What else have you tried? All of the alternatives have left me compromising on the way I build my front ends. The docs for Webpack aren't great, and configuring it might be a bit painful, but if there's a better option I would love to know what it is so I can start using it.
Things I want:
* es2015 transpiling
* jsx support
* css/less/sass support
* module loading
* uglification for production builds
* hot module replacement
* source maps
* multiple bundles/entry points
* hashed file names
Brunch fulfills a lot of these requirements, and I use it when I need to spin up an application really quick. But it misses on just enough items to make me reach for Webpack when I build anything serious.
parched-tasks-webapp has all but one of those things (hashed file names), and it's just built on browserify. And you don't have to do weird things to get your CSS out of your JS on the server.
Why not just use css modules with the extract text plugin to put everything in a single stylesheet to solve that problem? For Dev it supports hot reload, and other environments get an extracted stylesheet that works with sever rendering and avoids fouc's. Plus you can autoprefix the output, and because of the css modules design you get encapsulated component css for free. The annoyance is working with a css framework or its js library, i.e.: bootstrap or material as each one seems to have a different approach to css dependencies. But I think those frameworks are becoming less relevant or can have their limitations worked around usually depending on which one you choose.
When using browser-sync, which parched-tasks-webapps does, CSS is already hot-reloaded, and there's no worry of configuring different "loaders" for the case of a javascript file on the server trying to require a CSS file.
In both cases, the page is loading an external stylesheet, so both are as susceptible to FOUCs as the other.
This is only my opinion, but using CSS loaders backs you into a corner where your javascript file is suddenly less portable, since the environment it will be running on needs to be aware of it.
Things I want:
* es2015 transpiling * jsx support * css/less/sass support * module loading * uglification for production builds * hot module replacement * source maps * multiple bundles/entry points * hashed file names
Brunch fulfills a lot of these requirements, and I use it when I need to spin up an application really quick. But it misses on just enough items to make me reach for Webpack when I build anything serious.