Yep, exactly. I use Umbrella JS (author here!) for most side projects. I only reach for React for SPA and state-heavy projects. These cases with jQuery (or Umbrella JS) is tricky because while you can do it with template strings, you don't get the modularity, build tools and it's difficult to protect against XSS.

You have to be very, very careful with .html(...) and only for that reason sometimes React is worth it, specially with SPA. But for small-to-mid sizes projects, Umbrella JS FTW!

There are tiny alternatives to React that support JSX syntax. This library is better when you want to be "closer to the metal": https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder

It's interesting, I couldn't write jquery website anymore, even if simple, they become more complex so quickly. Add this feature...

Sidenote: Anyway in my brain jquery/templates never made sense. I always wanted components, pass some arguments and get the component, self contained.