4 ms·

Here's my self-serving advice for every one-man SaaS: Use Heroku. It's super easy to get started. And when you reach $2000+ in monthly bills, hire me to move

Here's my self-serving advice for every one-man SaaS: Use Heroku. It's super easy to get started. And when you reach $2000+ in monthly bills, hire me to move things over onto dedicated or EC2 so that you'll get 10x that performance for the same price. As for the actual language, I think PostgreSQL + Ruby Backend + JS Frontend is still the easiest way to get started. All those great architectural ideas don't matter much until you have your first $5k monthly in reliable revenue. And by then, you'll have a completely different perspective than what you think you need now.

taffer 6y ago
> PostgreSQL + Ruby Backend + JS Frontend is still the easiest way to get started. With JS, do you mean React or jquery or literally JavaScripting the DOM?
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  I meant some sort of JavaScript framework. I'd say that part mostly depends on personal preference. I'm quite happy with Angular, but I've also had lots of smaller one-off pages where I used jQuery.
tensor 6y ago
I'd actually suggest PostgreSQL + Hasura + React with Ant Design or Material UI
- armatav 6y ago
  This man knows the way. I use this stack and I'm pretty sure I could pump out any SaaS business in about two weeks with it. Host on Heroku, use whatever analytics system you want.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  For many newcomers starting out, the Rails CRUD generators are good enough to generate their entire admin area. And Rails comes with sane security defaults. I agree that GraphQL + React will be pretty and work well. But for one-man start-ups, the focus is usually on "looks good enough and kinda works". So I believe I'd go with Bootstrap & Glyphicons, just to get results faster.
  - cpursley 6y ago
    Hasura outperforms Rails by an order of magnitude in addition to being faster to develop with. Supabase also looks really nice.
xu3u32 6y ago
How hard is CORS set up with dedicated frontend/backend? I'm running into this with Django REST and VueJS. Or do you just host both using Heroku?
- cbdumas 6y ago
  I'm not the person you asked but I have my frontend hosted separately from the Heroku backend. CORS was a bit of a pain at first, mostly because I had never had to deal with it before, but after initial setup I never think about it.
- justingreet 6y ago
  We use Django REST and an angular frontend. Django is hosted on heroku, and angular is hosted on netlify. Netlify makes it super easy to proxy API requests from the front-end to our API backend.
aerovistae 6y ago
Okay, this thread is making me nervous about Heroku. I'm building a web app that runs on it and I clearly have not given the pricing scaling as much thought as I apparently need to. My site is a firebase powered SPA, so the only thing Heroku has to handle is the initial pageload....I would think that the standard 1x dyno would be sufficient for that....which is not very expensive...
- bpicolo 6y ago
  If it's just a static site, use Netlify.
- thesandlord 6y ago
  If you are already using Firebase, why not use Firebase Hosting or Firebase Functions?
xyst 6y ago
if you truly want to save some $$$, host it on your residential line and proxy the requests through an external load balancer. could also rope your friends/family into it if you want your app to be "distributed", might require a lot of work though especially if they are not very technology oriented.
blackrock 6y ago
Something doesn’t make sense here. Say, you’re a business, and want to set up your own e-commerce site. Whether it makes money immediately or not, is not a concern, as the business will pay for it, and absorb the initial loss. And the development costs to build the site are already in the $50,000+ range. So with all this upfront expense, why don’t the business just go with EC2? Unless this is for some silly hobby website of yours, that you have no clue will make any money or not. Then in this case, maybe your suggestion is valid.
- Rastonbury 6y ago
  They start the comment saying its targeted at one man SaaS. Even e-commerce, there are many who will not drop 50k on development and just start with shopify.

taffer 6y ago

> PostgreSQL + Ruby Backend + JS Frontend is still the easiest way to get started. With JS, do you mean React or jquery or literally JavaScripting the DOM?

fxtentacle 6y ago
I meant some sort of JavaScript framework. I'd say that part mostly depends on personal preference. I'm quite happy with Angular, but I've also had lots of smaller one-off pages where I used jQuery.

tensor 6y ago

I'd actually suggest PostgreSQL + Hasura + React with Ant Design or Material UI

armatav 6y ago
This man knows the way. I use this stack and I'm pretty sure I could pump out any SaaS business in about two weeks with it. Host on Heroku, use whatever analytics system you want.
fxtentacle 6y ago
For many newcomers starting out, the Rails CRUD generators are good enough to generate their entire admin area. And Rails comes with sane security defaults. I agree that GraphQL + React will be pretty and work well. But for one-man start-ups, the focus is usually on "looks good enough and kinda works". So I believe I'd go with Bootstrap & Glyphicons, just to get results faster.
- cpursley 6y ago
  Hasura outperforms Rails by an order of magnitude in addition to being faster to develop with. Supabase also looks really nice.

xu3u32 6y ago

How hard is CORS set up with dedicated frontend/backend? I'm running into this with Django REST and VueJS. Or do you just host both using Heroku?

cbdumas 6y ago
I'm not the person you asked but I have my frontend hosted separately from the Heroku backend. CORS was a bit of a pain at first, mostly because I had never had to deal with it before, but after initial setup I never think about it.
justingreet 6y ago
We use Django REST and an angular frontend. Django is hosted on heroku, and angular is hosted on netlify. Netlify makes it super easy to proxy API requests from the front-end to our API backend.

aerovistae 6y ago

Okay, this thread is making me nervous about Heroku. I'm building a web app that runs on it and I clearly have not given the pricing scaling as much thought as I apparently need to. My site is a firebase powered SPA, so the only thing Heroku has to handle is the initial pageload....I would think that the standard 1x dyno would be sufficient for that....which is not very expensive...

bpicolo 6y ago
If it's just a static site, use Netlify.
thesandlord 6y ago
If you are already using Firebase, why not use Firebase Hosting or Firebase Functions?

xyst 6y ago

if you truly want to save some $$$, host it on your residential line and proxy the requests through an external load balancer. could also rope your friends/family into it if you want your app to be "distributed", might require a lot of work though especially if they are not very technology oriented.

blackrock 6y ago

Something doesn’t make sense here. Say, you’re a business, and want to set up your own e-commerce site. Whether it makes money immediately or not, is not a concern, as the business will pay for it, and absorb the initial loss. And the development costs to build the site are already in the $50,000+ range. So with all this upfront expense, why don’t the business just go with EC2? Unless this is for some silly hobby website of yours, that you have no clue will make any money or not. Then in this case, maybe your suggestion is valid.

Rastonbury 6y ago
They start the comment saying its targeted at one man SaaS. Even e-commerce, there are many who will not drop 50k on development and just start with shopify.