel specific features). And then it adds incredibly powerful (but often complex) hybrid caching strategies that combine what would traditionally be done by different daemons altogether (a KV store, a memory cache, a HTTP cache, CDN. etc.). And then it adds a bunch of additional features like the middleware layer, image processing and caching, etc. I don't know of any other frontend-focused JS framework with such features in one package.
These are more common in the full-stack world. Next takes some of those traditional backend concerns and puts them in the hands of frontend devs, for better or worse. If you know a bit of both, it can be a great shortcut. If you overestimate your ability/knowledge, it can be a great footgun.
