TL;DR
SaaS boilerplate starters are popping up everywhere, but they’re freakin’ expensive (~$200-$800).
I wanted to find the best free, open-source SaaS Starters for React & NextJS that are being actively maintained in 2024.
In the article below, I run through each starter’s features, and their pros and cons, so read on if you’re interested. But I’ve also put together this nice chart below that compares them quickly at a glance (btw, there's a text version of the same chart at the bottom of the article with clickable links).
Enjoy!
Introduction
Software as a Service (SaaS) apps are one of the best ways for indiehackers and solopreneurs to make some good money. Hence why SaaS boilerplate starters are are on the rise! But some of them go for upwards of $2,000 dollars, with the average being about $200.
That’s why I set out to find out if there were any free, open-source SaaS starters and how they measured up. After finding many but noticing that the majority are no longer actively maintained, I narrowed it down to these four free, open-source SaaS Starters: BoxyHQ’s SaaS Starter, Open SaaS, SaaS Starter Kit, and Next SaaS Stripe Starter.
BOXYHQ SaaS Starter Kit
“Your Ultimate Enterprise-Compliant Next.js Boilerplate”
- GitHub: https://github.com/boxyhq/saas-starter-kit
- Video walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF8QIwQIhyo
BoxyHQ is a company focusing on security, with a specialization in Single-Sign-On (SSO) and enterprise security solutions. So it’s no wonder that this SaaS starter kit, while free and open-source, focuses more on enterprise needs.
So if you’re looking for a clean-looking boilerplate that’s got secure SAML SSO, user account creation, team creation, and management, as well as integration for webhooks and events, then this is your template.
Pros:
- SAML Single Sign-On
- Comprehensive roles and permissions
- Strong focus on enterprise SaaS application development
Cons:
- Geared more toward enterprise-level applications which may be overkill for smaller projects
- Some of the upcoming features such as billing and subscriptions are not yet implemented
Open SaaS
“The free SaaS template with superpowers”
- Website & Demo: https://OpenSaaS.sh
- Github: https://github.com/wasp-lang/open-saas
Open SaaS focuses on creating a full-featured, open-source SaaS boilerplate that’s got everything you’d expect from a paid template, including integrated A.I. examples, configured analytics dashboard for your site’s traffic and revenue stats, and full documentation and support.
It’s brought to you by the Wasp team, a full-stack React / NodeJS / Prisma framework that manages features for you via a config file. This means you can, for example, “roll your own auth” in just a few lines of code because Wasp manages the boilerplate for you.
Pros:
- Leverages Wasp for full-stack development, reducing development time
- Has full documentation and a diverse and supportive community
- Integrated with OpenAI API and includes AI-powered app examples
- End-to-end Typesafety out-of-the-box
Cons:
- Some broader SaaS app features, like testing, may be missing
- Dependent on Wasp, a lesser-known, yet performant, full-stack framework
SaaS Starter Kit
- Website & Demo: https://www.saasstarterkit.com/
- GitHub: https://github.com/Saas-Starter-Kit
SaaS Starter Kit is a modern SaaS boilerplate geared toward creating a comprehensive SaaS solution with free/open-source and pro/paid options.
It’s a simple, clean UI packed with a lot of nice UI components, including Shadcn UI analytics dashboard components. Unfortunately though, you’ll have to integrate them with your own data source as most of the boilerplate comes without the plumbing.
It’s missing a lot of configuration at the moment, but looks like it could be a promising template in the future
Pros:
- Comes in both free and Pro versions, making it adaptable for versatile needs
- Nicely designed UI components, specifically for the Admin dashboard
Cons:
- The Pro version, which has enhanced features, is not free which may discourage some users
- Mostly a collection of UI components with Auth built-in, so developers still need to do a lot of work
Next SaaS Stripe Starter
- Website & Demo: https://next-saas-stripe-starter.vercel.app/
- GitHub: https://github.com/mickasmt/next-saas-stripe-starter
Next SaaS Stripe Starter is a simple, clean looking SaaS boilerplate that leverages modern, trendy tools. Although it’s not as full-featured as some of the others, it looks nice and has a sleek blog, thanks to its use of Shadcn UI and Contentlayer. Generally, it’s in a good state to use as a foundation for your SaaS.
If you’re looking for a minimal NextJS template and are ok with doing a lot of customization and feature development, then this is the one for you.
Pros:
- Looks nice and leverages a variety of trendy tools.
