I was contemplating Usegravity.app or Saaspegasus.com, I'm pretty open for the language, just want a solid foundation to go fast building my SaaS idea.
I'd be thrilled to have you as a customer, and very happy to answer any questions you have about the Pegasus product, community, etc.
Almost all of the popular boilerplates mentioned here have been created by individuals 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). Many of us - including myself - are now full time on our products. So you're getting hundreds of hours of work "done for you", plus a steady stream of updates for the cost of what would typically amount to a few hours of our time as a freelancer. But I guess you're already sold on the idea of a boilerplate.
Anyway... my point is, you can't really go wrong as long as you pick one that's backed by someone who is a) experienced, and b) committed. And that's true of myself, Kyle (Gravity), Gabe (DivJoy), Andrew (Bullet Train), Chris (Jumpstart), etc.
You said you're open to the language, but in all honesty I'd say that's the most important decision criteria. 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.
+1 for saaspegasus.com as well - especially if you're looking to use django. i was looking for stripe integration and chart functionality, and really needed python as it was pretty much the only language i knew.
i would say its pretty easy to use, and the examples have helped me learn React functionality. good community that provides a lot of help, and cory (creator) is very responsive when i have needed help.
i don't have any experience with the other products mentioned here, so can't be of help there. i would guess you want to figure out your language first, before deciding which template to go with.
to consider: Stripe integration can be a little complicated to tackle on your own, so if that's a big part of what you are trying to do, i would recommend using a template. not much money and billing is probably not something you want to mess up.
+1 for SaaS Pegasus. In particular, Cory has done a wonderful job in introducing a more pragmatic approach to Javascript with Django [0]. Plus he's built a strong Slack community and is always around to support and listen to any feedback.
We re-built our SaaS product using this boilerplate and wrote about the experience [1]. TL;DR: would recommend!
A hard +1 to Jumpstart. I stan Chris a lot in the comments here, but Jumpstart combined with Hatchbox[0] is a pretty awesome mix to get started. Especially with the recent upgrades, the whole process of getting the framework up takes minutes.
If you already have customers and need to bring in some foundation for billing, yeah, a kit might be worthwhile to save some time. But when I've seen this question asked previously, it's usually before the asker has customers.
In the case you don't have customers, you can often get away with the following for an MVP and it won't take you more than an hour or two:
1. Update your org model (`account`, `company`, `organization`, or `user` object) to have an `active` attribute that indicates if they've "subscribed" or not
2. Create a `subscriptions` table that references your org model
3. Create an `invoices` table that references `subscriptions` and whatever your org model is, a `total_cents` column, a `issued_at` column, a `due_at` column, a `stripe_charge_id` column, and a `paid_at` column
4. Hook this up to Stripe with a simple callback: update the `paid_at` column and the `stripe_charge_id` column
Spend 20 minutes the first day of each month manually create these `invoices`.
It really doesn't need to be more than that. Once you have customers, you'll have a good reason to invest more time into billing.
Bullet Train (https://bullettrain.co/) is a good Rails saas starter kit. Their licensing is pretty reasonable (you can choose an annual $500/year plan or pay $1.5k upfront to get unlimited access forever). They also have a great community with a very active and responsive Slack group.
* Django → SaaSPegasus has been great. It has a nice (optional) coupling with React. I just signed up a couple days ago and the community is supportive and the out-of-the-box functionality is pretty solid
* React → DivJoy: everything Gabe builds is top notch. It's loaded with high quality integrations. If you're focused on React, this gives you a lot of customization and power.
* PSQL/GraphQL/React → Postgraphile Starter. Pretty amazing if you're willing to take a database-first approach (fully typed end-to-end system in GraphQL, Typescript, React, Next, Postgres) but make sure you know PSQL functions and are willing to track biz logic in a schema.sql file (or use plugins).
* Also checked out Blitz and Nodewood (both look cool). I looked at Bedrock, but couldn't figure out if it was actively maintained/updated (messaged the owner for a version history but never heard back.)
I'm actually in the middle of a pretty big revision of Nodewood from Vue 2 to 3 (you would not believe the number of packages that were abandoned at Vue 2 and never updated to 3, it's like Python 2->3 all over again), but then I'm planning on doing another big blitz with it.
I'd hope you come and check it back out again when that goes live!
I think before you get a recommendation, we should discuss what it means to be a good starter kit. I hate mealy mouthed "it depends" answers, but in this case the context seems especially relevant.
In one sense, the starter kit represents a lot of work in front of you: you still have to learn how it all fits together and works, how it might be modified and so forth.
It is likely that you will do better if you are familiar with the framework so I am surprised to hear that the language doesn't matter.
Finally, you want it to embody best practices so that when you do learn it, you can be assured you're learning about the best security, performance and other standards.
So the recommendation should be: this is the best, if you know Rails, this is the best if you know Django, and so on.
