HN Explorer

Ask HN: What are your go to SaaS products for startups/MVPs?

169 points by lbj ↗ HN
Looking for some inspiration. Ive done a lot of MVPs/Early-stage apps over the years and I tend to lean on the same SaaS portfolio for mails, text gateways, payment etc, but Im sure Ive missed a few valuable additions.

Here's a few I use: Mails: Mailchimp / Mandrill Payment: Paylike Search: Algolia

84 comments

[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] thread
[dead] british_india
Kubernetes, Terraform, Terragrunt, gangway
jtolmar
Stripe for payments, AWS Elastic Beanstalk for hosting/deployments.

Wish there was an even dumber alternative to Beanstalk. I've been tempted to build my own thing to get closer to my ideal of uploading a jar and forgetting about it.

(Raw javascript / vertx / postgres for actual development, but these aren't SaaS)

stockkid
Beanstalk is cool. Just curious, in what ways could it be more simplified? I think we can already just upload our code and forget about it. It could be that I am missing something.
jtolmar
There's a lot of configuration, and not a lot of debug output. Simple things that should be defaults like HTTPS forwarding instead require a barely-documented ngnx patch. If something goes wrong before your app comes up, it doesn't tell you. Logs are spread across several files, most of them meaningless because they're details about the AWS-generated environment.

It does a good enough job of staying running once it's up though, so at least it's easy to forget why it was a pain to set up.

WrtCdEvrydy
CapRover can accept any docker file (or a zip file with a .captain file). You can provision most databases and external self hosted services on a simple UI.

I self host it on a $5 droplet.

jtolmar
Well the pitch is certainly good. I'll look into it, thanks!
mustardo
My experience with Beanstalk was much the same had the feeling of a lot of hacky Ruby, Python scripts thrown together. Logs in random place, sometimes would get "stuck"

Current project uses GCP App Engine "Flexible" which is easier and seems to be built on better foundations than Beanstalk. Build a docker image and run. Although like you we could skip the docker shenanigans and just need a JRE to run our uber .jar (distroless https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/tree/mast... makes a basic JVM docker container easy)

kbyatnal
This was a big reason why I switched over to Heroku. More expensive, for sure, but I'm so much more productive and don't have to worry about annoying config issues.
diegoperini
Twilio for international SMS and more GSM related stuff.
kag0
Metabase for data analysis. Admittedly not a service, but more than worth running a docker container yourself since it's FREE.
matt_oriordan
Netlify/Vercel for static site hosting, intercom for chat, SendGrid for mail sending, Ably for pub/sub real-time messaging (yes I’m from ably.com!), paddle for subscriptions as opposed to stripe...
timothy-quinn
Mailchimp & Sendgrid for mail (I like MC for campaigns, but SG for API call driven messages).

Firebase for hosting/serverless funcs.

G Suite for collaboration.

Bitbucket for Repos (they had better enterprise-y tools for free, not sure if Github now is at parity).

Notion for task lists and product specs.

Stripe for payments.

Twilio for SMS.

Cloudflare for caching/DNS.

morcutt
All in on AWS for BE. Just about everything you need is there for free or close to free. Netlify for FE hosting just because it’s so easy to tie up to Github. Retool for ops. Metabase for BI. Seed for Serverless CI/CD.
sl1ck731
What kind of things are you doing in Retool for ops?
morcutt
We're pretty new to it but anything and everything ops related is running through it with minimal effort –

* Lookup various account types and see all relationships

* Editing accounts

* Changing permissions and verifying accounts

* Uploading logos to S3

morcutt
If you aren't familiar with it, take a look at their examples. You can do whatever you'd like with it.
sails
What backend are you using for Metabase? Any chance you are using the same backend for Retool? I'm thinking about doing this with Snowflake as a backend.
chrisMyzel
shameles plug - founder of myzel.io here - we're about to launch a platform that combines all the things you need as a startup in one platform.

As a simple example: Your startup is about tracking corona infections? You'll get the service built (no dev/design team needed), you'll get the services you need integrated (let's say kafka cluster, push notifications, analytics dashboard) and we host, monitor and scale it. All you need is an idea!

Love to see you all posting your favorite services. Following this

chrisMyzel
I see people signing up - unfortunately this is pre-mvp for until next monday. Happy if you reach out to chris@myzel.io for more info, pricing, etc.
perryh2
Twilio, Datadog, Splunk, Zoom, Envoy, Lever, Slack, PagerDuty, Mode, JIRA, Box, Airtable, readme.io
bdcravens
I know Datadog has the risk of being very expensive.
risyachka
It is the modern world of SaaS. If your margins are not super hight you are out.
bdcravens
Datadog left a bad taste in my mouth (different story for a different time, but it's more of a business practice thing than the product), but they can charge what they want. My point is startups/MVPs need to watch costs, so Datadog's value prop may mean it's not be the best use of capital.
hkarthik
This is the stack to run a startup with several engineers, not an MVP.
bharani_m
Postmark/Sendgrid for emails

Digital Ocean or Heroku for hosting

Skylight for application monitoring

Sentry for error tracking

Cloudflare for caching

S3 for storage

jayshua
Any specific reason for S3 instead of Spaces given you’re on Digital Ocean already?
thomasfortes
Not op, but for now spaces are lacking detailed stats, one example, if you want to build a saas and bill your users for the bandwidth consumed by their buckets you can't do that right now using spaces.
mceachen
For PhotoStructure, I'm using

