The stack at a glance
| Category | Day-1 pick | Budget alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Fly.io, Railway, or Cloudflare Workers | Hetzner VPS |
| Database | Supabase or Neon | Self-hosted Postgres |
| Payments | Stripe | Lemon Squeezy (MoR) |
| Auth | Clerk or Auth.js | Supabase Auth |
| Transactional email | Resend or Postmark | AWS SES |
| Email marketing | ConvertKit | Beehiiv |
| Docs + landing | Notion (Publish) or Astro | Ghost |
| Password manager | 1Password Business | Bitwarden Teams |
| Analytics | Plausible or Fathom | PostHog (free tier) |
| Error monitoring | Sentry (free tier) | Highlight.io |
Total day-1 cost (pre-revenue): $30–80/mo. Most items have generous free tiers that scale with you.
Who this stack is for
You’re building a SaaS product alone. You ship code, write copy, handle support, and answer the customer service email. You have zero employees and maybe one contractor. Your target revenue is $5k-$50k MRR within 18 months. You’re bootstrapped or very lightly funded.
Not a fit:
- If you’re VC-funded with 3+ engineers, you don’t have the constraints this stack assumes.
- If you’re a services-first founder who codes as a side, optimize for client-facing tools instead — see the solo consultant stack.
The essential stack (Day 1)
Hosting + database: Fly.io (or Railway) + Neon (or Supabase)
For a solo SaaS, the right default is a managed platform that handles deploys, SSL, regional routing, and autoscaling. Fly.io is our pick for apps with server-side logic; Railway is easier but pricier at scale; Cloudflare Workers is best if your product is genuinely edge-first.
For database, Neon (serverless Postgres) is best-in-class for solo dev ergonomics — branching per PR, automatic scaling down to zero, no ops overhead. Supabase is the alternative if you also want auth + storage + realtime bundled.
Payments: Stripe
Not a choice. Stripe handles cards, ACH, subscriptions, taxes, invoicing, and customer portals. The one alternative worth a look: Lemon Squeezy (merchant-of-record). Lemon Squeezy eats sales tax + VAT globally, so if your customers are 50%+ international and you don’t want to become a VAT expert, it’s a real option at the cost of higher fees.
Auth: Clerk (or roll your own with Auth.js)
Clerk handles email/password, magic links, OAuth, MFA, session management, and the “user is signed in” UI — the entire auth layer. $25/mo at 10k MAUs. Rolling your own with Auth.js saves money but costs you 2-4 weeks of engineering you could’ve spent on your product.
Transactional email: Resend
Resend is what Mailgun and SendGrid should’ve been — a clean API, great developer docs, reasonable pricing. $20/mo for 50k emails is enough for most solo SaaS until product-market fit.
Email marketing: ConvertKit
Wait — why email marketing for a SaaS? Because your blog, lead magnets, and drip sequences convert trials to customers. ConvertKit is the creator-native default and free up to 10k subs for newsletter-only use.
Password manager: 1Password Business
SaaS founders collect many more passwords than most people — you’re the admin on 15+ services (AWS, Stripe, Clerk, DNS provider, DB provider, Notion, GitHub, 1Password itself, Resend, …). Without a manager, you’re drowning. 1Password Business + Secrets Automation is the right pick for the dev-heavy workflow.
Internal wiki: Notion
Your product roadmap, changelog drafts, customer notes, investor decks (if any), marketing copy — all belong in Notion. You’ll also likely use Notion’s public pages or Ghost to host your public blog.
Add these as you grow
- PostHog at post-launch — product analytics that beat Google Analytics for SaaS.
- Chargebee or Stripe Billing at $5k+/mo MRR — more sophisticated billing than vanilla Stripe.
- Customer.io or Loops at 1,000+ customers — lifecycle marketing that’s more powerful than ConvertKit flows.
- Attio or HubSpot Free when leads exceed ~20/day — a real CRM.
Skip these (but everyone recommends them)
- Dedicated helpdesk (Intercom, Zendesk) — one email inbox + a public Discord is enough until ~500 paying users.
- Dedicated project management (Linear, Jira) — you’re one person. Notion database or GitHub Issues is fine.
- Feature flags (LaunchDarkly) — env vars + a simple
flags.tsis enough until you have real users and real risk.
Cost progression
Pre-revenue (month 1-3): $20-50/mo. Free tiers on Fly.io, Neon, ConvertKit, Notion (personal), Stripe (transaction-based).
First $1k MRR (month 3-6): $80-150/mo. You’ll be paying real-tier Fly.io, Clerk, and Resend.
At $10k MRR: $300-600/mo. Serious infra + auth + email + analytics. Still tiny vs your revenue.
FAQ
Should I use a no-code tool (Bubble, Webflow) instead?
If you’re not a developer, yes — ship faster. If you are a developer, no-code tools are a trap for SaaS; you’ll outgrow them in month 6 and have to rewrite, which is worse than building a thin custom thing from day one.
Open-source vs SaaS for self-hosting the platform?
Self-host when you must (regulated industry, privacy-critical), SaaS otherwise. Your time is the most expensive resource you have; don’t spend it on ops until the revenue justifies it.
What about AI infrastructure?
If AI is in your product, budget $200-2,000/mo for OpenAI/Anthropic API from month 1. Use the cheapest model that works; most products over-spec their LLM.