Introduction

In a quest to learn Django & Vue, I found a project, SaaS Pegasus, that had great examples of how to build a software as a service using that stack.

A few commands later I had a working project locally with:

• Stripe integration

• A Postgres database

• A cron job runner connected to Redis

• Authentication and authorization

• Configured webpack

• A project hierarchy

• Naming conventions

and I'm probably missing much more the project provides.

Should I use a SaaS starter?

Yes. Unequivocally yes.

Save yourself time, money, and effort & spend those resources finding product-market fit instead of setting up auth for the thousandth time.

Node coding the app yourself? Cool. Generate the codebase in a language your developer knows and hand it to them. You'll save one week of consulting fees and plenty of wasted time.

List of SaaS Starters by language

React SaaS starters

Divjoy

In the past, I've used Divjoy to jump start my Next.js software projects. I built:

• QuickerQuestions (abandoned, wrote about it here)

• QuarantineCup (a free to play remote drinking game)

What's included

• UI kit integration (Bootstrap, Bulma, or MaterialUI)

• Can generate Next.js or Create-React-App projects

• Auth (Firebase or Auth0)

• Database (Firebase)

• Stripe integration

• Vercel or Netlify hosting configurations

• Newsletter integration (Mailchimp)

• Contact forms (Amazon SES, Google Sheets, Formspree, Airtable)

• Analytics (Simple Analytics, Google Analytics)

Pros

• High quality React code

• Author actively develops features & is easy to get in touch with

• Long list of included features

• Visual editor

Cons

• No TailwindUI integration

• No Supabase or AWS Amplify option for database

• No opinion on your backend architecture

Price: $149 one-time purchase

If you'd like more info, I've written an extensive review of Divjoy and keep it updated as new features launch.

Gravity

Note: I have not used Gravity, this information is all publicly available info on their marketing website.

What's included

• Payments with Stripe

• React UI

• REST API with Auth

• Email with Mailgun

• Admin / user management UI

• Onboarding flow

• Pre-built components

• Team support

• Authentication and Authorization

• Pick your database (MySQL, Mongo, Postgres, SQLite and more with Knex & Mongoose)

Pros

• Seems pretty fully featured

• Comes with Slack Community & 1 yr of support

• One of the few with "user onboarding"

Cons

• One of the higher prices

Price: $795

Their tagline is as follows:

Save $16,403 by not writing these 10,000+ lines of code

A bold claim, but this starter includes a lot of features and lines of code.

Node SaaS starters

Gravity

We mentioned Gravity just above this and it uses a Node MVC backend.

Have you considered Next?

If you're a Node dev, I'd encourage you to check out the Next.js projects as well. Next.js is essentially an opinionated Express project with some great integrations and defaults.

I wrote a post explaining why React developers should use Next.js — check it out!

Next SaaS starters

Next.js Subscription Payments

I'm using this starter right now for a project I have not yet launched. Under the hood it uses Supabase.

In depth review coming soon

Price: $0 – it's open source!

Divjoy

We talked about Divjoy a few sections up. It has the ability to generate Next.js projects as well as Create-React-App projects.

Django SaaS starters

SaaS Pegasus

I purchased this starter to learn what a mature Django & Vue architecture could look like.

What's included

• Stripe integration

• A Postgres database

• A cron job runner connected to Redis

• Authentication and authorization

• Great documentation

Pros

• This is some of the best documentation I've seen with a starter project

• The interactive examples make creating your own functionality a breeze. Copy and paste. Done.

Cons

• Honestly, hard to think of any if this is your tech stack of choice