Issue#28: Building $1K -$10K MRR Micro SaaS products around SaaS Starter Kits
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No fluffy content. If your goal is to build a $100m ARR business, this is not the right post. Here I am are NOT going to talk about building the next Facebook or Twitter. If your goal is to make a $1K to $10K MRR, continue reading.
This post will cover one SAAS area and talk about multiple niches in this space. This post also explains more on how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, how the current players are doing, and also ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.
SaaS starter kits are getting increasingly popular and generating thousands of dollars in sales. SaaS Starter kits currently range from $100 to $1000. Even though most of these are one-time sales, they are still generating a huge chunk of profits as there is no cost in the starter kit business (except for the development efforts). So, the profit margin is close to 100% in most cases.
Let’s see some of the popular products in this space.
UseGravity: Build a Node.js & React SaaS app at warp speed. Gravity is a leading Node.js & React SaaS boilerplate. You can get all features you need in a single install.
SaaSPegasus: The Django SaaS Starter Kit. Pegasus ships with a gallery of common SaaS use-cases, ready to use in your own project.
DivJoy: React code base generator that works with Material UI, Firebase, Stripe, Vercel and Mailchimp.
Wave: Wave is the Software as a Service Starter Kit packed with awesome features like authentication, subscriptions, invoices, announcements, user profiles, and so much more.
BulletTrain: Bullet Train is a Ruby on Rails SaaS-in-a-Box. Bullet Train saves you months of development by starting you off with all the features that are the same in every SaaS, so you can focus on what makes your app unique.
SaaS Starter Kits: A starter template with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD and more. A Laravel starter kit with subscriptions, invoices, default pages, tests, pipelines, development tooling and deployment solutions.
ServerlessPage: Build a SaaS faster with React Serverless SaaS is aiming to be the perfect starting point for your next React app to build full-stack SaaS applications. Save time and skip implementing authentication, payments, teams, and more.
RailsKits: Write your app. Not billing code. Skip the boring stuff and dive right into the code that differentiates your app.
GetsJabloon: Rails SaaS starter kit to focus on your core product. In built modern front-end, UI, authentication and billing modules built on Ruby on Rails.
SaaS Starup Kit: Golang Startup Kit for SaaS Open-source project of Go code to bootstrap your software-as-a-service startup.
LaraKits: Larakits is the perfect starting point for your next Laravel app. Skip the boilerplate setup and build your app faster. It will save your weeks of effort and give you time to make your app unique.
JumpStartRails: Build products faster in Ruby on Rails Jumpstart Pro helps you build products incredibly fast. It provides all the foundations you need to build a product so you can focus on your idea.
Kiso: Skip writing all that boring boilerplate Stop starting every new Rails app from scratch. Use our growing library of Rails themes & UI kits, feature packed Rails engines & powerful tools to cut out weeks of struggling development time.
See which NodeJS/React SaaS Starter Kit is making $100K per year
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See which Django SaaS starter kit makes $50K/year
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See which Code generator kit is Making $40K+ in annual revenue.
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See which Serverless starter kit is making $1200 MRR
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Negative Nancy says - “It's always easier to write my code than using a starter kit and understanding how the starter kit code works”
Me - Not really. Writing core modules like authentication, billing, user profiles, etc takes time. Moreover, all starter kits come with enough documentation/code comments and easy-to-use guides as well. In most cases, these SaaS starter kits should save you at least 1 month of effort.
Negative Nancy says - “What if the SaaS starter kit doesn’t support my database or auth component or payment provider?”
Me - Possible. Buying a Starter Kit doesn’t mean you need to use all the modules. Most of the boilerplate codes work as plug-and-play. You can choose whatever modules you want. For example, DivJoy supports multiple UI kits (Material UI, Bootstrap, Bulma), multiple authentications (Firebase, Auth0), etc.
Negative Nancy says - “Most of the SaaS boilerplates or SaaS kits are developed by one-person teams. What if I need more help?”
Me - Almost all SaaS boilerplate products have their communities on Discord/Slack etc. You aren’t the only one. Join the community and understand more about the starter kit if you have questions.
Deep-dive
Starter Kits are programming replacements for what templates used to be for HTML pages. With web development starter kits, you can save hours by not spending time to develop common features like user profile, billing, authentication, etc.
Most of these are high-value products. All you need is a handful of customers. Make sure to have enough Unit Test cases. As you add more features, one of the daunting tasks could be to add more unit test cases to make sure nothing breaks.
The cost of running a business something like a ‘starter kit’ or ‘starter templates’ is almost always zero. As the actual code runs on the end customer infrastructure like AWS, Vercel, Netlify, GCP, or Azure, there is no cost associated with you whether you have 100 customers or 1000 customers. With a model like this, the profit margin is close to 100% as there are no running costs as the customers base increases.
Some niches
Starter Kits that work with multiple databases/multiple modules: Most SaaS kits work with only one or two databases. Create a starter kit that works with multiple databases including cloud databases. Provide support for trending databases like Supabase as well. Also make sure to support multiple modules like billing, auth, user profiles, databases, email integration, analytics integration, etc.
Starter kits for Dashboards: While there are many SaaS templates to create the dashboard UI, there are not many starter kits that can query the selected database and build reports to show in a beautiful dashboard. Create a SaaS starter kit for reporting dashboards. The tool should support multiple databases, multiple standard queries, provide required APIs to fetch the data from the databases.
Starter kit for the cloud: Cloud has started to grow exponentially in the last few years and is growing at a rapid pace. Create a starter kit for SaaS that purely works on top of cloud services. Start with one cloud provider - either AWS or Azure or GCP. You can safely ignore other cloud providers for now considering the current trend. Whatever cloud provider you select, make sure to support all cloud components. For example, if you select AWS, provide support for all AWS components - for database make sure to support AWS DynamoDB or AWS Aurora SQL, for backend APIs make sure to support AWS API Gateway, AWS Lambda, etc. For authentication, AWS has AWS Cognito that can be leveraged. The same is the case with GCP. If you select GCP, support all GCP services like Firebase Auth for authentication, GCP Cloud functions for backend APIs, GCP Storage for serving static files, GCP Firestore for NoSQL database, etc. See ServerlessPage for inspiration.
Starter Kits for Mobile Apps: Consider building starter kits for mobile apps (for SaaS applications). There are many Starter Kits for web-based apps but there are not many starter kits to build iOS or Android SaaS apps. (We aren’t talking about gaming app templates). You can also build starter kits for newer technologies like Flutter. Using these kinds of templates/starter kits, users should be able to build apps much faster with prebuilt modules for authentication, billing, user profile, etc.
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Cost Analysis for 100 customers
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