DEV Community: Roy Yan

Why I'm Selling My SaaS Boilerplate for 19 USD (and What's Inside)

Roy Yan — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:27:39 +0000

Every time I start a new SaaS project, I spend the first 2-3 weeks on the same things: auth, payments, dashboard, database setup, deployment config. It's boring, error-prone, and doesn't move the needle on the actual product.

So I built ShipKit — a complete Next.js 14 SaaS boilerplate that handles all the infrastructure so you can focus on your business logic.

What's Inside

Next.js 14 with App Router and TypeScript
Authentication — NextAuth.js with GitHub, Google, and email/password
Database — Supabase (Postgres) with migrations ready
Payments — Integration templates for Stripe or PayPal
Dashboard — Dark-theme admin panel with settings and billing
Landing Page — Hero, pricing cards, FAQ, footer
8 full pages, 40+ components, 15+ API routes
SEO optimized — Meta tags, OG images, JSON-LD

Why 19 USD?

I'm not trying to maximize revenue right now. I want my first real users. People who will actually use it, give feedback, and help me make it better.

The regular price will be 199 USD. Right now it's 90% off at 19 USD — less than a nice lunch.

Every plan includes:

Complete source code
Unlimited project license
Lifetime updates
30-day money-back guarantee

The Stack

Tech	Role
Next.js 14	App Router, Server Components
TypeScript	Full type safety
Tailwind CSS	Utility-first styling
NextAuth.js	Authentication
Supabase	Postgres database
Vercel	One-click deployment

How It Works

Purchase via PayPal
Email your receipt to get the download link
Unzip, npm install, npm run dev
Your SaaS is running at localhost:3000

From zero to a working SaaS in under 5 minutes.

Check it out: shipit.tools

I'd love to hear your thoughts. What features would make this more useful for your next project?

I Built 199 Free Developer Tools in One Website — Here's What I Learned

Roy Yan — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 10:16:19 +0000

Every developer has a bookmark folder full of random online tools. JSON formatters, base64 encoders, color pickers, regex testers — scattered across dozens of ad-heavy websites that take 5 seconds to load.

I got tired of it. So I built FastDevKit — a single website with 199 free tools across 14 categories, supporting 4 languages, deployed for $0/month.

Here's what I learned along the way.

The Spark

I was working on a side project and needed to quickly decode a JWT token. I opened the first Google result — a wall of ads, a cookie banner, and a loading spinner. For a tool that should be instant.

That moment I thought: what if there was one clean, fast site with every small utility a developer needs? No login, no ads (at least not obnoxious ones), no nonsense.

Two weeks later, FastDevKit had 157 tools. A few weeks after that, 199.

Lesson 1: Next.js 14 Static Export Is Underrated

I chose Next.js with full static export (output: 'export'). No server components, no API routes, no serverless functions. Every page is pre-rendered HTML.

Why? Because developer tools run entirely in the browser. There is nothing to compute on the server.

Static export gave me:

Instant page loads — it's just HTML + JS, served from a CDN
Zero server cost — Vercel's free tier handles static sites generously
Dead-simple deployment — vercel --prod and done
Reliability — nothing to crash, no cold starts, no timeouts

If your app doesn't need a server, don't use one.

Lesson 2: 4-Language i18n Without a Framework

FastDevKit supports English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. I didn't use next-intl or next-i18next. Instead, I went with a simple folder-based approach:

/en/tools/json-formatter
/zh/tools/json-formatter
/ja/tools/json-formatter
/ko/tools/json-formatter

Each locale has its own JSON translation file. At build time, Next.js generates all 4 versions of every page.

The result: 780+ URLs in the sitemap. Every tool, in every language, gets its own indexable page.

Lesson 3: SEO Is a Numbers Game

With 780+ URLs, I expected Google to index everything quickly. Reality check:

Week 1: 6 pages indexed, 24 impressions, 0 clicks
Week 2: Slowly crawling more pages, 255 URLs "discovered"
Week 3+: Steady growth as Google digested the sitemap

What actually moved the needle:

Unique <title> and <meta description> for every tool page
Canonical tags pointing to the English version as default
Internal linking between related tools
Blog content to signal the site isn't just a thin tool wrapper

Lesson 4: Zero-Cost Deployment Is Real

Service	Cost	Purpose
Vercel (free tier)	$0	Hosting + CDN
Cloudflare (free tier)	$0	DNS
Google Search Console	$0	SEO monitoring

No database. No authentication. No storage. Static site + Vercel free tier.

Lesson 5: Ship Categories, Not Individual Tools

14 categories, 199 tools:

Text & String tools
JSON/XML/YAML tools
CSS & Color tools
Crypto & Hash tools
Date & Time tools
Math & Number tools
Code tools (regex, diff, minifiers)
SEO tools
Unit converters
Random generators
Encoding tools (Base64, URL, HTML)
Developer utilities (UUID, Lorem Ipsum, etc.)

Shipping by category meant each launch felt meaningful. "10 new CSS tools" is more interesting than "I added a hex-to-rgb converter."

Try It Out

If you're a developer who uses online tools daily, give FastDevKit.com a try. It's free, fast, and doesn't ask you to sign up for anything.

What tools are missing? What categories would you want? Drop a comment below.

I built 199 free browser-based dev tools so you never have to google 'json formatter' again

Roy Yan — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 07:29:47 +0000

Every developer has been there. You need to format some JSON, so you google "json formatter online." You pick one of the top results, close three popups, decline cookies, and finally paste your JSON into a tiny text box surrounded by ads.

