Yes but good luck with React.createElement(). React without JSX is really a pain to use (or Preact, Inferno, etc).
Vue is much more straightforward for those simpler cases where you don't need/want to setup Babel, Webpack, etc.
What's painful about it? I prefer it without JSX, personally; JSX is a pretty simple syntax transform that doesn't really gain you anything that I can see, makes manipulating props a lot clumsier, and needs extra tooling. Most of the time it's almost identical with or without JSX, but when there is a difference, I've always found without to be smoother and clearer. You definitely want to assign React.createElement a shorter name, though.
For example, if you prefer to use small wrapper functions like `h(MyComponent)` and `div()`, there's `react-hyperscript-helpers` [0].
More recently, Jason Miller published `htm` [1], which provides near-JSX syntax using ES6 template literals, and no build step required. It appears to be a very viable alternative to JSX in many ways.
https://reactjs.org/docs/add-react-to-a-website.html#quickly...
How is the browser support for this?
It seems Vue is definitely the simpler choice to write reactive components in projects without a build chain.
Not just because it's harder to use without JSX (and JSX is a great idea), but also because every Stack Overflow answer assumes you're using Webpack and JSX. For a beginner, choosing not use JSX or Webpack, etc just makes the learning cliff steeper.