I do really wish there were a well-established open source framework for bootstrapping projects with authentication and payments, something that was vetted by a lot of people though.
It's a useful project, and I genuinely thank you for sharing it. That people are upvoting it and commenting positively on it gives me much more information than you saying it's "the ultimate".
My usual rule is:
> If you feel the need to tell me how good it is, I'll assume it's not very good
There are very talented developers, often deeply technical and highly skilled in areas separate from the idiosyncrasies of building SaaS web apps, who appreciate a functional jump start in an area outside of their core competency.
If your expertise extends to the areas covered by OP's SaaS template, consider offering suggestions rather than dismissing the (graciously shared) project's entire raison d'etre.
Oh no, someone tell rauchg and the rest of the Vercel team that they've not only built a terrible framework (next.js) but their using it to build Vercel is also bad because checks notes IceDane on HN said nobody does this.
> You probably don't want to entangle this API with your frontend, even though you can.
How about you build a SaaS with whatever gets the job done? Could be a single PHP file as long as it ships.
Why? Considering the mess that is JS development, it's nice to have projects like that to quickly evaluate some options.
> Also.. SaaS with next? If you're building a SaaS application, you're probably building an API first and an application second. You probably don't want to entangle this API with your frontend, even though you can.
That sounds like a very specific vision of SaaS, one mainly aimed at programmers. That's not the only kind of SaaS out there.
It really isn't.
It's nice to start from something that is not an empty canvas. That said, I think this one mixes way too many independent opinions to be useful.
Anyway, "I made a thing, what do you think" is a common kind of post here, and starting templates are something that attracts a lot of interest.
So yeah, I have a hard time seeing anything other than dystopia when I look at this. It's certainly not poorly made or developed in bad faith, but the optics and rhetoric around it really make me sick.
Here's a protip: The intersection of (people who are capable of building a SaaS application) and (people who need or want cookie cutter programming templates) is the empty set.
Also.. SaaS with next? If you're building a SaaS application, you're probably building an API first and an application second. You probably don't want to entangle this API with your frontend, even though you can.