Why would you ditch react because you don’t need SSR? You can still use vanilla React without SSR and serve it statically. It’s not as if you’re forced to use nextjs if you want to use React.
React used to be fine when next.js was a separate effort, now Vercel hijacked the project, and making things even more complex by mixing SSR and CSR, there is a learning cost associated when things and concepts getting larger unnecessarily.
the newest react is now _strongly_ recommending you start a new react project using next.js, vercel hired many of the react developers for its SSR oriented business, etc.