Day 9: Scaling Open Source — Why we built a dual-gateway e-commerce engine (Stripe + Freemius)
Scaling an open-source project means nailing your monetization architecture. Here’s a peek under the hood at the technical stack powering the upcoming NextBlock™ CMS Store.
Instead of forcing a single payment gateway to do everything, we built a hybrid e-commerce engine on our Next.js 16 and Supabase backend. We specifically split our gateway traffic to use the absolute best tool for each job.
Here is why our Premium E-Commerce package runs a dual-gateway system:
📦 Physical Goods = Stripe
When it comes to handling physical products (like our upcoming merch), Stripe is undefeated.
The Tech: We route our physical transactions through Stripe to leverage its seamless checkout UI, robust fulfillment webhooks, and—crucially—its automated global tax sync.
💻 Digital Software Licenses = Freemius
Selling software is fundamentally different from selling t-shirts. We integrated Freemius natively because it is a purpose-built powerhouse for digital license management.
The Tech: Freemius handles our premium package license key generation, activation limits, renewals, and secure digital delivery out of the box.
The DevX Win: This saved us hundreds of engineering hours so we didn't have to build and maintain a complex, proprietary licensing server from scratch.
🌍 Native Multi-Currency Support
NextBlock is a global project, so the store needs to be global too.
We engineered built-in multi-currency routing.
Whether users are buying physical goods via Stripe or digital premium packages via Freemius, they get localized pricing.
This drastically reduces checkout friction and increases conversions.
Building a decoupled e-commerce architecture isn't always the easiest path, but it ensures we have the most robust, scalable foundation for both our own store and our users' stores.
Want to see it in action? The NextBlock Beta is currently open. Jump in and test the frictionless checkout in our sandbox! 👇
#BuildInPublic #Nextjs16 #Supabase #Stripe #Freemius #OpenSource #SaaS #WebDevelopment #IndieHackers
