7 Boilerplates for a Head Start When Building a SaaS App
Building a SaaS platform is hard, especially if you’re a solo founder who needs to build everything by yourself. But there are options to help you build and launch your project faster.
When you have a great idea and start working on it from scratch, you feel a rush of excitement. It’s great to work on an interesting idea, but instead of focusing on what makes your product unique, you first need to put in the hours to work on things that are less exciting: configuring a project, building authentication flows, integrating payments, building forms, etc.
If you want to launch faster, there are some things you might want to consider. You probably want to use a web framework to increase development speed. Nobody builds their SaaS with plain Ruby code. You’d much rather use a framework like Rails. And the same goes for styling your application. Instead of writing all the CSS yourself, you could use a framework like Bootstrap, Material, or Tailwind. But if you really want to save a lot of time, you should start with a SaaS boilerplate.
A SaaS boilerplate includes a lot of functionalities that cost a lot of time to build out yourself. Think about authentication or billing. These are things that every SaaS needs to have, so why build it all yourself?
You should launch your SaaS fast so you can get feedback as soon as possible. To do that, starting out with a boilerplate/starter kit can save you tons of time. Here is a list of seven boilerplates that could help you build your SaaS faster.
Serverless SaaS
The Serverless SaaS boilerplate is the perfect starting point for your next React app. It’s built with TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind, and Firebase. You can tap into user authentication, payments with Stripe, teams, and more with zero effort.
Going serverless is a great way of cutting costs because the pay-as-you-go pricing model means you can start free and only pay when your startup gets real traction. You also don’t have to worry about scaling issues. With Serverless platforms you are outsourcing a lot of responsibilities which allows you to move quicker.
That makes this starter kit great for solo developers and small teams who want to launch something quickly without spending money.
Source: https://serverless.page/
Nextless.js
Nextless.js is a React SaaS Boilerplate that helps developers build scalable and production-ready SaaS products. It is a full-stack solution that includes all the essential features such as Authentication, Stripe Payment, Team Collaboration and Multi-tenancy, Dashboard, Landing pages, Emails, and more. The boilerplate is highly customizable and extensible using a layered architecture.
The entire codebase is written in TypeScript. The frontend is built with Next.js, React, and Tailwind CSS, while the backend is a Serverless Rest API. Additionally, the full-stack application can be easily deployed to AWS. It was created by a developer for developers to provide the best possible developer experience. Therefore, it comes with complete documentation, and email support to help you in the journey to build your SaaS product.
Nextless.js is the ideal boilerplate to launch your SaaS. With Nextless.js, you can create and deploy your SaaS product with ease, allowing you to focus on your business while saving time on development.
Source: https://nextlessjs.com
Jumpstart
Jumpstart is a great starter kit for your next Ruby on Rails app. You can skip the boilerplate set up and build your Rails app faster. It handles all the stuff you need like a user authentication system and even background processing. It also has very good documentation. You can even try out a lite version that is available for free on Github.
Source: https://jumpstartrails.com
Laravel Spark
Laravel Spark is a Laravel package that is built by Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel. An amazing project to help you build your next great product with PHP. It provides a lot of scaffolding features so you don’t have to code everything yourself. It also has the features that every SaaS business needs, like (two-factor) authentication, subscription billing, and invoices.
Source: https://spark.laravel.com/
Gravity
With Gravity, you can build a Node.js and React SaaS app at warp speed. It comes with a lot of features and pre-built components to get you up and running quickly. It even has a built-in user-onboarding flow feedback widget.
Source: https://usegravity.app
Sjabloon
Sjabloon is a modern Ruby on Rails SaaS starter kit that also includes all the SaaS features like authentication and payments with Stripe, but also comes with a huge UI components library that is built with Tailwind, the rising CSS framework. This allows you to focus on your core product right from the start. Just like Jumpstart, it also has a lite version that is available for free on Github.
Source: https://www.getsjabloon.com/
Wave
Voyager is a popular Laravel Admin Package and Wave is a starter kit built on top of both Laravel and Voyager. You can install this starter-kit on your own server and customize it to fit your needs. Wave integrates with both Stripe or Braintree and is well documented. It also has theme support for three different starter themes. You can choose from Bootstrap, UIKit, or Tailwind. Wave also checks all the boxes for all the other SaaS features so it will much likely speed up your development time when crafting a SaaS from scratch.
Source: https://wave.devdojo.com
Thanks for reading! I hope you find these helpful.