The Short Answer
**Use plain HTML** if: - You need a simple website (5 pages or fewer) with mostly static content - Budget and speed of delivery are priorities - You don't expect to add complex features later
**Use React** if: - Your site needs interactive components (booking forms, dashboards, filters) - You plan to add features over time (React scales much better) - SEO is important and you'll use Next.js for server-side rendering
Performance Comparison
A plain HTML website will almost always load faster on the first visit because there's no JavaScript framework to parse. A well-optimized React site (using Vite + lazy loading + code splitting) can match or exceed HTML performance, but it requires deliberate optimization.
For Google's Core Web Vitals, a poorly built React site can score 40–60 on PageSpeed. A well-built one can score 95+. The difference is in how the developer builds it, not the technology itself.
SEO Differences
Plain HTML pages are fully readable by Google bots the moment they load. React sites (CSR) render content in the browser using JavaScript, which means Google's bot needs to execute JS before it can read the page — this can delay indexing.
The solution is **Next.js**, which renders React pages on the server before sending them to the browser. This gives you the best of both worlds: React's interactivity + HTML's SEO friendliness.
All React projects by Manish Prajapati use Vite with SSR-friendly optimizations or Next.js where SEO is critical.