---
title: "Test CSR and SSR versions of the same site | Ian Nuttall"
description: "CSR vs SSR for SEO ranking"
canonical: "https://ian.is/post/csr-ssr-test"
language: "en"
---

# Test CSR and SSR versions of the same site

Apr 2025 / 48,428 views / [via X](https://x.com/iannuttall/status/1917524815772279128)

lovable vs bolt vs replit for SEO/CSR/SSR

i did another test today to build both CSR and SSR versions of a site to see which will rank better in 30 days

CSR prompt:

create a modern directory for the attached json file of beaches. each beach should have its own url and the single beach page should show the data for the user in an interesting way.

SSR prompt was same as above but including:

IMPORTANT: this app must be SSR for SEO purposes. I want all HTML to be rendered in the browser and not client side.

CSR/SSR results:

❌lovable: both apps were CSR
❌replit: both apps were CSR
✅bolt: first app was CSR, second was astro SSR

basic seo stuff:

lovable and bolt had unique titles for the pages of my app, replit had the homepage title for all pages

lovable and bolt had a meta description, replit didn't

lovable had og images and data, bolt and replit didn't

seo ranking test:

since bolt was the only one that could do SSR, i'll test the two versions of the bolt site for a month and see which one performs the best

the CSR site bolt built looks incredible (and one shot too), a much better design than the SSR app - but will the server rendered content rank better?

follow me and I'll post results in 30 days

\---
finally, a note about replit...

i really did not like replit at all

\- the design was bad with text that had poor contrast
\- it couldn't so SSR even when asked
\- it had lots of broken images
\- it was way slower than the others
\- you have to deploy with them, couldn't figure out git integration

overall just feels too complicated and if i were vibe coding and not using cursor, i would be using bolt for sure

[![](https://ian.is/media/tweets/1916184770507153618/9111552/3b92beafc36291717d6d5d467749e630ded347006cedcd81b351d3dae10e2e1e.jpg)**Ian Nuttall**@iannuttall](https://x.com/iannuttall)

> A bunch of people mentioned @boltdotnew (cc @EricSimons) so I thought I'd try it out and see how the SEO compares for vibe coders
>
> prompt:
> \---
> create a directory with mock items, each with its own URL
>
> IMPORTANT: the entire project MUST be server side rendered for SEO
> \---
>
> result:
> It one-shot a full Astro app, complete with breadcrumbs, category links, images, and importantly...
>
> all of the content is visible in the source, which is much better for getting crawled, indexed, and ranked in google and LLMs
>
> I've been sleeping on Bolt, but damn this was a smooth process

Video from the embedded X post

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