Most people never ship their SaaS idea.
Not because the idea is bad. Not because they lack skills. Because they spend three weeks researching the "perfect" stack, get overwhelmed by AWS pricing pages, and quietly close the tab.
This article is not that. This is the exact stack I would use today if I were starting from zero, a developer with an idea and an empty wallet, trying to get something in front of real users as fast as possible. Every tool listed here either has a free tier or costs a few dollars a month. The whole thing stays under $50/month even after you start getting traction.
No enterprise nonsense. No over-engineering. Just tools that let you build, ship, and grow.
The philosophy first
Before the tools: the biggest mistake first-time SaaS builders make is paying for infrastructure before they have a single paying customer.
Your job in month one is not to build something scalable. Your job is to find out if anyone will pay for this thing. That means keeping costs at zero for as long as humanly possible, then introducing paid tiers only when free options genuinely become a bottleneck.
Every tool below follows that rule.
The full stack at a glance
| Layer | Tool | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend | Next.js | Free |
| Backend / API | Next.js API routes or FastAPI | Free |
| Database | Supabase | Free (up to 500MB) |
| Auth | Supabase Auth | Free |
| Hosting | Hostinger Node.js Hosting | $3.99/mo |
| Domain | Hostinger | ~$10/yr |
| Payments | Stripe | Free (2.9% + 30c per transaction) |
| Resend | Free (up to 3,000 emails/mo) | |
| Analytics | Plausible or Umami (self-hosted) | Free |
| Error tracking | Sentry | Free (up to 5,000 errors/mo) |
Total at launch: $3.99/month + domain.
Layer 1: Frontend + Backend with Next.js
Next.js is the right call for a solo founder or small team building a SaaS in 2026. It handles your frontend, your API routes, and your server-side rendering in one framework. You are not maintaining a separate Express server. You are not juggling two repos. One codebase, one deployment.
Use the App Router. Use Server Components for anything that does not need interactivity. This keeps your JavaScript bundle small and your pages fast, which matters for SEO and for users on slower connections.
If your SaaS is primarily an AI tool or data-heavy backend, swap Next.js API routes for FastAPI. Python's ecosystem for AI, data processing, and async tasks is unmatched, and FastAPI is genuinely fast to build with. You can still use Next.js for your frontend and point it at a FastAPI backend.
What to build first: The signup page, the core feature (one, not five), and a simple dashboard. That is it. Resist building anything else.
Layer 2: Database and Auth with Supabase
Supabase gives you a Postgres database, authentication, real-time subscriptions, and file storage, all on a generous free tier. For a new SaaS, this is an absurd amount of infrastructure for zero dollars.
The free tier covers you up to 500MB of database storage and 50,000 monthly active users on auth. You will not hit those limits before you are making real money.
A few things worth knowing:
- Use Row Level Security (RLS) from day one. It keeps your data access logic in the database, not scattered across your API.
- Supabase Auth handles OAuth (Google, GitHub) out of the box. No Passport.js setup, no JWT headaches.
- The Supabase JavaScript client works seamlessly inside Next.js Server Components.
When you outgrow the free tier, the Pro plan is $25/month and gives you 8GB of storage and daily backups. At that point, you should have paying customers covering it.
Layer 3: Hosting with Hostinger
This is the one paid tool in the stack from day one, and it is worth it.
The reason you do not want to rely on free hosting tiers for your main app: they sleep. Render's free tier spins down your server after 15 minutes of inactivity. Fly.io's free machines get paused. Your demo fails in front of the one person who might have become your first customer.
Hostinger's Node.js hosting runs your Next.js or Node.js app on a live server that stays on, at $3.99/month. You can also grab your domain there and connect it in a few clicks. Deployment is straightforward: connect your GitHub repo, push code, and it deploys automatically.
If you are running a FastAPI backend, Hostinger's VPS plans start at the same price range and give you root access to install anything you need: Python, Gunicorn, Nginx, whatever your stack requires.
I use Hostinger for several projects. It is not trying to be AWS. It is trying to be the easiest, cheapest way to keep a Node.js or PHP app live. For a solo founder launching a first SaaS, that is exactly what you want. Get 20% extra discount here.
Layer 4: Payments with Stripe
Stripe is the standard. Do not use anything else until you have a reason to.
The free tier means you pay nothing until you process a transaction. Then it is 2.9% plus 30 cents per charge. On a $29/month subscription, that is about $1.14 per transaction. Reasonable.