- It includes future updates that cover a resend feature for successful subscriptions and switching subscription plans.
Cons:
- Little to no documentation
- Not as feature-rich as other templates.
VI. Conclusion & Recommendations
While all the SaaS Starters provide a great foundation for your projects, consider BOXYHQ if you’re working on an enterprise-level application. Open SaaS would be the ideal overall template if you are looking for a production-ready template and want to ship fast, while the Next SaaS Stripe Starter is suitable if you’re building a simple/micro-SaaS and you want a modern design aesthetic.
| BoxyHQ SaaS Starter Kit | Open SaaS | SaaS Starter Kit | Next SaaS Stripe Starter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suitable For | 🏢 📈 Enterprise. For apps needing Teams features |
🧑💻🤖 Indiehackers & Startups building modern (AI) apps with speed |
🧑💻🔧 Indiehackers looking for a good collection of UI components |
🧑💻🎨 Indiehackers looking for a minimal, sleek SaaS boilerplate. |
| Ease of Use | 6/10 Complex, Enterprise-focused. |
8/10 Streamlined and fast. Well documented. |
5/10 Requires lots of additional setup. |
7/10 Good foundation but lacks som features |
| Auth | Email verified, SAML SSO, Google, Github via Auth.js | Email Verified, Google, Github via Wasp w/ Lucia | Email, Google via Auth.js | Google via Auth.js |
| Admin Dashboard | Teams management only | Built-in & pre-configured Site and Revenue Analytics | UI components for Revenue analytics (not configured) | None |
| Payments | No (Coming soon) | Stripe | Stripe (+ Lemonsqueezy Paid version) | Stripe |
| Analytics | 3rd-party via Mixpanel (Paid) | Plausible (Free, Open-Source) or Google | Vercel Analytics (Paid) | Vercel Analytics (Paid) |
| A.I. ready | No | Built-in AI-powered https://opensaas.sh (OpenAI API) | No | No |
| End-to-end typesafety | No | Yes | No | No |
| Emailer | SMTP | SendGrid, EmailGun, or SMTP | Resend | Resend |
| Blog built-in | No | Yes (via https://astro.build/) | No (Paid version, yes) | Yes (via https://contentlayer.dev/) |
| Styling | Tailwind | Tailwind | Tailwind, Shadcn ui | Tailwind, Shadcn ui |
| UI & design | Basic | Nicely styled | Basic w/ nice UI components | Modern, trendy styling |
| Community support | https://discord.gg/uyb7pYt4Pa | https://discord.gg/aCamt5wCpS | https://www.reddit.com/r/saas_kit/(no discussions at publish time) | None |
| Documentation | Basic | Very Detailed | Basic | Poor |
| Demo App | None | https://opensaas.sh | https://www.saasstarterkit.com/ | https://next-saas-stripe-starter.vercel.app/ |
Top comments (20)
We used it to build a prototype of a SaaS and it will go live in 2-3 weeks. Amazing how quickly we were able to go from an idea to a fully functional product with Stripe integration, subscriptions and everything (captn.ai). Check it out, this is a game-changer!
wow, very nice! which boilerplate starter did you use?
Starters are the best - saves so much time setting up a project
Why not just start from scratch and build your own "template"?
you could! and you would learn a lot in the process, but boilerplates save you tons of time. Plus, starters like Open SaaS that have detailed docs and allow you to be way more efficient.
Really strong description for each one of them, thanks mate
yeah, we don't need anymore click-bait listicles :)
🙃
Champ
haha thanks
thank you, boss
Amazing comparison! Thank you. You should do that every year. We need another one like that for e-commerce and AI kickstarters :D
OpenSaaS.sh has built in AI example app
Here is another simple one, similar to Next Saas Stripe Starter, but simpler and combined with T3 (including TRPC)
github.com/FranciscoMoretti/t3-saa...
ooh missed that one
Awesome starter kits ✨
🙏 thanks
This is an awesome overview! I especially like the table where you neatly compared the starters across all the parameters. Thanks!
🙏
@vincanger Thank you for including BoxyHQ in your roundup! We are honored to be mentioned alongside these other great tools. We would love to get our ease of use up and would appreciate all feedback. 🙏
As our starter kit is open source, everyone is welcome to raise issues and make contributions to help us make this the best and easiest-to-use SaaS starter kit for folks building SaaS products with the aim of selling to enterprise clients. 🙌
Here is a link to the repository: github.com/boxyhq/saas-starter-kit
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