Most startups lose the first week to plumbing and never reach a customer call. This is the SaaS tech stack I would start a 30-day build on, with every price checked on 2026-10-13. The fixed bill is $45 a month, and the code lives in a repository you own.
The two sites I can show you do not run this exact stack. atharvashah.com runs Vite, React and TypeScript on GitHub Pages, with PostHog for analytics and Cal.com for bookings. The DevRel Workbench runs React, TypeScript, Tailwind, shadcn/ui and tRPC, and its guide checkout calls Polar. Next.js, Vercel, Resend and OpenPanel are the parts I researched and priced for you.
TLDR
One Next.js repository replaces a separate backend, a Python service and a component library.
shadcn/ui copies the component code into your repo, so you own the file and edit it.
Vercel Pro costs $20 a month and builds a preview URL for every non-production branch.
Polar is the Merchant of Record, so it files the sales tax and VAT, and your income tax stays yours.
The fixed bill is $45 a month, and every piece except your own code can be swapped.
The Same Task Takes a Week Without the Stack and a Commit With It
Take one task: put a login page and a paid plan in front of a stranger.
Without a stack, the work looks like this:
You rent a droplet and hand-write an Nginx config.
You build reset emails in raw HTML.
You read the VAT rules before the first sale.
Week one ends with no customer call.
With the stack, you push to GitHub and Vercel builds a preview. Resend sends the email, and Polar sells and handles the tax. Week one goes to the product.
Watch out. Spending money on plumbing only helps if you spend the saved time on customers. A founder who ships faster and talks to nobody has bought nothing.
Step 1. Start With One Next.js Repository
Next.js lets one repository serve the marketing site, the dashboard and the API. You skip three deploy pipelines and a second language. Neither a Go backend nor a Python service earns its keep before you have paying customers.
API routes that share TypeScript types with the interface catch a class of bug before it becomes a support ticket. Setup takes an hour, and both tools are free.
The figure shows the rule I use. Everything in your repository is yours. Everything the code calls is rented, and each rented piece sits behind one function so you can replace it.
One developer compared the full-stack setup of five years earlier with the one of October 2023.
Step 2. Own Your UI Code With shadcn/ui
A component library becomes a trap the day you need to change one behavior. shadcn/ui avoids it. Its docs say it is not a component library, and you copy the source into your project instead of importing a package.
The DevRel Workbench uses it, and the proof is in its own button file. White text on the brand orange measured 3.58:1 contrast. I changed the label to near-black, which measures 5.79:1, and edited one file to do it.
Example. That fix lives in the component file,
button.tsx. With a packaged library, the same change means a CSS override you rewrite after every upgrade.
Step 3. Deploy From GitHub to Vercel
Vercel builds a preview deployment whenever you push to a branch that is not production, or open a pull request. Its docs also list Instant Rollback on the Pro plan. That replaces the hand-set Nginx server for $20 a month, and the plan includes $20 of usage credit.
A push to
maindeploys production.A push to any other branch deploys a preview URL.
A bad deploy rolls back from the dashboard.
Pieter Levels made the opposite call and runs his products on one VPS.
Hosting is the swappable part. My own site deploys to GitHub Pages with a GitHub Actions workflow, which costs nothing and fits a static site.
Step 4. Sell Globally With Polar
Stripe is powerful and heavy for a one-person team. Polar's reason to exist is the Merchant of Record model. Polar is the seller on each sale, and its docs say it takes on the liability for sales taxes, including US sales tax and EU VAT.
The Starter plan has no monthly fee. It charges 5% plus 50 cents per transaction, which is $1.95 on a $29 sale paid by a US card. International cards add 1.5%. The Pro plan costs $20 a month and lowers the fee to 3.8% plus 40 cents.
Wiring it is short. The DevRel Workbench creates a Polar checkout with a product ID and a success URL, then redirects the buyer to Polar's hosted page. The code is in the Appendix.
Rule of thumb. Start on the free plan. Move to Pro when the lower rate saves more than the $20 fee. Polar lists that break-even at about $1,379 a month in sales.
Step 5. Send Email and Track Drop-Offs
A password reset that lands in spam loses the user for good, so pick a sender with a deliverability track record.
Resend. The free plan gives 3,000 emails a month and 100 a day. Pro costs $20 a month for 50,000 emails. You write emails in React.
OpenPanel. It costs $5 a month for 10,000 events. It also offers a free self-hosted option with unlimited events.
OpenPanel replaces a reporting interface built for a marketing team with one screen for drop-offs and feature use. PostHog does the same job, and it is what atharvashah.com runs today.
Step 6. Add a Coding Agent Last
Add the coding agent after the repository, the host and the payment flow exist. It reads your repository, so it is only as useful as the structure you gave it.
I write code with Claude Code. Claude Pro costs $20 a month billed monthly and includes it. Cursor lists paid plans from $8 a month.
GitHub's researchers ran a controlled experiment in 2023. Developers with Copilot finished a task 55.8% faster than the control group (arXiv:2302.06590). That study measured one coding task, so treat it as a direction and not a promise.
The Fixed Bill Is $45 a Month
Vercel Pro is $20, Claude Pro is $20 and OpenPanel is $5. Resend, GitHub and Polar cost $0 a month at the entry plan. Move Resend to Pro and the bill is $65.
Fewer moving parts is the point of the exercise. Fireship's video "I replaced my entire tech stack with Postgres" makes the same bet from the database side.
For the marketing side of the same build, read The Marketing Stack To Build An Empire On and the 2026 marketing stack. For the content side, read AI-First DevRel.
Questions Solo Founders Ask Before Starting
Do I have to host on Vercel? No. Vercel is the swappable layer, and any host that runs Node can replace it. Your code and your shadcn/ui files stay in your repository either way.
Does Polar file my income tax? No. Polar handles sales tax and VAT as the seller. Income tax in the country where you live stays your job.
Can I use PostHog instead of OpenPanel? Yes. PostHog runs on atharvashah.com today. OpenPanel is cheaper at low volume and can be self-hosted.
What happens when I outgrow the free Resend plan? The Pro plan is $20 a month for 50,000 emails. The free plan caps at 3,000 a month and 100 a day.
The Appendix Holds Every Command and Config
Create the app and add shadcn/ui:
npx create-next-app@latest my-saas
cd my-saas
npx shadcn@latest init
npx shadcn@latest add buttonThe shadcn config in the DevRel Workbench, which records where the component files live:
{
"style": "new-york",
"tailwind": { "baseColor": "neutral", "cssVariables": true },
"aliases": { "components": "@/components", "ui": "@/components/ui" }
}The Polar checkout call in the DevRel Workbench, trimmed to the essentials:
const polar = new Polar({ accessToken: process.env.POLAR_ACCESS_TOKEN });
const checkout = await polar.checkouts.create({
products: [productId],
successUrl,
});
return checkout.url; // redirect the buyer here
The DevOps cosplay line is painfully accurate. Where do you see this stack breaking as teams scale.
Here's the TL;DR version of this:
• Shipping speed matters more than experimenting with new frameworks.
• Next.js and TypeScript reduce decision fatigue and technical drag.
• Vercel eliminates the need to hire DevOps too early.
• Cursor materially increases developer output per hour.
• Polar.sh removes global tax and compliance friction entirely.