Indie SaaS Starter Stack
A lean, production-proven stack for solo founders launching a SaaS on a tight budget. Focuses on fast development, low ops overhead, and self-hosted control using widely adopted open source components.
Tools in this Stack
Scalable PaaS (automated Docker+nginx) - aka Heroku on Steroids
Powerful, performs operating-system-level virtualization. [![Open-Source Software][OSS Icon]](https://github.com/docker) ![Freeware][Freeware Icon] [![Awesome List][awesome-list Icon]](https://github.com/veggiemonk/awesome-docker#readme)
Fast, instant realtime GraphQL APIs on Postgres with fine grained access control, also trigger webhooks on database events. ([Source Code](https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine)) `Apache-2.0` `Haskell/Docker/K8S`
Cryptocurrencies payment processor and development platform. ([Demo](https://admin.bitcart.ai), [Source Code](https://github.com/bitcart/bitcart)) `MIT` `Docker/Python/Nodejs`
Dashboard, API and SDKs for adding Feature Flags to your applications (alternative to LaunchDarkly). ([Source Code](https://github.com/flagsmith/flagsmith)) `BSD-3-Clause` `Docker/K8S`
Why This Stack Works
This stack is optimized for a solo developer who needs to ship quickly while keeping infrastructure and costs under control. CapRover and Docker together provide an opinionated yet flexible platform-as-a-service experience, allowing one-command deployments, automatic HTTPS, and easy rollbacks without deep DevOps knowledge. This dramatically reduces operational burden compared to managing raw VPS infrastructure. Hasura acts as the backbone for data, authentication, and authorization by exposing an instant GraphQL API on top of Postgres. Its built‑in auth hooks and role-based access control eliminate the need to build a custom backend early on, while still allowing future extensibility. For monetization, Bitcart enables self-hosted crypto payments with no platform fees, making it a practical choice for indie founders targeting global users. For product analytics and event tracking, Flagsmith provides lightweight feature flags and usage insights that double as an experimentation and rollout tool. Together, these tools form a cohesive, low-cost SaaS foundation with clear upgrade paths as the product grows.