In the world of AI, creating boilerplates is the next immediate task in the queue of business for developers.
Under the Hood
I have an entrepreneurial mind, and I’ve learned it from past examples but I love solving problems and most importantly I love to start with automation.
Automation or “the process of automating almost anything we are doing” will help you to bring an entrepreneurial mindset within the frame. The art of solving problems well and optimising the existing solution as well as multiple ways of execution is what I love the most. People are diverse with diverse thinking and below examples of what I’ve researched will justify it.
Every year I release one full-stack boilerplate or repository, it’s kind of like a starter kit or code repository that contains top or trending or latest tech-stack already being coded or written with well-defined responsive and interactive UI.
Boilerplates is not a new concept but certainly the way people think and so will make it different.
While researching boilerplates in the front end, I switched to product hunt and I was lost. Because so many boilerplate options are available we can’t simply open every website to check details.
So I narrowed down the research and first found the aggregators of SAAS boilerplates and understanding what’s the market demand, so I start with linkedin.
Found this top google article and read it to find the extensive collection of
- boilerplates ideas,
- github boilerplates,
- SAAS boilerplates products and
- startups that provide SAAS boilerplates Then I found the aggregators list
Next.js SAAS starter kit
Boilerplates.com
How can I leave Github, here we go https://github.com/topics/saas-boilerplate
I look into each of the above platforms to get an in-depth understanding of the SAAS boilerplates marketplace.
Next.js, Supabase, Stripe, TailwindCSS
These are the most common boilerplates present on almost all of the SAAS platforms.
Since the demand is high I am predicting that more providers and creators are coming to have their piece of cake.
But almost all kinds of existing or known programming languages SAAS boilerplates exist in the world of the internet.
- Python
- Next
- Nest
- Express
- Net
- Astro
- Remix
- Flask
- Go
- Pheonix check https://boilerplatelist.com/ for more info
SAAS Boilerplates Market
Well, I don’t think the market has too many boilerplates but
Before buying the boilerplate, I want to know the boilerplate code architecture as well entire code repository in one go.
But most of the platforms don’t provide code lookup or glimpse otherwise it might be stolen or simply copy-pasted. We still need to work on these factors so that where SAAS boilerplate owner can gain a huge trust on the first go. This part is missing from a lot of SAAS boilerplate businesses.
Show the user an image or video explaining the code repository hence telling the user within a minute how easy is for him to start his/her business within days.
This will help him to have trust on you and simply increase your sales, I’ve tested this idea so works well for me.
Customised SAAS Boilerplate Idea
Another thing to note in this market is a mini boilerplate or customised boilerplate.
This idea is implemented by Divjoy as they provide SAAS boilerplate with customisation options meaning you can choose which packages you want to install and work with and pay for only those packages contained repository.
This makes sense as the user won’t get all the unnecessary code in the boilerplate but anyway, we can delete that code later or simply push it in the new branch.
Reducing the cost of boilerplates with customisation options is a good way to increase your sales as well as trust, simply adding all the code in one repository and selling it to all kinds of customers won’t make sense.
I would love to choose the Divjoy concept in general and put a form kind of thing for the user to select the packages he/she wants to work with and in the end, the submit button will give the corresponding boilerplate.
Where do Github repositories exist?
Github repositories have one thing as a problem the production-level codebase.
I’ve covered a basic blog on What it is like to put code in production in which I’ve explained the basic difference between production-based code and project-based code.
When we develop user-centric products we have to take care of so many edge cases as well as so many validations, unnecessary states and memory leaks along with performance and responsiveness make things quite messy to handle on the client side.
These things can only be handled and understood well by and experienced developer and that is why most of the founders of SAAS boilerplates startups are experienced devs it wasn’t there only startup, so understand deeply that they have experience in developing real-world products.
Marc Lou the founder of ShipFast is the best example you must have heard on the internet.
Github repositories are a good starting point to have your boilerplates.
I suggest that almost all devs have their own boilerplates and code samples to get ready to reuse and help develop things fast.
Another Cheap Business Idea
I’ve another idea and I got this from my Freelance business.
Once you crack the freelance client to develop his/her SAAS the total cost should be at least USD 200 otherwise this trick won’t be profitable.
Let’s say your client is paying you a $1000 for an E-commerce website and ShipFast will take $200 for the entire boilerplate.
1000–200 = 800 USD + Development time
This saves tonnes of your time as well and we can easily serve more than 5 clients per month, I’ve not tested this idea but what I used to do in my freelancing days was to have boilerplates ready for frontend websites and react-native mobile apps and use these boilerplates for all other clients and keep making them better by adding all other clients work as well.
This process was quite a time time-consuming process but helps me a lot in saving time as well.
AI in the picture
How can I miss AI from the picture? AI will just make everything like a cakewalk.
I mean I simply copy-paste this boilerplate code file by file in chatGPT to optimise it, clean the code, and refactor it.
Then I add Stripe, Lemonsquezy, wise and other payment libraries as well analytics libraries like Google or Plausible and will install Vercel AI SDK all using chatGPT making it easy for me in future.
AI helps me write test cases in frontend and backend using jest so writing test cases can also be solved using AI.
Conclusion
A boilerplate business for a developer is a good option to get paid for what he love to do.
Anyone can easily start this business and learn and eventually make money.
AI wrapper over boilerplates can help advance this business by creating more boilerplates, reducing development time and increasing sales as well.
AI can also help to crack the user's exact needs and demands to provide the exact boilerplate as per the requirements.
Think of this as our next idea to build and let me know what’s your opinion.
That’s it see you in the next one
Shrey
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