Once you add a transpile step, your &quot;transpile step&quot; can give you a lot more confidence, with linting, and flow, and ecmascript 6.<p>Minifying, concatenating, and compiling only used code paths&#x2F;files and assets is only a few lines of code (<i>with webpack</i>).<p>JSX to me is the more natural way to use React.  I don&#x27;t understand what the benefit of moving away from &lt;html&gt; is.  It&#x27;s more verbose, and harder to read if you construct your views in pure-js. (imo)<p>To me, using webpack is avoiding complexity.  It&#x27;s a set and forget exercise, sure it&#x27;s a bummer upfront.  But once it&#x27;s running, it&#x27;s pretty smooth.