
Ask HN: What are your go to SaaS products for startups/MVPs? - lbj
Looking for some inspiration. Ive done a lot of MVPs&#x2F;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.<p>Here&#x27;s a few I use:
Mails: Mailchimp &#x2F; Mandrill
Payment: Paylike 
Search: Algolia
======
westurner
[https://StackShare.io](https://StackShare.io) and
[https://FounderKit.com](https://FounderKit.com) are great places to find
reviews of SaaS services:

> _mails,_

[https://founderkit.com/growth-marketing/email-
marketing/revi...](https://founderkit.com/growth-marketing/email-
marketing/reviews)

[https://stackshare.io/email-marketing](https://stackshare.io/email-marketing)

[https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/](https://zapier.com/learn/email-
marketing/)

> _text gateways,_

[https://founderkit.com/apis/sms/reviews](https://founderkit.com/apis/sms/reviews)

[https://stackshare.io/voice-and-sms](https://stackshare.io/voice-and-sms)

> _payments_

[https://founderkit.com/apis/credit-card-
processing/reviews](https://founderkit.com/apis/credit-card-
processing/reviews)

[https://stackshare.io/payment-services](https://stackshare.io/payment-
services)

Both have categories:

[https://stackshare.io/categories](https://stackshare.io/categories)

[https://founderkit.com/reviews](https://founderkit.com/reviews)

~~~
askjdlkasdjsd
If you're looking for market/competition research, I'd recommend
[https://coscout.com](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 :)

~~~
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?

------
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

~~~
dmitryminkovsky
Exiftool vendored is excellent thank you!

------
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

------
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

------
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](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/](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/](https://clicky.com/)).
Less intrusive than Google Analytics and a simpler interface.

\- For email, Mailgun
([https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/](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/](https://stripe.com/)) is still king for
payments. Their API sets the standard.

------
kag0
Metabase for data analysis. Admittedly not a service, but more than worth
running a docker container yourself since it's FREE.

------
Taurenking
For [https://calenduck.co](https://calenduck.co) (built with Django) we use:

[https://dashboard.heroku.com/](https://dashboard.heroku.com/) for the infra

[https://www.sendinblue.com](https://www.sendinblue.com) for emails

[https://sentry.io](https://sentry.io) for error reporting

[https://stripe.com](https://stripe.com) for payments

[https://papertrailapp.com/](https://papertrailapp.com/) for logging

[https://slack.com](https://slack.com) (free) for chat

[https://trello.com](https://trello.com) (free) for keeping track of things

Totaling at 14$ a month, it doesn't really get any cheaper

------
avinoth
All my products mostly start with these list of essential services, but can do
away with the free plans until the product grows.

* Github for repositories (Free) * Namecheap for DNS * Zoho for emails (free for 5 email accounts) * Mailgun for emails (1250 emails per month free) * Trello for project management (free) * Airbrake for error monitoring (7.5 errors per month free) * Tawk.to for customer support contact form (free) * Netlify for frontend hosting (free) * Cloudflare for CDN (free) * Hetzner for servers. (this is the only paid service :), but its only $2.70 per month for a 1Vcpu 2GB ram vps) * Paddle for payments (they take 5% cut which is very reasonable for the services they offer)

This stack pretty much allows me to just invest "time" into a project and get
it out, before scaling it.

------
abinaya_rl
Highly recommend

\- [https://simpleanalytics.com](https://simpleanalytics.com) -> Simple,
clean, and privacy-friendly analytics

\- [https://wip.chat](https://wip.chat) -> it's a community of makers who help
each other ship products.

------
semicolonandson
I've been an indie-hacker for a decade and personally the biggest win by a
country mile is Heroku (platform as a service).

Even though I'd consider myself good with linux etc., I still love Heroku
because it's a massive time and stress saver not to have to deal with most
deployment issues myself.

------
jakelazaroff
Here’s what I use for my app [https://songrender.com](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

------
gjayakrishnan
Zoho One - One platform for all your business needs. CRM, Mail, Finance,
Support, Marketing, HR, Office Suite, Chat, Project Management, Business
Intelligence, Custom Solutions, etc.

[https://www.zoho.com/one/](https://www.zoho.com/one/)

NB: I work for Zoho.

~~~
andrepaulj
Having used Zoho for 3 years, I can say that Zoho is nice because it's cheap,
but you get what you pay for. It feels like the less-good version of G Suite
in almost every way.

------
michalbugno
In [https://getprobe.io](https://getprobe.io) (built in Ruby) we use:

AWS (RDS, S3, ECS, EC2)

[https://www.mailgun.com](https://www.mailgun.com) for emails

[https://rollbar.com](https://rollbar.com) for error reporting

[https://stripe.com](https://stripe.com) for payments

[https://gsuite.google.com](https://gsuite.google.com) for email, calendar,
sheets

[https://slack.com](https://slack.com) (free) for chat

[https://trello.com](https://trello.com) (free) for keeping track of things

------
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...

