Launchr
Launchr is a SaaS starter template
One of the most tedious tasks when setting up a new project is to implement the whole payment flow and subscription management. Especially for a SaaS backend which needs to know about the current subscription state of every single user.
Launchr, the Open Source SaaS starter template for Django, now has full Stripe integration. I've updated the code last week and just finished the first iteration on the documentation for it.
If Django is your go-to framework or if your are new to web development and want to create your first SaaS, make sure to check it out. It's also on GitHub.
In May last year I decided to put the Launchr project on hold, mostly due to time constrains. Now it's time to relaunch it!
Launchr is a starter template to build a fully functional SaaS with Django.
I've redesigned the landing page, began to write more documentation and completely updated the repository on GitHub.
Overall, I think this makes it easier to understand what value Launchr provides and also makes it easier to approach.
What do you guys think? Have you ever used a starter template before?
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Does this handle subscription payments and that whole flow? The details are kinda sparse on what exactly is implemented.
I would totally have used this for my app if it was available at the time we started.
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Exactly. The whole payment flow, plan selection + subscription management, all of it via Stripe. I'm currently sitting on a list of all implemented features and pages. Should be available in the coming days.
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Very cool, I'm going to try it out. I've been learning Django so that I can put together a SaaS offer, but it is slow going when starting from scratch. This will save me a lot of time and frustration!
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Awesome. Let me know if you get stuck at some point. This will help me decide on what documentation to write next.
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I've decided to put Launchr on hold for the foreseeable future. Since I got engaged in lots of different other projects in the last couple of months, I've found myself in a position where I simply wasn't able to work on it anymore due to time constraints.
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Hi Jannis, my name is ed I've just checked out the git repo and the video....slick! Really liked it. I've been coding for about 1000 years, although mostly java, I do have some python experience and a little Django. Most was with PyGame and Web2py. Code is code, right? Anyway shout if you would possibly consider a helping hand on the project, I'm looking for something similar and who knows it might just lead to something substantial. ed@littlebuddhadigital.com
I redesigned the landing page for Launchr, an Open Source SaaS starter template: https://getlaunchr.com/
While I'm still heavily working on the code (and making good progress), I wanted to redesign the landing page which was basically just a coming soon page before.
My goals with the landing page are to get some initial interest for the project and to show what to expect from it without going into much detail.
What do you think? From looking at the landing page alone, do you know what this is?
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Thanks!
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Hi! It seems that the web site is down! What happen?
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Just restarted the server, should be working again :)
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Nice! Is your demo template from creative-tim?
https://demos.creative-tim.com/argon-design-system/examples/landing.html -
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what did you use to create the landing page? A template?
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Wonderful design! Which tool did you use to make these shapes and bubbles?
I guess, a demo video instead of a screenshot would made it even more clear.
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The design is great! I also agree with @volkandkaya you should definitely put more screen shots of what it looks like.
Also make the email capture bigger, with a stronger CTA. Something like get notified when we launch. (P.S. early adopters get special pricing/features). This will allow you to have a bigger list to market too when you are ready to do a full launch.
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Hi, the text on the little window with an open website is a bit small for my test, but the rest is just perfect. No kidding.
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Love the design. Very easy to read and easy on the eye. Love it!
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Looks good.
For the landing page I recommend showing screenshots of the actual web app such as pricing pages, login screens and user permissions.
Also I would remove the idea of you handling the marketing site for them.
Have them host the web app on app.example.com and recommend they use something else to build the marketing site.
I may be biased because I run a marketing site builder, but unless the SaaS app requires the marketing site and web app to be connected I wouldn't recommend it.
I have done it before and to make changes you have to push code to the master branch for no reason, and if you grow and hire non-technical people they can't change the marketing site.
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This comment was deleted 4 years ago
With launchr.io I’m trying to build the perfect starter template for Indiehackers. My goal is to make it extremely easy to start a new project. Someone using the template should be able to focus on the idea right away instead of writing tons and tons of boilerplate code. Ideally, it should only take a couple of minutes from initial setup to a working website with all the core features for a fully functional SaaS.
