from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is it ever worth it to pay for SaaS boilerplates?

by ChilledTonic on 10/16/24, 10:34 PM with 2 comments

It seems most frameworks have a small ecosystem of developers dedicated to building premium (as in charge a fee for use) boilerplate applications, where things like Auth and Payments are already implemented.

For reference, here is one for Nuxt3 (I'm completely unaffiliated):

https://supersaas.dev/

I've had many projects in the past be bogged down by implementing routine things again and again, so the idea of paying for one is appealing, but I was curious if anyone in Hacker News has successfully built a product from such a starter project?

It equally seems like it could be entrapping to work with someone else's code for something so important in a project.

  • by czue on 10/17/24, 5:39 AM

    I just got this message from a customer of my boilerplate yesterday (slightly edited to remove revealing details). So... yes?

    > We're well into the six figures of ARR, closing out a raise at a multi-million dollar valuation. I 100% believe my product never would've gotten off the ground without you. You have done all of the intimidating, monotonous, but also hard-to-reason-about structural pieces of the project. I know it might seem silly to think of it like this, but your boilerplate has really helped change the trajectory of my life.

  • by codingdave on 10/16/24, 10:49 PM

    I've never wanted to. It would take me a day or so to throw one together with my own choices for libraries and integrations, so I recommend people do that and then just save it as your own personal boilerplate. If you also can do it in a day, it is worth having it. And if you need to learn more before being able to do it, going through that learning experience will teach you how the whole stack works... which is also worth the trouble.