I got tired of this, so I built FastDevKit — a single site with 199 free developer tools. No signup, no ads cluttering the interface, and everything runs client-side in your browser.

What's inside

Here's a sample of the tools available:

For everyday coding:

JSON Formatter & Validator
Base64 Encoder/Decoder
UUID v4 Generator
Regex Tester with explanations
Diff Checker
Markdown Preview

For frontend devs:

Color Picker (HEX/RGB/HSL)
CSS Minifier
Tailwind Color Generator
Flexbox Generator
OG Image Preview

For backend/DevOps:

JWT Decoder & Generator
Hash Generator (SHA-256, MD5)
Subnet Calculator
Cron Expression Builder
HTTP Status Code Reference

Calculators:

Mortgage, Loan, Compound Interest
BMI, Calorie, Body Fat
Unit converters (temperature, weight, distance)

Why client-side matters

Every tool runs entirely in your browser. Your data never leaves your device. No server processing, no data collection, no "we may use your input to improve our services" nonsense.

4 languages

The whole site is available in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Developer tools shouldn't have a language barrier.

The tech

Built with Next.js 14, Tailwind CSS, deployed on Vercel. The entire site is open to suggestions — if there's a tool you wish existed, let me know in the comments.

Check it out: fastdevkit.com

What tools do you find yourself googling for most often? I'm always looking for ideas on what to add next.

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Building My First SaaS (Would Have Saved Me 3 Months)

Roy Yan — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 10:12:06 +0000

I've shipped 4 SaaS products in the last year. The first one took me 3 months. The latest one — FormCatch, a form backend service — took 3 days.

The difference wasn't skill. It was knowing what actually matters.

Here are 5 lessons I learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

1. Nobody Cares About Your Tech Stack (But It Can Still Kill You)

My first SaaS started with two weeks of deliberation. Should I use tRPC or REST? Drizzle or Prisma? App Router or Pages Router?

Here's the truth: your users will never know or care what ORM you chose. But picking the wrong stack — or worse, switching mid-project — can absolutely destroy your momentum.

What actually matters:

Pick boring, well-documented tools. Next.js + Supabase + Prisma is not exciting. It's reliable. That's the point.
Optimize for speed-to-ship, not theoretical performance. You don't have scale problems when you have zero users.
Authentication and payments are solved problems. If you're writing auth logic from scratch in 2026, you're cosplaying as a security engineer instead of building a business.

2. The "Boring" Parts Take 80% of the Time

Every SaaS needs the same infrastructure: authentication, payments, database, email, rate limiting, admin dashboard, landing page. None of this is your product. All of it is required before you can even start building your product.

On my first SaaS, here's where my time actually went:

Task	Expected	Actual
Auth + user management	2 days	8 days
Payment integration	1 day	5 days
Landing page	1 day	4 days
Email templates	0.5 days	3 days
Admin dashboard	2 days	6 days
The actual product	2 weeks	4 days

The boring stuff took 26 days. The actual product — the thing that makes money — took 4.

This is why boilerplates exist. After my second SaaS, I started extracting all the shared infrastructure into a reusable template. That eventually became ShipKit — the boilerplate I now use for everything. Auth, payments, database, admin panel, landing pages, emails, SEO, dark mode, rate limiting — all pre-wired and ready.

3. Launch Before You're Ready (Seriously)

My first SaaS launched after 3 months with 47 features. Nobody used 42 of them.

FormCatch launched after 3 days with exactly 2 features: receive form submissions, and send email notifications. That's it. People are using it.

The pattern I've seen across every successful indie product:

Ship the smallest possible version that delivers one clear value
Get it in front of real users within the first week
Let user behavior tell you what to build next

You cannot think your way to product-market fit. You have to ship your way there.

4. SEO Is a Compounding Asset (Start on Day 1)

I ignored SEO on my first two products. "I'll add it later." Later never came, and I was stuck depending entirely on Product Hunt launches and Reddit posts for traffic.

On my recent projects, SEO is baked in from the start:

Proper meta tags, Open Graph, structured data on every page
A blog with genuinely useful content
Fast load times (this is where Next.js really shines)
Programmatic pages for long-tail keywords

My tools site FastDevKit now gets steady organic traffic without me doing anything. That's the dream — traffic that grows while you sleep.

5. The Real Competition Is Your Own Motivation

Most indie SaaS products don't fail because of competition or bad ideas. They fail because the founder burned out during week 6 of implementing Stripe webhooks.

The #1 predictor of success I've seen is how quickly you get from idea to live product. Not because speed itself matters, but because:

Fast shipping keeps you motivated
Motivated founders iterate more
More iterations = better product-market fit
Better fit = revenue
Revenue = more motivation

It's a flywheel, and the entry point is speed.

What I'd Tell Myself 12 Months Ago

Stop building auth systems. Use NextAuth and move on.
Stop designing landing pages from scratch. Use a template.
Stop deliberating. Ship something in a week or kill the idea.
Start writing content on day 1. SEO is a slow game.
Invest in your toolkit. A good boilerplate pays for itself on the first project.

That last point is why I built ShipKit. It's the Next.js 14 boilerplate I wish existed when I started — auth, payments, Supabase, Prisma, admin dashboard, landing pages, email templates, SEO, dark mode, rate limiting, all pre-configured. $199 one-time, no subscriptions.

Your users are paying for your unique insight, not your auth implementation.

If you want to see what a 3-day build looks like, check out FormCatch. And if you want the boilerplate itself, it's at shipkit-delta.vercel.app.

Got questions about shipping SaaS fast? Drop them in the comments.