Guide Outlines Sub-$10 Full-Stack SaaS Stack
A developer broke down how to launch a full-stack SaaS application for approximately $10 per month. The proposed stack leverages free or low-cost tiers from modern providers. It includes Vercel for hosting, Supabase for database and authentication, Resend for emails, Stripe for payments, and shadcn/ui for the user interface.
- A key constraint in Supabase's free tier is that projects are automatically paused after one week of inactivity, making it potentially unsuitable for production applications requiring constant uptime. - While Vercel's free "Hobby" plan is generous, it has a 100 GB monthly bandwidth limit, and every request to your site, including for static assets, counts towards a 1 million "Edge Requests" limit. - Resend's free tier provides up to 3,000 emails per month but is limited to 100 emails per day and only retains data for one day. - Stripe's payment processing operates on a pay-as-you-go model with no monthly fees, charging a standard 2.9% + $0.30 per successful online card transaction for domestic cards. - Unlike traditional UI libraries, shadcn/ui is not installed as a package dependency; developers use a CLI to copy the source code for individual components directly into their project, offering complete ownership and control. - The Supabase free plan includes a 500 MB database and allows for up to 50,000 monthly active users for its authentication service; however, exceeding the database limit will switch it into read-only mode. - For businesses with international customers, Stripe's fees increase, adding a 1.5% fee for international cards and an additional 1% fee if a currency conversion is needed. - This stack is part of a broader trend of leveraging open-source or low-cost alternatives to expensive SaaS tools, with other examples including Coolify as a Vercel alternative, and Appwrite or PocketBase as Supabase alternatives.