What most people do not realise: Stripe Checkout handles your entire payment UI. You do not need to build a checkout page. You redirect users to a Stripe-hosted page, and Stripe handles card collection, 3D Secure, tax calculation, and PCI compliance. Wire it to a webhook, update the user's subscription status in Supabase, done.
For subscriptions specifically, use Stripe Billing. It handles trial periods, proration on plan changes, dunning (automatic retries on failed payments), and cancellations. Things that would take weeks to build yourself.
Layer 5: Email with Resend
Transactional email (welcome emails, password resets, upgrade receipts) is non-negotiable for a SaaS. Resend gives you 3,000 emails per month for free with a proper API that works beautifully from Next.js.
The developer experience is significantly cleaner than SendGrid or Mailgun. You write your emails as React components using the react-email library, which means type safety, reusable components, and no more wrestling with HTML tables.
import { Html, Button, Text } from '@react-email/components';
export function WelcomeEmail({ name }: { name: string }) {
return (
<Html>
<Text>Hey {name}, welcome aboard.</Text>
<Button href="https://yourapp.com/dashboard">
Go to your dashboard
</Button>
</Html>
);
}
When you hit the free limit, Resend's paid tier starts at $20/month for 50,000 emails. By that point, you will have the revenue to cover it.
Layer 6: Analytics and Error Tracking
Analytics: Do not use Google Analytics. It is bloated, it shares your users' data with Google, and it will scare privacy-conscious users in 2026. Use Plausible (lightweight, privacy-first, $9/month) or self-host Umami on your existing Hostinger VPS for free. Umami is a single Node.js app. Add it as a second service alongside your main app.
Error tracking: Sentry's free tier captures 5,000 errors per month and shows you the exact stack trace, user session, and browser when something breaks in production. Integrate it in one line:
// app/layout.tsx
import * as Sentry from "@sentry/nextjs";
Sentry.init({ dsn: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SENTRY_DSN });
You will find bugs you never would have found otherwise.
What the cost curve actually looks like
Month 1 (building, no users): $3.99/month. Domain is a one-time $10/year cost.
Month 2 to 3 (early users, free tier everywhere): Still $3.99/month. Supabase, Stripe, Resend, and Sentry are all free at small scale.
Month 4 to 6 (getting traction, 100+ users): You might upgrade Supabase to Pro ($25/month) and add Plausible ($9/month) for better analytics. Stack is now around $38/month.
Month 6+ (revenue coming in): Your hosting might need an upgrade depending on traffic. Hostinger's plans scale without requiring a migration to a different platform. Total stack stays under $50/month well into the thousands-of-users range.
The point is: the costs scale with your success. You are not paying $200/month in infrastructure before you have a single dollar of revenue.
The one trap to avoid
The trap is adding complexity before you have users.
You do not need a separate Redis instance on day one. You do not need a message queue. You do not need microservices, Kubernetes, or a CDN with edge functions until your traffic makes those things genuinely necessary.
Every layer of infrastructure you add is a layer you have to debug at 11pm when something breaks and your only user is waiting for a response.
Start with this stack. Get to ten paying customers. Then look at what is actually breaking and fix only that.
Quick start checklist
- [ ] Create Next.js app with
npx create-next-app@latest - [ ] Set up Supabase project, enable RLS on all tables
- [ ] Configure Supabase Auth with Google OAuth
- [ ] Get a domain and Node.js hosting on Hostinger
- [ ] Connect GitHub repo for automatic deploys
- [ ] Create Stripe account, set up one Product and one Price
- [ ] Add Stripe webhook to update Supabase on subscription events
- [ ] Set up Resend, write welcome email with react-email
- [ ] Add Sentry to catch production errors
- [ ] Self-host Umami on the same VPS for analytics
That is your entire infrastructure. Everything else is product.
Final thought
The SaaS graveyard is full of products that were never shipped, not products that shipped on the wrong stack.
Pick these tools. Build the thing. Ship it to five people this week.
The stack can always be changed later. The feedback you get from real users this week cannot be replicated by anything else.
Did you learn something good today as a developer?
Then show some love.
© Muhammad Usman
WordPress Developer | Website Strategist | SEO Specialist
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Top comments (2)
A thought on this: Before building an MVP, it's worth considering whether it could run entirely in the frontend. With IndexedDB, Web Workers, and the File System Access API, modern browsers are more capable than most people think. The upside: virtually zero costs and it's privacy-centric by default, since no user data ever hits your server. You might only need a micro-backend later for tasks that truly require a server, like payment webhooks or scheduled jobs. This is usually how I build the first MVPs for my clients.
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