Presenting Open SaaS 🎉
We’re really excited to present Open SaaS, the totally free, open-source, production-grade SaaS boilerplate for React, NodeJS, and Prisma.
See it in action here:
Open SaaS has got all the features of those paid SaaS starters you’ve been seeing lately, except its entirely free and open-source.
We felt that paying $300-$2,000 for some boilerplate code that you need to manage yourself was crazy. On top of that, many of these boilerplates rely heavily on 3rd-party services. Add on hosting and other fees, and you’re looking at spending quite a bit of money just to get your idea out there into the world.
That’s why with Open SaaS we made a conscious decision to try and use open-source and free services whenever possible. For example, our hosted demo app and its admin dashboard on OpenSaaS.sh are powered by a self-hosted version of Plausible analytics. Want the same features in your SaaS? Well, Open SaaS has got it preconfigured for you!
Also, the Wasp framework, which Open SaaS uses, does the job of building out a number of features for you, like Auth and Cron Jobs, so that you don’t have to pay a 3rd-party service or code it entirely yourself (we’ll explain this in more detail later).
What People Are Already Building With Open SaaS...
Since the official release we've had tons of people building amazing apps and launching super creative businesses with Open SaaS. So we though we'd highlight some of them here to start with.
Below is a curated list of some of the apps people from our community:
-
Solon: An AI sales agent for instagram/whatsapp sellers to help customers with product exploration.
-
Captn.ai: AI agents working together in teams to automate the creation, monitoring, and optimization of Google Ads campaigns.
-
Bleepify: Automatically dub or remove certain words from videos instantly, with the help of AI. Super helpful for quickly making YouTube videos compliant with their code of conduct.
-
Get AI Blog Articles: A high-quality, SEO-focused blog post generator in markdown format
If these examples above don't already get you inspired to build, continue reading below, where we'll discuss why we built an open-source SaaS template, what stack we used, and how it works.
Why we built it… and then gave it away for free
The feedback since our official release has been hugely positive.
We've had tons of people rave about it, and numerous SaaS apps already built with it, but we’ve also gotten some questions like:
- “Is it going to stay free?”
- “What’s your motivation for open-sourcing this?”
So we thought we’d go ahead and answer these to start.
First, yes it is 100% free and open-source and will stay that way.
Second, we believe that the collective knowledge of a community of developers, indiehackers, and solopreneurs will produce a better boilerplate than an individual or small group. When you buy a SaaS starter from some developer, you’re already getting an opinionated stack, then on top of that you’re also getting an app built the way they think is best — and that may not always be the best for you.
Third, Open SaaS is a project by Wasp, an open-source React + NodeJS + Prisma full-stack framework with superpowers. We, the Wasp team, believe that Wasp is very well suited for creating SaaS apps quickly and efficiently, and we want this template to prove it. Plus, as developers, we’ve learned so much from other open-source projects, and Wasp itself is an open-source project.
Basically, we love the open-source philosophy and we want to pay it forward. 🙏
So it’s our hope that we can provide a seriously valuable asset to the developer community while spreading the word about our open-source, full-stack framework. And we’d love to see the community contribute to it so that it will grow and become the best SaaS boilerplate out there.
What Open SaaS is Made Of
We put a lot of hard work into Open SaaS, including the documentation, so that developers can get a SaaS app launched confidently and easily.
We’ve also spent some time checking out other free, open-source SaaS starters, and wanted to make sure Open SaaS has all the right features of a production-ready starter, without the bloat. And we think we’ve accomplished that for the most part, although we will continue to add features and improve on it with time.
Here are the main features at the moment:
- 🔐 Authentication (email verified, google, github)
- 📩 Emailing (sendgrid, emailgun, SMTP)
- 📈 Admin Dashboard (plausible or google analytics)
- 🤑 Stripe payments (just add your subscription product IDs)
- ⌨️ End-to-end Typesafety (no configuration necessary)
- 🤖 OpenAI integrated (AI-powered example apps)
- 📖 Blog w/ Astro
- 🧪 End-to-end tests w/ Playwright
- 🚀 Deploy anywhere
- 📄 Full Documentation & Community Support
It’s worth going into some detail about each of these features, so let’s do it.