The best starter kit is almost an example app that you can copy, so the closer the example is to the final app you have in mind, the less you have to modify it off the bat and the longer you will have to learn it.
For price & ease of use, https://divjoy.com/ would probably be where I'd start. The community and support are great.
https://nodewood.com/ Is another option that I've come across. I've seen usegravity previously but the price is outrageous. As a developer I don't want to pay that much of a premium for stuff I could do myself. Saving a little bit of time, sure. But not at that price.
Readit News
I'd be thrilled to have you as a customer, and very happy to answer any questions you have about the Pegasus product, community, etc.
Almost all of the popular boilerplates mentioned here have been created by individuals 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). Many of us - including myself - are now full time on our products. So you're getting hundreds of hours of work "done for you", plus a steady stream of updates for the cost of what would typically amount to a few hours of our time as a freelancer. But I guess you're already sold on the idea of a boilerplate.
Anyway... my point is, you can't really go wrong as long as you pick one that's backed by someone who is a) experienced, and b) committed. And that's true of myself, Kyle (Gravity), Gabe (DivJoy), Andrew (Bullet Train), Chris (Jumpstart), etc.
You said you're open to the language, but in all honesty I'd say that's the most important decision criteria. 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.
Good luck!
i would say its pretty easy to use, and the examples have helped me learn React functionality. good community that provides a lot of help, and cory (creator) is very responsive when i have needed help.
i don't have any experience with the other products mentioned here, so can't be of help there. i would guess you want to figure out your language first, before deciding which template to go with.
to consider: Stripe integration can be a little complicated to tackle on your own, so if that's a big part of what you are trying to do, i would recommend using a template. not much money and billing is probably not something you want to mess up.
We re-built our SaaS product using this boilerplate and wrote about the experience [1]. TL;DR: would recommend!
[0] https://www.saaspegasus.com/guides/modern-javascript-for-dja...
[1] https://davidkell.substack.com/p/davids-opinionated-guide-fo...
It's very polished. Kept up to date. Follows best practices for RoR. The author is one of the most active RoR community members.
https://excid3.com/
edit:
If you like PHP then https://spark.laravel.com/ is an official Laravel project. I haven't used it but I've seen discussions where folks recommend it.
[0] https://www.hatchbox.io/
Also used Hatchbox in another project (startup w customers), it definitely was worth the money.
For fun and giggles: this is what happened when I wanted to quickly build a side project after not coding for a while (using jumpstart to go faster) https://twitter.com/ddccffvv/status/1430967157404340228
I considered this too: https://www.getsjabloon.com/.
Deleted Comment
In the case you don't have customers, you can often get away with the following for an MVP and it won't take you more than an hour or two:
Spend 20 minutes the first day of each month manually create these `invoices`.It really doesn't need to be more than that. Once you have customers, you'll have a good reason to invest more time into billing.
* Django → SaaSPegasus has been great. It has a nice (optional) coupling with React. I just signed up a couple days ago and the community is supportive and the out-of-the-box functionality is pretty solid
* React → DivJoy: everything Gabe builds is top notch. It's loaded with high quality integrations. If you're focused on React, this gives you a lot of customization and power.
* PSQL/GraphQL/React → Postgraphile Starter. Pretty amazing if you're willing to take a database-first approach (fully typed end-to-end system in GraphQL, Typescript, React, Next, Postgres) but make sure you know PSQL functions and are willing to track biz logic in a schema.sql file (or use plugins).
* Also checked out Blitz and Nodewood (both look cool). I looked at Bedrock, but couldn't figure out if it was actively maintained/updated (messaged the owner for a version history but never heard back.)
Thanks for bringing it up!
I'm actually in the middle of a pretty big revision of Nodewood from Vue 2 to 3 (you would not believe the number of packages that were abandoned at Vue 2 and never updated to 3, it's like Python 2->3 all over again), but then I'm planning on doing another big blitz with it.
I'd hope you come and check it back out again when that goes live!
In one sense, the starter kit represents a lot of work in front of you: you still have to learn how it all fits together and works, how it might be modified and so forth.
It is likely that you will do better if you are familiar with the framework so I am surprised to hear that the language doesn't matter.
Finally, you want it to embody best practices so that when you do learn it, you can be assured you're learning about the best security, performance and other standards.
So the recommendation should be: this is the best, if you know Rails, this is the best if you know Django, and so on.
The best starter kit is almost an example app that you can copy, so the closer the example is to the final app you have in mind, the less you have to modify it off the bat and the longer you will have to learn it.
https://github.com/smirnov-am/awesome-saas-boilerplates
https://nodewood.com/ Is another option that I've come across. I've seen usegravity previously but the price is outrageous. As a developer I don't want to pay that much of a premium for stuff I could do myself. Saving a little bit of time, sure. But not at that price.