Server-side rendering: the questions we get asked most

There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. The questions about server-side rendering that come up most often on our calls.

The question is rarely whether something can be built, but what it costs to keep running afterwards. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Do we need to care about this?

Rendering on the server gets content in front of people sooner. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets.

How do we know it is working?

It adds infrastructure, so only pay for it when you need it. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

How to tell if yours is fine

Code gets read far more often than it gets written, and usually by someone with less context than the author had. Three things worth confirming about server-side rendering before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Rendering on the server gets content in front of people sooner — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.