Ask HN: Best SaaS Boilerplate?
Basic account setup and payment integration (Stripe); ideally with accounts having multiple roles and members etc. Any language, but ideally Java or Python/Django etc.
That said, all of the popular boilerplates have been created by individuals or teams who are passionate about their frameworks (in my case Django) and have significant experience building products on top of them (in my case 10+ years). All of them will drastically reduce your time to MVP and likely be a better foundation than you'd author on your own.
I actually would choose a language/framework first and then choose a boilerplate based on that. The boilerplate will get you far, but ultimately you're still going to be doing lots more dev in the framework, so you should pick one you like. Django and Rails and to some extent Laravel are comparable - mature frameworks with lots of batteries included, mostly server-render HTML by default. JavaScript is its own separate beast with a more fractured ecosystem, but tighter integration with the front end. I'm obviously biased towards Python because it's a wonderful language to work with and has a great community and third-party package ecosystem. But honestly, any of these are great choices and will help you launch your first product way faster.
There's a huge list of SaaS boilerplates broken down by language available here: https://github.com/smirnov-am/awesome-saas-boilerplates
Good luck!
- Cory’s writing on low JS alternatives to single page web apps was game changing for us. And that’s all built in. 10x faster to develop.
- You get access to a wonderful community of Django devs. Any question gets 3+ independent responses.
- The framework is non-opinionated. You get the same examples in both HTMX and React + APIs, many versions of CSS frameworks (Bulma, Tailwind, Bootstrap), multiple deployment methods, etc. This gives you a valuable toolkit to fit your solution around the needs of the problem.
We're not live with self-serve yet but I'd be happy to give a demo to anyone interested, just email me at paul (at) railsrocket.app
Billing, teams, roles, chat, outbound webhooks, etc
Disclaimer: It is a paid software, and I am not affiliated with Jumpstart or GoRails.
We support Python/Django on the backend and Typescript/React on the frontend. It has all you mentioned - RBAC, User management, and payments/subscriptions (via Stripe integration). Of course, these are not all the features we have ;)
Happy to answer all your questions! Wishing you good luck with setting up and launching your project.
Cheers, Zee
Nodewood (https://nodewood.com/) is a Javascript SaaS boilerplate built to take advantage of using Javascript on the server and in the UI. Models, Validators, and other business logic can be re-used in both builds, so you don't have to write, rewrite, and maintain that logic in both places, or in different languages.
It has built-in subscription management (with Stripe), team management, roles and permissions, user management, an Admin Panel, a helper CLI tool, and more. It's in beta just now (with a corresponding 20% discount), but the only "missing piece" is an automated deploy system - the rest of it is in place and has been in use by customers for over a year now.
Makes me wonder if someone hasn't yet come up with a cloud based SaaS to streamline that. Something basic, ideally it would handle basic language/eco-system selection, automatic SaaSSaaS boilerplate service select, on-boarding and configuration and customization, ideally transparently federated over several vendors? Maybe a paid tier that uses CoPilot-like-AI and NoCode to come up with your idea and then execute it. SaaS4SaaS4SaaS. SaaSCubed?
Flask is to hard to setup. I setup a PHP server and dropped a PHP script in 30mins. Why can't I do the same with Python but with user mgt, auth and billing rolled in? sigh.
DocUI gives you an easy to use SDK for a Flutter UI (web and other platforms) powered by the back-end.
I will also release Nim packages which handle back-end work, including an ORM, account management, payments and other functionality. These will eventually have Python wrappers.