Beginner (cheap) friendly AI Tech Stack

Hello Indie Hackers!

This post is officially certified by me. Who am I? I built and sold 5 easy peasy nocode AI apps on Acquire last year. So take it for what its worth. Once, I spent an entire year coding something I eventually ditched. Needless to say, didn't feel too good. If you have an idea, build it quick, see what happens, make it better, and if need be, code it down the road. This should help you save time and money. Enjoy.

Tech Stack:

Hosting/Database/Almost everything - Bubble.io ($32/month)
Email - Loops.so or Sendgrid.com (free plan)
Analytics - Google Analytics
Event Tracking - Logsnag.com or clarity.microsoft.com (free plan)
AI - OpenAI (I'll get into other popular choices below)
Error Handling - Sentry.io (free plan)
Domain name - Porkbun.com or www.dynadot.com (cheapest and lowest renewels)

Domain Name:
95% of the time Porkbun will have the lowest pricing and the lowest renewals. Plus, their support is out of this world helpful and you talk to a real human almost instantly. Recently, Dynadot became the cheapest registrar for .ai domains and their DNS/Nameservers are intuitive.

If you don't think this project will last longer than a year, go with whatever registrar has the cheapest first year registration. When I was starting out I registered my domain at GoDaddy. And while their support is good if you become a domain addict their pricing will soon add up.

Error Handling:

Sentry, it's free (limited) and while not a must have right off the bat once you start see what's happening on your site you'll soon become a mini detective. Their emails can get slightly annoying but for free can't complain. LogSnag and Clarity also cover errors so this is really a personal preference.

AI:

This is certainly a case by case basis depending on what your project does. And with Bubble you will be limited in your scope. To make things simple I'd go with OpenAI since there are tons of tutorials out there, great documentation, and it seems they only lower their pricing (how is that possible?).

Before OpenAI had voice, ElevenLabs was (and still is) a great option. Especially if you want to spice things up and add a variety of voices. Play around with both and see which is better for your project.

Audio Transcription: OpenAI. However, if you need more features like transcribing multiple speakers Assembly.AI is a better option. Instead of going down the road of every AI I'd start with OpenAI and if not possible google, X, IndieHackers search what you're looking for and test it out.

Recently, a product, RepurposePie (Tweets to AI Video) launched and it is a super cool idea. However, this isn't an easy build in Bubble as Bubble doesn't do well with anything Video or Audio editing related.

Event Tracking:

Clarity does everything something expensive does and it is 100% free so that raises some alarm bells for me. Setting it up is as easy as pasting your Clarity ID into the Bubble Plugin Connector.

I recently found LogSnag and I'm pretty sure it is built by an Indie Hacker. Very well done, great documentation, and tons of features. If you project blows up I'd consider supporting him.

Analytics:

Google Analytics. I know I know. Everyone hates it. If you have privacy concerns Plausible, Fathom, or Simple Analytics are great choices but they tend to range around 15 bucks a month.

Email:

My new go to is Loops.so. They have both transactional emails and an easy to use marketing email builder. They charge by the user so this is helpful if you plan on sending tons of emails. So far, deliverability has been top notch.

Sendgrid gives you 3000 free emails a month. However, their deliverability leaves much to be desired. It's also annoying to set up an account with multiple 2FA and a 16 character password.

If you have a few bucks PostMark is a great option for 10,000 emails a month for $15. Their deliverability is spot on.

Hosting/Database/functionality:

Depending on what you are building Bubble.io is probably the right fit. There are tons of options. If you want a simple directory site an option is Softr.io with an Airtable database. Other nocode options tend to get more complex and quickly add up in pricing.

I'd start with YouTube tutorials but if you're looking for a good course anything by NoCodeLife aka Kieran Drew is really informative. Heard good things about Matt Neary's course.

The thing that makes Bubble the best nocode option is they have an API connector and if need be you can add JavaScript for more custom functionality. The learning curve is fairly steep but if you're looking to launch quickly I highly recommend it.

That's it. That's the tech stack.

It is what I used to just build https://starterbuild.com/. As of now, StarterBuild is a boring AI Business Report Generator. Going to launch a bunch of free tools on Product Hunt and see what users need. The plan for this is to target the general public via TikTok and IG Reels. Eventually, I want it to be the go to place for people launching new projects, apps, or businesses.

It is going to be a full on marketing effort and when needed I will rebuild it in code (Ruby). If you have a product that isn't a dev tool and is more geared to the general population I'd love to host it on the site if you offer a discount (great for anyone with an affiliate program (I don't want an affiliate link)). Dorik (a great easy website builder) was the first app I reached out to and they agreed.

May edit this post later when I think of all the things I forgot. Thanks!