Shall I use a Boilerplate for my SaaS? Any Recommendations [Node.js]?
I'm pretty confused about using a Boilerplate or not and if yes, do you have any recommendations. Also, keep in mind I don't have fancy budget. Thanks.
Trending on Indie Hackers
I just bought https://divjoy.com/ last week and have really enjoyed it. Would be great if you want to get up and running quick to test stuff out.
Not free, but I've heard good things about https://usegravity.app from @kylegawley
Thank you for the mention Derek :-)
Check out my list of SaaS boilerplates
Navigate to Tools > Full-stack boilerplates
Boilerplates are awesome in my opinion.
I've personally found this boilerplate to be best fitting for my projects: https://github.com/hagopj13/node-express-boilerplate
MongoDB, JWT, security in mind and a nice file structure make this boilerplate really easy to use.
I really enjoy that boilerplate as well! A question that I've repeatedly had about it though is how you handle the JWT token storage. Do you modify the server to store the refresh token in a cookie and only send the access token to the client? Or do you store them in localstorage which I bleive is not secure? I just haven't found a good tutorial on hooking up a front end. I asked about it in that repos discussion tab: https://github.com/hagopj13/node-express-boilerplate/discussions/65
The way I see it is that using something ready can speed things up at the very beginning, but sometimes it can take longer to properly customize stuff to your needs than just building from scratch. Not always, but it can happen easily with something more than a very basic app IMO.
Yes, building authentication, billing, user management etc is a colossal waste of time and money. A boilerplate will allow you to focus on the features that provide value and get your product into the hands of customers faster.
Yes, the quicker you can get started the better. There are plenty of free boilerplates on Github.
@BenBrewer has just posted this if it is of any use https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-just-open-sourced-my-firebase-react-typescript-reusable-webapp-template-3f290169c3 @Prajwal
It depends on when and for what. Overall, boilerplate is a good starting point for anything, just so you can start getting something without spending many hours settings things up from scratch.
Often times, a boilerplate will need to be ripped apart and re-composed, just so you can tune it to match production needs, but it is definitely worth the usage at start when you care more about getting something working in general, rather than a finished product.
I generally tend to focus more on the product aspect rather than technical, so tend to use tools which speed up development. If it is successful - you'll have time to optimize or hire someone to do it. But at start - speed matters.
I tend to use a NodeJS based stack, where APIs would get generated using protoforce (https://www.protoforce.io/) or swagger (swagger.io), and the front-end then using react with some off the shelf framework, such as blueprintjs (https://blueprintjs.com/) or material (https://material-ui.com/).
Hey Prajwal, I just released a paid-for node + react app generator on Indie Hackers here: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/sapling
One thing I'm focusing on is a "data-modeling" piece where you define data types in our app and then full stack CRUD will be generated for you (React forms, Express API + PostgreSQL DB code).
https://www.udemy.com/course/saasify-build-a-complete-saas-app-this-weekend/
Try out my course if you want a boilerplate and a tutorial to go with it .
Yeah I'd highly recommend it. Setting up a new project from scratch is such a huge time sink.
If you're talking about just a frontend theme then there's a lot of good ones here: https://themeforest.net/category/site-templates?tags=react .