Ten days ago, I set a personal challenge: build a new SaaS product from scratch and earn \$1,000 in revenue from it in just 50 days. No team, no budget, just one indie hacker with a laptop, a frozen bank account, and a dream.
Why a Boilerplate?
I’ve always been annoyed at how expensive good boilerplates are. The ones with proper integrations — payments, auth, email, file uploads — either cost too much or require hours of extra work to actually be usable.
So I built SaaSRocket, a full-stack SaaS boilerplate that helps indie devs get their projects off the ground fast, without spending \$300+ just to get started.
The Stack I Used (And Why)
I wanted the stack to be indie-friendly — something anyone could deploy and understand:
- Next.js + Tailwind CSS for the frontend
- Supabase for auth, DB, and instant backend APIs
- Resend for transactional emails
- Lemon Squeezy for payments (after 5 days of approval wait 😅)
- Cloudinary for media uploads (esp. useful for blogs)
The goal was to eliminate all the grunt work solo founders dread:
- Want a blog? Plug in your Cloudinary key and go.
- Want dashboard sections? Just update one config array.
- Want payments? Lemon Squeezy is pre-wired.
Things That Broke (And What I Learned)
No real project comes without hiccups. Here’s a few I hit:
- Unit testing: Out of 9 test suites, 8 failed on my first run 😭. Fixed.
- Test mode hell: Accidentally shared the test checkout URL instead of the live one. Rookie mistake.
- Store delays: Lemon Squeezy took 5 days to approve my store, and my bank account was frozen for a week.
-
No domain at launch: SaaSRocket launched on Vercel with no proper
.prodomain until after the build.
Despite this, I still shipped the whole thing in 9 days.
What I'd Do Differently Next Time
- Start marketing before the product is live.
- Avoid long waits by having backup payment providers.
- Build a clearer onboarding doc earlier in the dev cycle.
- Set up better session recording (PostHog had issues for me).
For Devs Who Just Want to Launch Faster
If you’ve ever:
- Spent hours wiring Stripe for the nth time
- Struggled to get basic SaaS infra running
- Wasted a weekend trying to plug in Resend/Supabase/Auth
...then SaaSRocket might be a lifesaver.
🔗 Check it out here — \$49 for the first 500 customers.
It includes:
- SEO-optimized landing page
- Dashboard generator
- Blog with Cloudinary support
- Lemon Squeezy, Resend, Supabase all integrated
- Pre-written tests
It’s what I wish I had 2 years ago when I started indie hacking.
What’s Next?
I'm marketing SaaSRocket across Reddit, Twitter/X, Product Hunt, and Dev.to — trying to get my first sale and prove to myself I can make it as a solo founder.
If I hit \$1,000 in the next 50 days, I’ll share a full breakdown of what worked and what didn’t.
Over to You 👇
What's the one integration that always slows you down when you're building a new SaaS?
Or what's your go-to stack for shipping fast?
Drop your thoughts below. Would love to jam!
Keep building,
Shreyan
PS: If you liked this post, I’m on X @Shreyanrants building in public and oversharing my entire journey 😅
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