SaaS Starter Kit for Node.js
Hey everyone!
I've been hard at work building a SaaS starter kit for rapidly shipping and testing new applications.
It's essentially a shell application with:
• authentication
• subscription payments (with Stripe)
• user/team manage
• transactional emails
• landing page
• GDPR compliant legal docs
• complete UI kit
I'm going to release this as a commercial product (similar to Railskits or Bullettrain) but for Node.js.
I'd love to get some feedback on the viability of this and my pricing model. I've put up a basic landing page here: http://usegravity.herokuapp.com
My main questions are:
-
Would you pay for a a product like this that could save you weeks of development time/costs and eliminate the need for hiring a designer?
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What features am I missing? For v2.0 I'll be adding SaaS metrics, integrations with accounting packages, and lots more.
Thanks for your help 🙏🏻
'No future updates' would worry me, can these updates be broken into essential/ security updates vs. major new features.
Good point – noted & thank you.
I've updated the tiers and split updates by critical and new features. Thanks for the suggestion! :-)
I like what you're doing, but I think the pricing is pretty steep. I know it's a different technology, but a very similar product - Laravel Spark is "Just $99 Per Site. $299 For Unlimited Sites." Note, however, that I'm not happy about Spark's quality and lack of activity on filed issues, so make sure you provide excellent support and don't ignore reported bugs. I'm giving this as an example to compare pricing.
I know there's a thing Laravel Wave coming, but the pricing is not available yet. https://wave.devdojo.com/
Good luck with your product!
Thanks Michał, I was basing the pricing off a few Rails competitors such as Railskits and Bullettrain who are similar prices.
Also, it's taken me weeks to build this, so for someone paying a dev to do the same work, it's going to cost a lot more than what I'm charging.
Oh I'm sure it's going to cost a lot more to charge a developer to do the same. I meant that you should probably do pricing sensitivity research in your market instead of doing competition-based pricing, because it may turn out pricing it at 50% what you have right now would give you 4x more users. Just food for thought.
I think you're right. I've dropped the pricing down to match Spark, which I think is a much more affordable entry price for solopreneurs.
I hope this move actually brings you more total revenue than the previous pricing model. Good luck :)!
These are the points what I did for my side hustle with nodejs stack that can add value and reduce indie hackers time
Helmet npm ( security ) dependency for all routes
Support CI with gitlab deployment in seconds to the live servers
SSL support with letsencrypt - may be automated with the shell script
pm2 integration
Good ORM Stack ( sequelize ) that takes all my SQL query load and prevents injections until you run the raw query
Slack Integration when my server fails with an exception
Log integration
Well defined production and development env support
Scalable session management with Redis/mongo support
Nginx complete setup to handle blog, support, client domains subdomain for the project.
These are the things which I have made myself as a boilerplate for my nodejs project which reduces my whole time. rather I spend on product roadmap, customer support and even more than debugging issues in nodejs. Obviously, this fails twice a month but pm2 does the job for me in restarting the server and make it perfect
I would not sell my code, but just making everyone aware that if these problems that I found it and solved before entering into the SaaS development.
Remember you can't give the commitment to the customer and debug an issue in deployment in future. so, make sure to automate from the first commit.
PS : we were able to gain good traction of customers past 6 months and we're now totally concentrating on product development.
This is very helpful. Thank you :-)
Hi !
Cool project, but personally I don't have so much money to buy it while I may have the time to build it myself. It is surely useful but I think that a lot of people just don't have enough money.
One little crazy idea, you can charge users depending on the revenue that they earn with apps done with your boilerplate.
Thank you Marco. I think my target market is probably going to be non-technical founders. It's going to be a hard sell to developers, but a non-tech founder is going to be more concerned with saving time, getting to market faster - rather than wanting to do everything themselves.
A SaaS is generally a poor fit for non-tech founders. It's also a small segment of the larger market of "stuff you can build with Laravel Spark or Bullet Train".
I can understand the marketing advantages of going for a niche, but wouldn't online stores or membership sites be a better fit than selling software (as a service) for those who are a bit less comfortable writing software?
There's a tonne of products out there for building online stores and membership sites already, and it would be difficult for me to compete with products like Shopify.
That's because it's a great market for semi-technical entrepreneurs! Laravel Spark is probably the best of the existing options. I'd seriously recommend checking it out.
ok, anyway cool the rocket image, did you do it by yourself or you took it from a website?
It's a stock image, I'll probably replace it with a video
Your app is down/not responding?
Oops, sorry. Try: http://usegravity.herokuapp.com
Problems with SSL :-)
I would be interested in seeing a blog that outlines what choices you made on the stack!
I think this is a great idea! I can build ML models and APIs, but I'm hopeless at building the rest of the stack (front end, authentication, user management, payments etc). Right now, I've outsourced that part - although I get exactly what I want with that arrangement.
