For a first SaaS release, choose the stack your builder knows best and that already gives you login, billing, an admin panel and background jobs. I mostly build in Laravel and Filament, so I lean that way. Next.js with NestJS suits a team already working in TypeScript, and no-code suits testing demand before writing software. Host simply, and leave most features out of v1.
Last reviewed 9 October 2026. Disclosure: I sell SaaS development, so I am not neutral, and I have a stack bias. I mostly build in Laravel and Filament, and this very site runs on them. I also work in Next.js, NestJS and React, and I have 13+ years of experience. Read the comparison below with that bias in mind and ask any developer, including me, to justify the choice against your situation.
Which stack should you choose for a SaaS MVP?
Choose the one that lets your builder ship a working first version with the fewest moving parts. A first release needs accounts, a way to charge money, an admin view for you, emails and some background work. How quickly those arrive matters more than which framework is fashionable.
| Option | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Laravel with Filament | Dashboards, forms, roles, subscriptions and an admin panel for staff, built quickly by a small team. | Heavy real-time or highly interactive interfaces. A team that only knows JavaScript will find PHP a new language. |
| Next.js with NestJS | A rich, interactive front end, or a team that already writes TypeScript and wants one language throughout. | More parts to choose and connect: login, database layer, admin screens, queues and emails are separate decisions. |
| No-code first | Testing whether anyone will pay, with one simple workflow and a short timeline. | Limits on billing logic, data portability and per-seat or per-record costs. Plan to rebuild if it works. |
Laravel with Filament. Laravel is a PHP framework that ships with login, queues, scheduled tasks, email and validation. Filament is a toolkit on top of it that produces admin panels and forms quickly. Together they cover most of what a first release needs without gluing many libraries together. This is where my bias shows: I use it because it is fast for me, not because it is the only good answer.
Next.js with NestJS. Next.js is a React framework for the web interface and NestJS is a structured Node.js back end, both in TypeScript. It is a good fit when your team already lives in that world or when the product is mostly a rich interface. The cost is assembly: you pick and connect more pieces yourself.
No-code first. Use it when you have not yet shown that anyone will pay. A spreadsheet, a form builder and a payment link can answer that question before any software exists. If the answer is yes, you rebuild properly, with real customer requests to guide you.
Where should you host a first SaaS version?
Host it where you can restore it from a backup this afternoon, not where it could scale to millions. For a first release that usually means a VPS, a managed platform or, for a small Laravel app, ordinary cPanel hosting.
| Option | Fits when | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| VPS | You have someone who can maintain a Linux server, or you hire one. | You own updates, backups, SSL renewal and keeping the queue worker running. |
| Managed platform | You want deployments from your code repository and less server work. | Usually costs more per resource and gives less control. Check where your data is stored. |
| cPanel hosting | A small first version with modest traffic and a tight budget. | Long-running processes are limited and PHP settings are shared. Moving later means a migration. |
A Laravel app can run on cPanel hosting if you point the web root at the app's public folder, have SSH or another way to run Composer, and use a cron entry for the scheduler. Where long-running workers are not allowed, queue jobs can be processed from cron instead. That is a perfectly sensible first home for a small app, as long as you accept the ceiling.
Whichever you pick, keep a staging copy, take automated backups and practise restoring one. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup.
Which billing provider should a SaaS use: Stripe, Razorpay or PayPal?
Choose by where your customers pay. The right provider is the one your customers' banks and cards work well with, not the one with the nicest dashboard.
| Provider | Fits when | Check first |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Customers pay by card in many countries and you want subscriptions, invoices and a mature developer toolkit. | Whether Stripe supports your business's country, and its current fees and payout terms. |
| Razorpay | Most customers are in India and pay in rupees by UPI, cards or net banking. | Whether international payments are enabled on your account, and how recurring card payments work under Indian bank rules. |
| PayPal | Your buyers expect to pay from a PayPal account, as an extra option beside cards. | Its subscription features, fees, and how it handles disputes and held funds. |
Three habits apply to all of them. Build around the provider's webhooks (the notifications it sends when a payment succeeds or fails), not around the customer returning to your site. Make webhook handling safe to run twice, because providers retry. And store the provider's customer and subscription IDs, never card details.
Taxes are a separate question. If selling across borders makes sales tax or VAT a worry, look at a merchant of record, which is a company that sells to your customer on your behalf and handles that tax. Laravel's Cashier packages cover Stripe and Paddle subscriptions (they are two separate packages); for Razorpay or PayPal expect to write or add more integration code.
If you already run WHMCS for hosting, billing a SaaS through it can make sense, with the product provisioned through a custom module or the WHMCS API. I cover that kind of work on my WHMCS API integration and automation page.
How should a SaaS keep each customer's data separate?
This is called multi-tenancy, and you have three options. The simplest is one shared database where every table carries a tenant ID and every query filters by it; it is cheapest to run, and the danger is a missed filter showing one customer another's data, so it needs automatic scoping and tests. The second is a database per tenant, which isolates data and makes per-customer export or deletion easier but multiplies migrations and operations. The third is a separate installation per customer, the strongest isolation and the heaviest to run, which only suits a few large customers. Unless a contract or regulation says otherwise, start shared with strict scoping. Filament has built-in support for tenant-scoped panels, which helps if you go that way.
What should you leave out of version one?
Leave out anything that does not help your first ten customers get value and pay you. Each item below is a real feature people ask for, and each can wait.
- Custom roles and fine-grained permissions. Start with owner and member.
- A public API and webhooks for customers. Add them when someone asks for them.
- Single sign-on for enterprises. Build it for the first customer who needs it for a deal.
- Multiple languages and currencies. One of each is enough until demand is proven.
- Usage-based billing. A flat monthly plan is easier to build and to explain.
- White-labelling and custom domains per customer. They add a lot of operational work.
- A mobile app. A responsive web app answers the first question.
- Heavy analytics dashboards. Track a few numbers by hand or with a simple export first.
- Microservices and container orchestration. One application and one database are easier to change.
- AI agent features. If AI is part of the idea, ship a simple version first and add agent actions once the core is used. See AI agent development and the AI chatbot vs AI agent guide.
Which stack and setup fits your situation?
| Your situation | Reasonable starting point |
|---|---|
| You are not sure anyone will pay | No-code, or a very thin Laravel app, with a payment link. |
| A business tool with dashboards, roles, subscriptions and staff admin | Laravel with Filament, hosted on a VPS or managed platform. |
| Interactive, real-time interface and a TypeScript team | Next.js with NestJS. |
| Customers are mainly in India | Razorpay for billing, with a plan for international cards if you need them. |
| Customers are spread across countries | Stripe, with PayPal as an optional extra. |
| Small budget and a small app | Laravel on cPanel hosting, with a planned move to a VPS later. |
| You already run WHMCS for recurring services | Keep billing there and connect the product through the WHMCS API. |
A choice that fits one row of this table can still be wrong for you. Treat it as a way to start a conversation with your builder, not as a verdict.
What is a sensible next step?
Write the one workflow your first customers will pay for, list who pays and from which country, and mark every feature as "needed for the first ten customers" or "later". That page is the brief for any developer. If you would like to talk through it, my SaaS development page describes how I work on first releases.