Auth
Thanks to Wasp, Open SaaS ships with a number of possible Auth methods:
- username and password (simplest/easiest for dev testing)
- email verified w/ password reset
- Google and/or Github social login
Here’s where Wasp really shines, because all it takes to set up your full-stack Auth and get pre-configured UI components is this:
//main.wasp
app SaaSTemplate {
auth: {
userEntity: User,
methods: {
usernameAndPassword: {},
google: {},
gitHub: {},
}
}
}
Seriously. That’s it!
Just make sure you’ve set up your social auth and have your API keys, as well as your User and ExternalAuth entities defined, and you’re good to go. And don’t worry, that part is all documented and explained in detail in the Open SaaS Docs.
On top of that, Open SaaS comes preconfigured with some examples on how to customize and create some really powerful auth flows.
Admin Dashboard & Analytics
By leveraging Wasp’s Jobs feature, Open SaaS pulls data from Plausible’s or Google’s Site Analytics (your choice!) and Stripe’s Data APIs every hour and saves them to our database. This data is then shown on our Admin Dashboard (go to OpenSaaS.sh to see it in action). The nice part is, to get access to this data for your own app, all you have to do is follow our guide on getting your analytics API keys, insert the provided script, and you’re good to go!
Again, Wasp makes this whole process really easy. With the function for querying the APIs and getting the data we need already defined for you, Open SaaS then uses a Wasp Job within the main.wasp config file:
job dailyStatsJob {
executor: PgBoss,
perform: {
fn: import { calculateDailyStats } from "@server/workers/calculateDailyStats.js"
},
schedule: {
cron: "0 * * * *"
},
entities: [User, DailyStats, Logs, PageViewSource]
}
And that’s it! Wasp takes care of setting up and running the cron job for you.
Stripe Payments
If you’re a developer that’s never built your own SaaS before, then integrating with a payments processor like Stripe is probably one of the few challenges you’ll face.
This was the case for me when I built my first SaaS, CoverLetterGPT.xyz. That was actually one of my main motivators for building it; to learn how to intergrate Stripe payments into an app, as well as the OpenAI API.
And even though Stripe is well known for having great documentation, the process can still be daunting. You have to:
- create the correct product type
- set up webhook endpoints
- tell Stripe to send the correct webhook events to you
- consume the events correctly
- deal with recurring and failed payments
- test it all correctly via the CLI before going live
That’s why having Stripe subscription payments set up for you is such a win.
But even more important than that, is having the whole process conveniently documented for you! Which is why Open SaaS offers you convenient Stripe guides in our documentation 🙂
End-to-End Typesafety
Open SaaS was built with Typescript, and because it’s a full-stack app, type safety from the back-end to the front-end can be a real lifesaver. I mean, some opinionated stacks have gotten hugely popular on this basis.
Luckily, Wasp gives you end-to-end Typesafety out-of-the-box (nothing to configure!), so it was easy for Open SaaS to take advantage of it.
Here’s an example:
-
Make Wasp aware of your server action:
// main.wasp action getResponse { fn: import { getResponse } from "@server/actions.js", entities: [Response] } -
Type and Implement your server action.
// src/srever/actions.ts type RespArgs = { hours: string; }; const getResponse: GetResponse<RespArgs, string> = async ({ hours }) => { } Import it and call it on the client.
Client-side types will be inferred correctly!
AI-powered Example App (w/ OpenAI API)
AI is making new app ideas possible, which is partly why we’re seeing a resurgence in developer interest in creating SaaS apps. As I mentioned above, the first SaaS app I built, CoverLetterGPT, is one of those “GPT Wrappers”, and I’m proud to say it makes a nice passive income of ~$350 MRR (monthly recurring revenue).
I personally believe we’re in a sweet spot in software development where there exists a lot of potential to develop new, profitable AI-powered apps, especially by "indiehackers" and "solopreneurs".
This is why Open SaaS features an AI scheduling assistant demo app. You input your tasks for along with their alotted time, and the AI Scheduler creates a detailed plan for your day.
Under the hood, this is using OpenAI’s API to assign each task a priority, and break them up into detailed sub-tasks, including coffee breaks! It’s also leverages OpenAI’s function calling feature to return the response back in a user-defined JSON object, so that the client can consume it correctly every time. Also, we're planning on adding open-source LLMs in the future, so stay tuned!
The demo AI Scheduler is there to help developers learn how to use the OpenAI API effectively, and to spark some creative SaaS app ideas!
Deploy Anywhere. Easily.