I'd want a try-before-you-buy option though, as it might not do all I need or might be difficult for me to customize. For example, for my app, a user dashboard would need to include a document library that they can upload docs to and share, so I'd need to see if I could customise your code to do that.
But, you know what, I think the pricing is quite fair, so long as there's a way you can allow people to try it out. I'd be prepared to pay the asking price to use something like this for future projects.
I think the pricing is too high, I'm going to drop the entry level package to $99 for the features I have right now.
The other tiers will then provide the more advanced features coming in the future, like SaaS metrics, Xero integration and a host of other stuff.
I'm pleased to hear that you've been outsourcing that stuff 👍
I totally get that people have more time than money in a lot of cases but spending weeks building standardised SaaS features doesn't make good business sense when that time should be spent building USP features that are going to generate revenue.
So I need to find a price point where it's clear that risking a little cash makes sense if it means getting to market faster. Or even getting to failure faster.
Part of my motivation for building this was to allow me to deploy products fast, test them and either trash them or continue then. Time is precious!
Yes, I'd love to do a try before you buy option but I'm not sure how. Once I give away the code as a download, I'm relying on people's honesty to pay up.
Maybe you can have a trial version with a couple of features removed, e.g. Stripe integration
Hi Kyle,
As other commenters have said, there can be a bit of developer ego at play or simply irrational frugality involved in paying a not insignificant sum for code which they could write themselves.
If this saves a few weeks of development work on spinning up a new project, then logically from a purely business sense, it should be a no brainer.
But developers are often not rational (I include myself here). It's not just about building the business, it's the fun involved in writing the software and solving the problems along the way (although legal docs definitely aren't fun, so I'd definitely want those).
All that said, given that there are similar offerings for other platforms who've been around for a few years (BulletTrain as you mentioned), there are obviously people who pay for this type of thing. I don't know what size their market is but I don't see any particular reason why it shouldn't work for Node.js developers like it does with Rails. And I do think that your pricing is in the right ballpark if you want to make this profitable as a one-time payment model. To first-time indie devs that's a lot of money but to a company that's probably half a day's salary of one of their employees.
Have you done any research into the types of customers that are paying for the likes of BulletTrain? Are they mainly single developers or are they teams within companies? What type of companies are they (product divisions in established businesses, funded startups, etc)?
Also, I'll play devil's advocate a bit — do you plan on starting development on your v2.0 features before you've any paying customers? How will these new features help you validate your product idea?
Best of luck and keep us posted.
Hey Paul,
I didn't know you were on here :-)
Thanks for the feedback. I agree, the developer ego is going to be a massive obstacle. It's becoming clear that my market is probably not going to be developers working on passionate side projects and who want to enjoy the journey of building something in their spare time.
For me, I don't want to waste weeks of my life writing authentication and billing code when I should be focused on writing code that is going to bring in revenue. Not to mention, that writing these features isn't the fun part of building a new project.
Another market segment that is probably more viable is freelancers building products for other people. If someone is billing on an hourly basis to develop a project, and they can essentially cut out weeks of development time and still charge for it – then it should absolutely be a no brainer to use something like this).
Re: v2.0 – I have a feature roadmap but I won't be building anything until I sell some copies of v1.0.
Freelancers building products for other people certainly sounds like it has potential. 👍
Hope Thailand is treating you well btw :-)
Update: added a demo video and some updated copy: https://usegravity.app
I think this is a really great initiative. I just get worried about who'll buy it.
First time builders hate spending on anything. Like, not a dollar. Just their seemingly infinite time.
Second (or more) time builders have done it before and don't feel the pain as much (and maybe have their own templates)
Am I wrong? That's just what I feel from spending time with these people.
Way out of my price range, but I definitely see where you're coming from! I absolutely hate writing boiler plate code, and I think I'd build out more ideas to test if I could go from idea to launch more quickly.
The "missing" (more like potential) features are limitless. File uploads, SSL (like others mentioned), built-in release tools, sharing tools (maybe your teams thing covers that). I could go through each step of building a new app from start to domain/server/release and think of a million things to help :)
Thanks Andrew. What kind of price would be within your range?
I have more time than money, so I'm probably not a good target. I've built 4 apps that I actually released without success. If I went about MVPs correctly and was reasonably sure about a project, I might be willing to pay for something that speeds up the time to market, but until then, I can't justify paying for stuff I can do myself decently.
I can do all you mentioned above but I will still buy (my only concern is price, I feel its a bit high).
Time is a very important factor in configuring these things.
Suggestion: Also include chat tools like Crisp, Google Analytics, UptimeMonitor linking etc. Also please make it firebase supported :)
What price do you feel would be fair?
~ $100.
How about different versions BASE features and FULL featured version with different prices.
I've dropped the entry level tier down to $99 based on yours and a few others feedback :-) Thank you for the input
I will bookmark your product and will surly consider it for my next product.
Awesome, thank you! :-)
A demo would be perfect for this concept. Link right next to the "Buy Now" button.