* GitHub and GitLab for private and public repos

* Just switched from GitLab CI to GitHub Actions (as self-hosted runners, especially on Windows, can be flaky)

* MailChimp (free tier)

* Drift for chat support (generous free tier)

* Braintree (similar functionality to Stripe, but also includes PayPal)

* Cloudflare proxying a Digital Ocean droplet running nginx serving a Hugo-built static website

* Sentry.io for error reporting (again, generous free tier, and open source)

* Twilio for an extremely cheap toll-free number

* G suite for email/docs

* Clerky for corporate setup

* Todoist for shared lists

orliesaurus
A few weeks ago I heard of this tool called saasify (.sh),it aims at making the process of building SaaS faster. I haven't used it personally but I wonder if anyone reading the comments did and what are your thoughts? Is it worth getting into it?
westurner
https://StackShare.io and https://FounderKit.com are great places to find reviews of SaaS services:

> mails,

https://founderkit.com/growth-marketing/email-marketing/revi...

https://stackshare.io/email-marketing

https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/

> text gateways,

https://founderkit.com/apis/sms/reviews

https://stackshare.io/voice-and-sms

> payments

https://founderkit.com/apis/credit-card-processing/reviews

https://stackshare.io/payment-services

Both have categories:

https://stackshare.io/categories

https://founderkit.com/reviews

lbj
Awesome resources, thanks a lot for sharing.
askjdlkasdjsd
If you're looking for market/competition research, I'd recommend https://coscout.com as well, for info about companies, funding, competitors, tech stack etc

It's in alpha right now, so you'll have to get in the waitlist, though they're only a few weeks away from launching AFAIK.

Full disclosure: A friend of mine is building this :)

JustAnotherVC
Looks interesting. I could be a paid customer, is there a way to get access to this?
westurner
Long term viability of SaaS solutions is definitely worth researching.

Is this something that's going to get acquired and be extinguished?

What are our switching costs?

How do we get our data in a format that can be: read into our data warehouse/lake and imported into an alternate service if necessary in the future?

How does Coscout compare to e.g. Crunchbase, PitchBook (Morningstar), YCharts, AngelList?

justaguyhere
Stackshare doesn't let me browse many pages without logging in, Pinterest style :( I checked some random tools, the content is a bit...thin.

Overall a good resource, I just wish they had deeper content

DanHulton
So, not a SaaS itself, but I am working on a JavaScript SaaS starter kit, if you're looking for another tool to have in your belt. Instead of writing all the common code (user authentication/management, subscriptions, build systems, design systems) for your app yourself, Nodewood (https://nodewood.com) starts you off with all that written by someone for whom it is the main focus, not a secondary one.

Perhaps closer to your original ask, here's the SaaS tools I tend to lean on:

- For hosting, I like Linode (https://www.linode.com/). Decent VPS prices and they keep increasing the value you get for the same price.

- For analytics, I like Clicky (https://clicky.com/). Less intrusive than Google Analytics and a simpler interface.

- For email, Mailgun (https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/). They're more focused on transactional email, not marketing email, which is a subtle difference, but can be worth it depending on what you're doing.

- Stripe (https://stripe.com/) is still king for payments. Their API sets the standard.

narrationbox
Give us a try if you need text to speech:

https://narrationbox.com

ryan-allen
Heyo! I signed up, just a heads up that the verification email went to my spam folder. You may be able to somehow improve your reputation so they get through. I marked it 'not spam' to help, though!
narrationbox
Thanks for the heads-up! Really appreciate it.
tathougies
I've used slides2video.com before to make explainer videos and walkthroughs straight from my Google Slides presentations. It can be a bit rough around the edges, but it works great.
limograf
For my one-woman-band projects I use:

Github for repos and static hosting Gandhi for domains S3 & Cloudfront for assets Fortrabbit or Digital Ocean also for hosting Runway for ML and hosted models Algolia for search Snipcart and Stripe for payments Trello for project management Whereby for client video calls Twilio for a phone number Google suite generally for admin and presentations etc Typeform for forms Waveapps for accounting

alfon
https://www.revenuecat.com (YC S18)

API to manage In app subscriptions. I think it qualifies since it’s free up to 10K$ MTR.

Disclaimer: I work at RevenueCat, not in the mobile side of things although if I were to start a mobile app with subscriptions, after seeing how painful is to get it right, I for sure would use them.

jmstfv
I share all tools (and their costs) I use to run my SaaS publicly: https://tryhexadecimal.com/running-costs

Roughly speaking:

* AWS for servers/database/CDN (because I have credits)

* Netlify for static site hosting & forms

* Cloudflare for DNS/domains

* Fastmail for email

* Redis Cloud for managed Redis hosting

* Stripe for billing/payments/company incorporation

* Sentry for exception tracking

* Twilio for SMS notifications

* Sendgrid for transactional email

* Tarsnap for backups

weitzj
- Logdna for logs - rsync.net for backups and S3 „gateway“
dmitryminkovsky
Surprised not to see Zendesk here seems lots of people are using them...
jakelazaroff
Here’s what I use for my app https://songrender.com:

- DigitalOcean for servers/load balancer/database/object storage

- Netlify for the frontend and marketing site

- Cloudflare for CDN and DNS

- Stripe for payment processing

- Postmark for transactional emails

- Papertrail for logging

- Sentry for error tracking

- Fathom for analytics

- StatusCake for uptime monitoring

- GitLab for code hosting

- Trello for project management