A lot of the popular SaaS starters out there use hosting-dependent frameworks, which means you're stuck relying on one provider for deployments. While these can be easy options, it may not always be the best for your app.
Wasp gives you endless possibilities for deploying your full-stack app:
- One-command deploy to Fly.io with
wasp deploy - Use
wasp buildand deploy the Dockerfiles and client wherever you like!
The great thing about wasp deploy, is that it automatically generates and deploys your database, server, and client, as well as sets up your environment variables for you.
Open SaaS also has built in environment variable and constants validators to make sure that you’ve got everything correctly set up for deployment, as well as deployment guides in the docs
In the end, you own your code and are free to deploy it wherever, without vendor lock-in.
Help us, help you
Wanna support our free, open-source initiative? Then go show us some support by starring us on GitHub 🙏
Now Go Build your SaaS!
We hope that Open SaaS empowers more developers to ship their ideas and side-projects. And we also hope to get some feedback and input from developers so we can make this the best SaaS boilerplate starter out there.
So, please, if you have any comments or catch any bugs, submit an issue here.
And if you’re finding Open SaaS and/or Wasp useful, the easiest way to support is by throwing us a star:
- Star the Open SaaS repo
- Star the Wasp repo
Top comments (22)
Are people still considering React for a new project? 😳 It is the new defacto jQuery 🌚
People building real applications are using React. It looks like NextJS is a powerful full-stack framework but once you get into the details of the implementation and interpretation, you will notice you have no control over the application when it starts growing that you can get in React. It is a bubble
You can build a real application using SolidJS or any other framework which don't utilize Virtual DOM, not have a messy lifecycle hooks and isolated rendering structure (aka. granular updates).
I see React choosers as jQuery fans who insist (maybe still) that React isn't a real life tech stack over jQuery.
When we start thinking ahead, the philosophy of JS ecosystem is: never settle 😁 Every now and then, we will get faster things than before and SolidJS may become obsolete, considering the fact it is a good replacement for React developers, and most probably other frameworks too (including me)
Yes I agree people tend to lean towards the tools which can solve their problems in a way they understand the best and that is where strong opinions for frameworks come in. But I personally haven't seen any complex applications available in the market built using SolidJS, I can be wrong here.
And talking about VDom, I can't agree more on the drawbacks it has, for which I highly appreciate Svelte for it's dynamic nature and lightness.
There goes another thing that people tend to follow similar approach to solve a problem in different languages/frameworks ignoring the inbuilt features that can provide a better experience
That's the challenge while in real world applications things keep growing as things change via feature addition and functionality.Here comes the nightmare while we have other frameworks that support that growth without breaking your app, Angular,veujs,django restframework,php larvel ,python django .everything is there just focus on what real matters.React and Nextjs is cool but for me i use it for hubby project.
I don't understand peole hating on React, coming up with these kinds of examples... Django? PHP/Laravel? I mean no offense, but I don't think you understand what React is...
Noted you are right thanks.
Yea, a lot more than you'd think.
Well I'll be damned
I remember React fans saying the same about jQuery when React was new. The technical prowess of a framework or library is only one of several considerations when you're running a business. Some of the others might be "How hard will it be for me to find experienced developers to work on this project?", or "What open source libraries/tools will I be able to leverage to build my product?". Developers tend to think only in technical terms, but building a successful product requires additional perspectives.
Most underrated comment :)
Sure they are, look at statistics and the job market. It's ridiculously popular and for next couple of years will remain the same.
It's simple actually; will you install jQuery on your new project? I mean, a sane and modern developer would not.
Of course React cover most of the market right now but, jQuery does too.
Will developers replace jQuery based web sites in an instant, no of course. Same with React. But eventually React will be replaced or it will evolve to how true reactive libs works by dropping its existing API. It is just matter of time
The "Woah" in the promo video gets me every time! Vinny devrel of the year
haha thanks buddy
Amazing curation of templates
how cool, thank you
Amazing Stuff
Amizing!! I'm a huge fan of wasp!! I share some love from italy. I would love to let you know our open-source project. You can find more on Our Github Repo.
Love your work.
Have a nice day!!
Oh thanks man for your hard work. I love OpenSaaS, the choices of the tech stack and its website. You are a genius! Great job, I will use it on a project for my wife :)
I love Open SaaS!!
Great job on this! It's super cool to see different stuff that people are building.
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.