HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you find writing plumbing code for SaaS painful?

5 points by brilliantcode ↗ HN
Used to run a few different SaaS but the plumbing code relating to integrating Stripe, user authentication, billing management for customer all quickly adds up to non-product related coding which now adds friction to your testing & deployment lifecycle.

I don't know, has this been the case for any of you out there?

Would there be value in being able to quickly deploy different SaaS ideas by bootstrapping it with a SaaS website hosted on the cloud that will be completely taken off your hands?

All you'd have to do is point to your core product running on your own deployment and interact with potentially a service that will give you drop in Access Control?

I know security is paramount here but also feel like there should be minimal friction in retrofitting SaaS functionality to your web app. Stripe removes the need to store any of your customer's sensitive data on my end which would require PCI compliance.

It's the classic build vs buy, and I'm curious to know if anything hits home for those working on SaaS product.

If so, let's have a conversation to discover ways that I can help you get you to the market quickly, focus on your core product while helping you become a profitable SaaS.

To contact me: Please click on my profile name & find my email & website there.

p.s. Please be gentle, everything is in a state of flux as I'm trying to gauge if this is worth doing.

4 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 16.0 ms ] thread
zilchers
Auth0 does a good job taking some of the pain out of integrating authentication, but I tend to agree. I have a nice couple of templates I use to bootstrap side projects.
brilliantcode
Auth0 looks dope, something like that, where it's super easy to just drop in user authentication and access control but with SaaS related billing. Thanks for that link.

The templates were a starting point for me and I think you are already quite ahead of the curve by having your own internal solution, did you have any specific pain rolling out your own SaaS with your templates? I'm assuming by 'template' that we are referring to more than just landing page designs.

keviv
I'm planning to build my own SaaS application and I totally understand what you are feeling. I won't say billing, auth etc are non-product things but I do feel that all the SaaS companies pretty much reinvent the wheel every time they write billing and auth code. I'm a PHP developer and I work mostly on Laravel. Laravel's creator definitely felt the same and he created Laravel Spark. Spark is basically a boilerplate for SaaS apps. It includes boilerplate for Authentication, teams, billing, subscription etc. It costs $99 which isn't a lot for all the things it offers. I'm not sure if any other framework offers such stuff.

Link: https://spark.laravel.com/ P.S I'm not related to Laravel or Spark in any way.

brilliantcode
+1 Wish I knew about spark before I set out to implement my own SaaS application, it looks excellent. The pricing is on-point as well. I wonder if the licensing lets me deploy it for my customers.

However, I think http://saasful.com goes beyond reinventing the wheel. Basically you get a human to handle your requests like css & content changes, anything related to your website . On top of not having to code, you get a completely managed-by-humans support on an ongoing basis and I think we are focusing more on being the "on-call go-to-guy" for all of your website related requests.

I'm not advocating against spark (it's awesome) but I feel like there's more itch to scratch by moving beyond just the "build-vs-buy" into "maintain-vs-outsourced-at-deep-discounts" if that makes sense.