Currently, my main focus is on a set of strong base features. First and foremost, user login and signup flow in conjunction with payment/subscription processing. I’m planning to fully support Paddle and probably Stripe at launch. As a user, setting up payment processing should be a matter of copying API tokens and adding plans to the project - that’s it.
In order to launch fast, the template also ships with a beautiful design. This includes examples, a functional pricing page, a user dashboard and templates for privacy policy and terms of service.
On top of that, I’m also planning on adding a little feature that allows to control user signups. Setting the site in beta mode locks everything down to a simple form which collects email addresses. These can be used to send out invites for a small group of people to test the service. Perfect for Indiehackers who want to launch on sites like BetaList prior to their official launch.
I’m currently expecting to be ready in a couple of weeks. Launchr is Open Source, if you want to follow me building it, take a look at: https://github.com/jayfk/launchr
If you want to take a look at a demo site, check out https://demo.launchr.io/
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This looks nice and I’m also glad it’s in Python, which is one of my go-to languages and there’s a lack of SaaS templates for it.
However I’d be curious to see it actually in use.
My main question: how tricky will it be to deploy? Would it support most VPS setups?
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Deployments will be super easy. Thanks to Docker, you can deploy the template on any VPS/cloud provider. All you really need to do is to install Docker + Docker Compose and point your DNS to your server.
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That’s awesome. Sounds super easy!
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there’s a lack of SaaS templates for it.
Hmm? ;-))) not already, mine SaaS templates are written in Python https://www.saasforge.dev/Would it support most VPS setups?
Can you specify what you mean?
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pretty cool!
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I think you’re doing yourself a disservice by giving this away for free. SaaS templates are a lucrative market.
Also, from my experience - people place a lot more trust in products in this niche that have a higher price tag. Free stuff is good, but not necessarily when it’s the foundation of your entire tech business.
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That's true. My current plan is to make the code Open Source and to sell deployment addons on top of that.
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I actually think the existing business models of your competitors are not good. They make me pay a big upfront fee to use their code. Instead you seem to think out of the box, instead of protecting the source code you give away. Bold, I wish you success !
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This comment was deleted 4 years ago
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That's a good point. Reinventing the wheel isn't necisarrily a bad thing, though. It shows that there's a market. There's RailsKits, Bullet Train, Laravel Spark and even a fellow IndieHacker is working on a template with https://www.indiehackers.com/product/gravity (hey @kylegawley!).
Launchr is based on Django and as far as my research shows, there's currently nothing available for Python in general. Python is trendy again (thanks ML) and there seems to be a market for this. This was enough initial validation for me to start working on this.
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Thanks for the mention, @jayfk! :)
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Today I launched the initial starting page for https://launchr.io/
One of my top priorities was to get this off the ground as soon as possible. There's no content yet, but we'll get there.
It took me a couple of days to find a suitable name, create the logo and decide on the template I wanted to use but ultimately, I'm quite happy with what I have now.
The idea to create something like Launchr dates back to 2016.
I was heavily working on two SaaS products simultaneously and on the side, I was also working on Cookiecutter Django, which is the most popular starter template for Django based projects.
During that time, lots and lots of smaller ideas came to my mind I wanted to try out. But in order to launch something, I always had to go trough all that silly configuration and boilerplate coding just to even start working on the idea.
This is where I created Cookiecutter SaaS, open sourced it and released it to the public.
Since I had multiple other projects going on during that time I eventually decided to focus my time elsewhere and stopped working on it.
6 Comments
Congrats!! I just did it for mine this week too. I sent my first real payment (my own money) a minute ago :)
https://hupreter.com/
I did implement this in a Node.js stack and I can confirm Payments, Subscription and managing that is certainly one of the difficult and tedious task to implement.
Just used the Launchr demo and it works great. Congrats!
Good stuff! Congrats on an another milestone
I was actually looking for something like this but python is not my stack. Would it be possible to plug external sources / is launchr has an admin API interface?
Congrats!
I’m trying to build my own SaaS payment system for subscriptions using Ruby on Rails. Anyone here has any experience building it either using a Rails gem like Pay or from scratch?
Stripe is the one of the easiest subscription tool for SAAS. If you think it is tedious, just try to get back 20 years ago and try to figure out how to set it up! ;)
Congrats on relaunching Launchr!