hey Ady Ngom You can use this Create-web-app and select the MERN options, the starter pack generated from this is absolutely beginner-friendly and you can make your needful change quickly.
PS: It's still under development, may be having few bugs here and there but you can give it a shot.
Create your own one-time starter pack. Use that over and over and simultaneously add more features and refinement on that and optimize that.
If it's for production then I would suggest not to go with the one I mentioned cause it has some bugs.
then Please go with something which covers deployment and state management using Mobx or redux. cause these are the proven ones. Checkout this one, List here
Please take any of the react starter separately and server separately. and then combine then. Cause most of them lag in someway
Also Hashnode had one MERN which was awesome. so better clone this repo and use it 😁
Personally, I feel nextjs is too much and offers features which we don't need. Like the one of the main is that page wise routing, I am completely -1 for that like its not the way of routing I would prefer for my project
This is just my opinion and I am sure others do have strong point to correct me