Noted :-)
For me, as a semi-technical founder with no engineer to help and limited time, this proposition is right up my street. I'd want to see a bunch more than a static landing page, (demo, or a free trial for example) to give me confidence at that price though.
Added in a demo video: https://usegravity.app :-)
I agree, I'm still trying to figure out how a trial could work. I'd thought about a 30 day money back guarantee but my whole business model will be dependant on people's honesty as it would be easy for anyone to download the code, then claim a refund.
I'm in the same boat (my product is single purchase, at which point you have everything.)
I'm hoping videos and a demo of a very cut down version will do it for me, plus customer recommendations. But we'll see!
Does it offer than just a landing page?
There's a landing and price page on the front end, then back end has sign up, sign in, dashboard, account/billing/password settings and user management. Adding more pages is as simple as copying and pasting the UI elements from the docs into a new view.
Hey I've noticed there isn't anything like omnipay/cashier for the nodejs ecosystem. Would be good to develop something like that cause I would like to use different payment gateways other than stripe.
Given how Node is a fundamentally different offering from an MVC framework, how would you appeal to the same sorts of Rapid Application Development use case that Bullet Train or Laravel Spark?
Have you considered building on top of something like Sails.js instead of just Node/Express?
I've build this using an MVC pattern. Looking at a Sails.js integration is on my ideas list for the future.
The stack is almost similar with what I used for chartbrew.com 😀 I can definitely see the potential for this. To answer your questions:
I would personally not pay for something like this mainly because I have quite a few years of experience doing this so it won't take me that long to set up something like this + software engineer ego screaming not to pay for something I can do
Connecting point 1 to this, I can see market potential where people are not that experienced to set up something like this. That means that your customers might be people that learn how to code or that haven't coded before. So a good area to focus on might be crystal clear documentation and tutorials. Basically you want your customers to feel good using your product and achieve success and then the word will spread.
Best of luck with this and keep us posted with how you're getting on 🙌
Thanks Raz! I think the market is definitely developers, or at least founders who are hiring a developer. The latter is probably better because I think a lot of developers are going to suffer from the ego issue you're describing.
I tried to buy but it doesn't work :) Great idea by the way! One remark - I would prefer to have MongoDB (and mLab integration in particular) instead of MySQL as DB. Oh and Firebase integration for users management. Also it would be great to have a demo to check all the functionality "live". And is the Front End solution SEO friendly?
Thanks for the feedback Alex, this is helpful! I haven't set up the ability to purchase yet, I just wanted to get the page up to gather some feedback.
Good points about the database, adding other options for these is something I'll be looking at in v2.0.
The front-end is range of components, so it's up to the developer to ensure that everything is SEO friendly when he's putting it together.
Thanks Kyle, please also add a mailing list to your landing page (like a Drip style one). I would like to subscribe to your project's updates in case I will need one in the future. Also from SEO perspective it would be great if you will have an open source version of your app template maintained on Github. First it will help to check code and get support (like issues), and second - improve your product retention. I would say the usual customer journey for your product will be. 1. Need to bootstrap an idea 2. Google Node.js apps templates with stripe integration 3. Visit your Github open source page 4. Check issues. 5. Check code quality 6. Install. 7. A couple of months after check the full version 8. Convinced by value (calculated by how much will need to spend money/time to build premium features) 8. Buy. Good luck!
Also please don't build version 2! Market version 1 and sell it at least to 10 people founders/companies/startups before jump to build new features. Next on pricing. Ask yourself who is your ideal customer? Small startup teams usually have tech founders and able to build the app like this in 3-4 weeks. Time is not a problem for them as well and usually they need a very custom solution (that coupled tight to their tech skills, especially front-end ones). Self tech founders (like me) don't have money on a start and would never pay 1k$ for something they can build in 1-2 months by nights and weekend. But I would consider use your app template to start the app as a non-tech founder who has money to hire freelancer, modify the app to the point of MVP readiness and instead of spending 2-3 months of development launch the idea in just 1-1.5 months. Next. So you're saving a non-tech founder 1 month of freelancer's payment. Freelancers have a rate 30-40$ per hour (you will hire a decent one), so you saving non-tech founder ~$4-5k. So price it as: 999$, 1499$, 2999$ based on tiers (split them by features). And you have to have open sourced, bare boned version of the app on Github to attract dev's and non-tech founders in a first place.
I think this type of service is needed, the question is what is the price point and pricing structure.
Would probably not buy, but I can't tell since there's no demo of an app built with it or screenshots of what exactly I'll be getting.
I'm also a dev that enjoys design and often only use solutions that I find technically sound enough (not saying that yours isn't, it's just hard to tell on the outside). Probably not your target market.
Thanks, Mike! A demo video is something I'll be adding to the homepage before launch.
Personally not a fan of videos, some screenshots would be great so I can get a quick look without having to hit any buttons. (Or better yet, a gallery of a few websites built with your tool)
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