The AI SaaS Toolkit - My Top Picks for Solo Builders
After building several SaaS products and helping hundreds of developers do the same, I compiled a massive resource list covering every stage of the journey. Over 100 tools, books, communities, and platforms. But you don't need all of them. You need the right ones. This article is my curated shortlist of the tools I actually recommend, organized by the stage of your SaaS lifecycle.
Ideation - Finding Ideas Worth Building
Before writing a single line of code, you need an idea that people will pay for. These are the tools that help me spot opportunities early.
Exploding Topics identifies rapidly growing topics before they hit the mainstream. It's like Google Trends but forward-looking. When I see a topic gaining traction with no solid tool serving it yet, that's a signal.
IndieHackers is the reference community for solo builders. People share validated ideas with real revenue numbers. Reading through success stories here is one of the fastest ways to understand what works and what doesn't.
And if you only read one book on validating ideas, make it The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It teaches you how to talk to potential customers without leading them into telling you what you want to hear.
Validation - Test Before You Build
The biggest mistake I see developers make is building before validating. These tools let you test demand in a day, not a month.
Carrd lets you spin up a landing page in minutes for just $19/year. Throw up a simple page describing your product, add a waitlist form, and drive some traffic to it. If people sign up, you have signal. If they don't, you just saved yourself weeks of wasted development.
Tally is my go-to for surveys and forms. Unlimited free responses, clean interface, and easy to embed. Use it to run quick surveys in relevant communities before committing to an idea.
AI-Powered Development
This is where things get exciting. AI tools have completely changed how fast a solo developer can ship.
Claude Code is my primary development tool. It's an agentic coding assistant that runs in your terminal, understands your entire project context through CLAUDE.md files, and can plan, write, test, and debug code autonomously. The ability to define project-level instructions that persist across sessions is a game-changer for consistency. I use the Pro plan at $20/month and it pays for itself many times over.
Cursor is a VS Code-based editor with deep AI integration. Multi-line suggestions, inline chat, and codebase-aware completions. At $20/month for Pro, it's a solid complement to Claude Code when you want a more visual editing experience.
Bolt.new deserves a mention for rapid prototyping. It generates full-stack browser apps from a prompt. When I need to quickly test a UI concept or scaffold something for a demo, it's incredibly fast.
Deployment - From Code to Production
Shipping should take minutes, not hours.
Vercel is the reference platform for Next.js deployment. Push to git, and your app is live. The free Hobby tier is generous enough for most side projects, and the Pro plan at $20/month scales well when you start getting traffic. The developer experience is unmatched.
Railway is what I recommend when you need more than just frontend hosting. Full-stack apps with databases deployed in about two minutes. Their free tier gets you started, and $5/month covers most early-stage projects.
Infrastructure - The Stack That Scales
Picking the right infrastructure early saves painful migrations later.
Supabase is the backbone of most of my projects. PostgreSQL database, authentication, real-time subscriptions, and storage, all in one platform. The free tier gives you 500MB, and the Pro plan at $25/month is more than enough for a growing SaaS. It replaces what used to require three or four separate services.
Cloudflare R2 for file storage. S3-compatible with zero egress fees. That last part is huge. With AWS S3, your costs grow as your users download more. With R2, you get 10GB free and no surprises on your bill.
Better-Auth is an open source TypeScript authentication framework that you self-host. Free forever, no user limits, no vendor lock-in. If you're comfortable managing your own auth, it's the best option out there.
UI/UX - Interfaces That Convert
You don't need a designer to ship something that looks professional.
shadcn/ui has become the standard for React component libraries. Built on Radix UI and Tailwind CSS, it gives you accessible, customizable components that you own (they live in your codebase, not in node_modules). Free and open source.
GSAP is the industry standard for web animations. I use it extensively on this portfolio for scroll-triggered animations and parallax effects. The free open source version covers most use cases. If you want to take your UI from "functional" to "memorable", GSAP is how you do it.
SEO & Analytics - Measure What Matters
Organic traffic is the most sustainable growth channel for a bootstrapped SaaS.
Google Search Console is free and non-negotiable. It shows you exactly how Google sees your site, which queries bring traffic, and what needs fixing. Start here.
Plausible Analytics is my preferred analytics tool. Lightweight (under 1KB script), privacy-respecting, no cookies, GDPR-compliant out of the box. At $9/month for cloud hosting, it replaces Google Analytics without the complexity or privacy concerns.
PostHog goes beyond basic analytics. It's an open source suite that includes product analytics, session recordings, feature flags, and A/B testing. Free up to 1 million events per month. When you need to understand how users actually interact with your product, PostHog is the tool.
Marketing - Getting Your First Users
The best product in the world means nothing if nobody knows about it.
Product Hunt can drive thousands of visitors in 24 hours. The key is preparation: partner with a top-500 hunter (they get 3.2x more upvotes), launch on Tuesday or Wednesday, and have your landing page, demo, and social proof ready before launch day.
Building in public is not a tool but a strategy. Share your development process transparently on Twitter/X, IndieHackers, Instagram, or YouTube. It builds trust, attracts early adopters, and creates organic marketing content as a byproduct of your work.
Loops.so unifies transactional and marketing email in one platform. Free for up to 1,000 contacts, $49/month after that. Clean interface, good deliverability, and purpose-built for SaaS.
Monetization - Getting Paid
Keep it simple. Pick one payment processor and focus on building value.
Stripe is the default choice for good reason. 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, excellent documentation, and an ecosystem of tools built around it. If you're comfortable handling tax compliance yourself, Stripe gives you the most control.
Polar.sh is built for open source monetization but works great for any SaaS. It acts as your Merchant of Record, handling VAT and tax compliance automatically. At 5% commission per transaction, it's straightforward and developer-friendly. If you're building in the open source ecosystem or want a clean, modern payment experience, Polar is an excellent choice.
Security & Maintenance - Keeping Things Running
Don't skip this section. A security incident or extended downtime will cost you far more than the time it takes to set these up.
OWASP Top 10 is your security checklist. Input validation, authentication, HTTPS, rate limiting, CORS configuration. Read it, internalize it, and audit your projects against it regularly.
Sentry catches bugs in production before your users report them. Real-time error tracking with stack traces and context. Free for up to 5,000 errors per month, $26/month for the Team plan.
UptimeRobot monitors your app and alerts you when it goes down. Free for up to 50 monitors. It takes five minutes to set up and gives you peace of mind.
Get the Full List
This article covers my top picks, but the complete resource list has over 100 tools, books, communities, and platforms organized across 15+ categories. If you want the full version with detailed pricing, use cases, and links for everything, you can grab it here:
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