> Does that mean the top benefit of next.js is to alleviate difficulties with Webpack + Babel + etc?

And server-side rendering which solves common SEO and performance challenges of SPAs. Here's an article showing where server-side rendering is especially useful for SEO reasons:

https://hackernoon.com/react-js-cms-blog-tutorial-e090c69984...

I wouldn't say it's the top benefit but it is a benefit indeed! You don't have to worry about setting any of those up unless you want to customize them. You shouldn't have to because they come with sane defaults (i.e., Babel has support for latest ES and the Webpack config takes care of everything for you).

For example, the only custom change we had to make was to add Webpack's `DefinePlugin` to expose `.env` variables in the client. It was extremely easy though (3 LOC) and we didn't need a full Webpack config.

See: https://github.com/zeit/next.js#custom-configuration

It's why I use it. I can build my own Webpack configs just fine and have done for a long time, but I just don't want to do it anymore.