SaaS boilerplate – mind-blowing
Building your own SaaS application you have to code a lot of things. But what if I will tell you, it’s not necessary? I want to introduce SaaS boilerplates. Yes, something like this exists. And it’s good!
A little background.
I started to interest in the SaaS business something about a year ago. Quite short time. In the beginning, I thought that you have to do everything by yourself. Code everything from scratch. Why was I so mad? Well, I’m not sure now. There were a few arguments behind this approach, for example. If you have everything in the codebase, you can modify everything as you want. But one thing I was missing. Coding everything is indeed better for the product than having it in some nocode tool. But… You don’t have to code it on your own. Really.
There is a SaaS boilerplate!
SaaS boilerplate is a way to start developing your app, not from scratch. That boilerplate has a lot of common functionalities. You don’t have to write an implementation of pricing or user management. It’s not important what language you want to use. You can find saas boilerplate for almost all languages. I will create a list of the best in the future. Most languages are Ruby, Python, and Node.js but I saw some boilerplate in C# and Go lang. It sounds pretty amazing.
Two types of SaaS boilerplate
Like other code projects, SaaS boilerplates come in two different ways. Commercial and open source. Which one will be better for you? I have no idea. But I can tell you what differences you can expect between this two.
Commercial
It’s pretty easy to understand. You have to pay if you want to use this boilerplate. But with money comes other possibilities. First of all, when you pay for a service like that, you can expect some support from the creator/seller of this boilerplate. It’s crucial. When you are stuck somewhere, you will have someone to ask for help. Next, when you pay for some code boilerplate, it should have good documentation. Free boilerplates do not always have a good one.
Open source
Free, open-source boilerplates are the opposite of paid ones. You can find a lot of this on Github. Open source projects are viral this day in the dev world. If you found a popular SaaS boilerplate, you can count on the community created around this solution. Not all free projects are popular, but if you want to use an open-source one, you have to search for the community. It’s crucial.
How to pick a SaaS boilerplate for you?
There is a bunch of things which you have to check before you decide which boilerplate to use. Below you have short list of this elements:
- Price
- Documentation – check if it’s exist and is it good
- Community – did this boilerplate has any community?
- Support – is there any support or someone who can help in case of problems?
- Growth perspective – check is boilerplate still maintained and if there some people interested in this
- Technological stack – check what languages are used in this project
Check this six elements of SaaS boilerplate before you decide to use it in your project. It will save you a lot of time and maybe even money.
Use boilerplates!
Do not reinvent the wheel! I was there, and this approach doesn’t lead anywhere. If you try to code everything by yourself, you will be stuck on some unimportant part of your application, and you will never ship your SaaS project to your clients. It’s a bad way to do it. Just take what you can find on the Internet and put your app together as soon as possible. This approach will allow you to do some amazing stuff.
Hope this post will help you to move forward with your SaaS idea! If you have some question feel free to ask in the comment section or on my Twitter @rog_saas !
See you next time!