------
vmurthy
I’m a PM at a startup and have to quickly spin up integration mvps. I’ve found
pipedream very handy! [http://pipedream.com/](http://pipedream.com/)

~~~
narrationbox
This looks like an exact clone of [https://stdlib.com](https://stdlib.com)

------
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.

------
XCSme
I recommend my own self-hosted analytics tool (I know, right...),
[https://userTrack.net](https://userTrack.net)

It has everything you need to quickly iterate over your website (analytics,
segments, heatmaps, session recordings and, coming soon: A/B tests). Privacy
benefits aside, I think it's way faster to have everything in one dashboard
instead of having to go to Google Analytics, than to Hotjar than to some other
tool.

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

------
sfrese
For [https://stackprint.io](https://stackprint.io) I'm using:

* GitLab for private repositories and CI (free)

* GitHub for public repositories (free)

* AWS for serverless backend & frontend hosting (free so far)

* Notion for milestones, sprint planning and notes (free)

* MailChimp for email campaigns and CRM (free)

* Webflow for landing page & blog

* Docusaurus for documentation, in progress

* Plausible for analytics

* Office 365 for email and documents

* Stripe for payments

~~~
kyawzazaw
Any particular reason for separate Gitlab and GitHub?

~~~
sfrese
I started out with GitLab for their free CI and multiple private repos before
both was available on GitHub.

I'm mostly using GitHub to share code examples as people are just more
familiar with it. With GitHubs current offering I might completely switch in
the not too distant future.

------
veeralpatel979
I saw [http://viable.fit/](http://viable.fit/) on Twitter today!

~~~
redis_mlc
You don't see a lot of purple web sites. Worth visiting just for that
experience.

------
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)

~~~
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!

------
davedx
Hosting: DigitalOcean

Emails: Mailchimp (marketing), Sendgrid (transactional)

Development: Github, Bitbucket, Trello

Payments: Stripe (I've seen people try to cheap out on payments gateways, it's
always a big, costly mistake. Choose a good one)

I have a question to people using things like CloudFlare, S3 etc. for early
stage apps and MVP's: why?

~~~
ies7
Cloudflare = free/cheap global CDN, free worker, and free WAF.

Also: As a member of the Bandwidth Alliance, DigitalOcean waives egress fees
to transfer data to Cloudflare, effectively creating a zero-cost data bridge
from DigitalOcean to Cloudflare's global network.

------
tkainrad
For [https://keycombiner.com](https://keycombiner.com) I am using:

Development & Project management:

\- GitLab

\- Notion

\- Sentry

Hosting:

\- PythonAnywhere (Makes hosting a django application very simple!:))

\- Cloudflare (Free tier already works great for caching purposes)

Mail:

\- Mailgun

Payments:

\- [https://paddle.com/](https://paddle.com/) (to handle sales tax on top of
stripe)

------
rozenmd
For [https://PerfBeacon.com](https://PerfBeacon.com) I'm using:

\- Chat window: Crisp

\- Email Newsletter/Transactional: Mailgun/Mailchimp

\- Payments: Stripe

\- Hosting: AWS Lambda / API Gateway / CloudFront / S3

\- Code: GitHub

\- CI: CircleCI

\- Task management: Trello

~~~
tbran
Hey, the end of your logo is clipped on Firefox:

[https://imgur.com/pZPmlR2](https://imgur.com/pZPmlR2)

I tried it with a totally clean Firefox and with Chromium (both Linux) -
Chromium is fine, Firefox is clipped.

------
kevsim
Question for the HN crowd - seems like people doing any sort of self promotion
on these types of questions inevitably get downvoted. Is there a stated rule
against it or is it just generally not appreciated?

~~~
HelloFellowDevs
Guidelines[0]

> Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users should vote and
> comment when they run across something they find interesting—not for
> promotion.

There are some situations where a well crafted Ask or Show HN would qualify as
self promotion. I'm not a moderator so I don't know how the rules are
interpreted day to day.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
shreyshrey
Here is a list of apps we use to run our marketing team :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23154800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23154800)

------
Maria_micro
# GitHub and Bitbucket for private and public repos

# Sendgrid (mails and campaigns)

# Slack for team chats

# 2Checkout for payment

# GA for analytics

# Trello for team tasks

# G suite for email and drive

# Postman for automated API tests

# Datadog for monitoring and tracing

# SonarQube for code quality assessment

# AWS as cloud provider

# Microtica for automation and software delivery

------
jeffbarg
Recent YC company that does SaaS reviews for startups:
[https://satchel.com](https://satchel.com)

Not associated with them, but I found their comparisons helpful!

------
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.

~~~
maxlamb
Did you mean high or tight?

~~~
risyachka
Sorry, high.

------
alfon
[https://www.revenuecat.com](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.

------
swati_ucl
Mailchimp, Firebase for hosting, GSuite for collaboration. Stripe for
payments.

------
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.

------
dmitryminkovsky
Surprised not to see Zendesk here seems lots of people are using them...

------
hpen
Auth0 for user sign up and authorization. AWS for everything else

------
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?

------
weitzj
\- Logdna for logs \- rsync.net for backups and S3 „gateway“

------
diegoperini
Twilio for international SMS and more GSM related stuff.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
Twilio for calling and SMS as well.

------
p0nce
\- Discord (free) for chat

\- sendinblue.com (free) for newsletter

\- GSuite for emails

\- OVH for hosting

------
vekker
My favourite stack at the moment for fast MVPs:

* Frontend with Angular deployed on Netlify on git push to the production branch

* AWS Lambda + API Gateway via Serverless and Nest.js for API endpoints

* Airtable API for recording data (under 1000 records = free)

* For larger database needs, I set up postgres, mongo, or I use DynamoDB

* SendGrid for transactional emails

* MailChimp for marketing emails

* Mollie for payments

* Matomo deployed on a DigitalOcean droplet for GDPR-proof analytics

* Zapier for all kinds of automated workflows

* Trello for project management

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

[https://narrationbox.com](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.

