I got tired of rebuilding auth and Stripe for every SaaS. So I packaged my own starter.

Utkarsh Singh — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 09:22:43 +0000

Originally published at https://zerodrag.cloud/blog

Every time I started a new SaaS project, I spent the
first week doing the exact same things.

Wiring up auth. Integrating Stripe. Setting up a
database. Configuring transactional email.

35+ hours of setup before writing a single line of
actual product logic.

The worst part? None of it was my product. It was
just infrastructure. The same infrastructure every
SaaS needs. Built from scratch. Again.

The breaking point

When I built zerodrag.cloud, I realized something.

The entire backend - auth, payments, database, and
email - was running in production before I'd written
a single line of product code.

The only "setup" was filling in a .env file.

That's it.

No wiring NextAuth. No debugging Stripe webhooks for
four hours. No figuring out why Prisma migrations
weren't running in production.

Just credentials in a .env file. Done.

What I built

I packaged that entire foundation into ZeroDrag - a
production-ready Next.js SaaS starter.

Here's what comes pre-wired:

Auth

Google OAuth + magic links
NextAuth v5 + App Router
Protected routes via middleware
Server-side session helpers

Payments

Stripe AND Razorpay (switch via env var)
Subscription lifecycle handled
Webhooks pre-configured
Entitlement sync built in

Database

PostgreSQL + Prisma ORM
Works with Supabase, Neon, Railway
Seed scripts included
Production-safe migrations

Email

Resend integration
React email templates
HTML + plain text support

AI (Pro)

OpenAI, Claude, Gemini - unified API
Keys never exposed to client
Per-user rate limiting
Token usage tracking

Error tracking (Pro)

Sentry pre-configured
API and webhook error capture

The Razorpay thing

One thing that makes ZeroDrag different from every
other Next.js starter: it supports both Stripe AND
Razorpay out of the box.

If you're building for Indian customers, you already
know the problem. Stripe has poor card acceptance
rates in India. Razorpay doesn't support international
payments well.

ZeroDrag solves this with a unified payment API.
Switch between providers by changing one env var:
PAYMENT_PROVIDER=stripe
PAYMENT_PROVIDER=razorpay
No rewrites. No refactoring. Just change the variable
and deploy.

Who it's for

Indie hackers shipping real SaaS products
Solo founders going from idea to paid users fast
Engineers tired of wiring the same infrastructure again and again

It's not for beginners or no-code builders. It assumes
you know how to build apps — it just removes the
boring, repetitive parts.

Pricing

One-time payment. No subscription.

https://zerodrag.cloud