Show HN: SaaS application boilerplate

I have briefly evaluated a few of these in the last month (focusing only on TS or Python) or so and have ended up convincing myself I need to go down the path of building bits I need in my own way. Consider this only constrictive criticism and I massively applaud the hard work that has gone into these projects:

   https://github.com/async-labs/saas 

Good:

-React Material UI Front End

-Book showing how you how to build it, really cool way of funding OSS!

-Simple but scalable enough architecture, not too much cruft.

Not for me:

-MongoDB/Mongoose, where SQL (sequalize ORM or plain postgres) would have been a much better fit for a SAAS boilerplate in my opinion. Quite a big user document in the mongodb schema.

-Quite tight integration with AWS by default (s3,SES,Lambda) not hard to replace but the principle of OSS with defaults to one vendors IAAS feels uncomfortable to me.

-No password based login, not a big deal but an interesting choice.

-No Delete on team members and some other simple things that are needed to make it functional.

-Missing a few key features (permissions, master dashboard ect) that are addons by commercial licence which is fine, but these add up quickly to ~$1000 for something that would still be a fairly basic boilerplate.

   https://github.com/staart/api

Good:

-Awesome features: landing page, RBAC (although roles are hardcoded so take a look at these before you build your app), TFA, Api Gateway, Auto Join company based on domain. Everything you need (and some you wont)

Not for me:

-While there are lots of features, some don't actually work out of the box and require fixes. Some features you will not need and may have to strip out. If more time was spent on getting fewer core features absolutely perfect this would be the best SAAS starter out there in my view (in TS/JS).

-Again integration with AWS by default (SES) with no SMTP or second option, easy to replace though.

- Would personally have chose postgres with knex (rather than direct mysql) for the DB and react for the front end over vue but these are personal preferences.

- UX on front end could do with a little work.

SAASForge seems interesting but missing alot of features like companies/teams master dashboard ect.

Nice effort but I don't like it.

You could replace everything here with Django. There's nothing in here that supports migrations, deployment etc (Django can).

I've used React and Webpack and loath it, it's extremely opinionated, saturated with pure JS developers, has an enormous learning curve and load of gotchas.

Django also has API support and a wealth of add-ons for services like federated auth, ElasticSearch bindings, bindings for S3, Redis, discovery, Cassandra, NoSql, etc etc.

The architecture here is also really unscalable. There's nothing in here that can be horizontally scaled, and Jinja or Django + bootstrap is 10x faster for prototyping before you hire a dedicated dev to maintain a React nightmare.

Modules are not a feature of this app, they're a feature of the Python language. Putting that in the README is misleading IMO.

Wooooow.

You better be super sure you can launch something good in 1 year with a $1,500 / year license.

Thanks for your opinion! It's probably more valuable for me than from people who like it :)

But you are a little bit wrong. Currently, it supports migrations and will support deployment very soon.

I don't agree about ReactJS and Webpack. I start using both in my projects and it didn't take too much time to learn them. Even if I don't know them deep I know them enough to use in the real projects.

I agree that currently, Django is more might than this project but it's just a beginning.

You are not right about modules too. It has nothing to do with Python's modules, I "invented" my own "modules" - it's just a combination of front-end code and Python API in one folder. And I created them to make the project more scalable. I don't know though if I gained this goal or not - yet.

Thanks for your great comment.

You are not the first person who wants companies/teams. But I'm not sure I understand you well, guys. Can you give more details, with some examples, why and what it could be useful for?