The short answer
Choose Framer for a marketing site your team edits itself: pages, a blog and campaigns, live in about five weeks. Choose Next.js once the site behaves like a product: a customer portal, a configurator, a dashboard, hundreds of pages from a database or deep integrations. For a ten-page site with a blog, Next.js is usually more than you need.
| Framer | Next.js | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A visual website builder with hosting and a CMS | An open-source React framework you build with code |
| Who edits | Your marketing team, visually | Developers; editors work in a headless CMS |
| Content | Framer CMS collections | Any headless CMS, such as Sanity or Payload, or your own database |
| Custom logic | Code components and overrides, within Framer | Anything: APIs, auth, payments, server-side logic |
| Hosting | Hosted by Framer | Vercel or your own cloud |
| Ownership | Your Framer project and account | Typed code in your own repository |
| Timeline with Visinex | About five weeks | About eight weeks |
| Starting price with Visinex | From $5,500 | Custom development from $7,000 |
When Framer is enough
Framer is enough when the site’s job is to explain, convince and convert: a homepage, product pages, pricing, cases, a blog and campaign landing pages. Your marketing team edits all of it visually, and nothing waits for a developer.
That covers most startup marketing sites, including sites that support a raise. Solstice went into its $21M Series A with a Framer site its team keeps building on themselves.
When you need Next.js
You need Next.js when the site stops being a set of pages and starts being software. Typical signals:
- Users log in: a customer portal, an account area or a dashboard
- A configurator or calculator with real business logic and pricing rules
- Hundreds or thousands of pages generated from a database
- Deep integrations with your CRM, payments or internal systems
- Strict requirements on where data lives and who can access it
Code components: the middle ground
Before you move to code, check whether a Framer code component solves it. They are React components inside Framer, and we use them for calculators, multi-step forms, CRM integrations and interactions beyond the defaults, while your team keeps editing the rest visually.
When the custom part grows into the main part of the site, that is the moment to build in Next.js.
Speed, SEO and AI search
Both can produce fast pages with clean HTML that search engines and AI crawlers read without running JavaScript. Framer handles hosting and performance for you; Next.js gives you control over every byte and every rendering choice, which matters for large or very dynamic sites.
For a marketing site, the ranking difference comes from structure and content, not the platform. Our guide to choosing a Next.js agency covers what to ask about SEO and speed on a coded build.
What it costs to build and run
A Framer site with Visinex starts from $5,500 and goes live in about five weeks; on top of that you pay Framer’s monthly site plan. Custom development in Next.js starts from $7,000 and most builds go live in about eight weeks, all excluding VAT.
A Next.js site rarely runs alone: hosting, a CMS, a database, email and analytics each have their own monthly cost. Ask any agency to write those out per service, and in whose name each subscription is. See pricing.
Start in Framer, move later?
Yes, and it’s a common path. Launch the marketing site in Framer now, and build the product or portal in Next.js when you need it, often on a subdomain. If the marketing site itself later needs code, we migrate it with every URL mapped and redirected.
Our take
We build in Framer, Next.js and Astro, so we have no reason to push one. For a ten-page marketing site with a blog, Framer or Astro is faster, cheaper and easier to manage yourself. Next.js is the right choice once your site is really a product.