SaaS Panda 🐼

Look, another developer with big dreams and a monorepo. But hear me out.

What is this?

This is a real SaaS boilerplate that I actually use to ship products. No BS, no over-engineering, just three simple pieces that work together:

• React app - Where users do the actual work
• Landing pages - Astro site that converts visitors
• API server - Express.js that handles the heavy lifting

Why should you care?

Because I'm tired of seeing developers waste months setting up the "perfect" stack instead of shipping products. This setup lets you:

• Start building features on day one
• Deploy everything together (no microservice hell)
• Scale when you actually have users to scale for

Quick start (the only section that matters)

# First time setup
./setup.sh

# Get it running
bun run dev

# That's it. Everything runs on localhost:3001

The setup script handles dependencies and configuration. The dev command starts all three servers and handles the boring stuff. Your app is at localhost:3001/app, landing pages at localhost:3001, and API at localhost:3001/api.

How it works

User Request → Express (3001) → Routes to:
├── / → Landing pages (Astro)
├── /app → React app (Vite) 
└── /api → API endpoints (Express)

In development: 3 separate servers + proxy
In production: 1 unified server serving everything

Quick Reference

Common tasks:

• Start dev environment: bun run dev
• Build for production: bun run build
• Deploy: bun run deploy
• Check logs: bun run logs
• Database proxy: flyctl proxy 5432 -a your-db-app

Troubleshooting:

• Port conflicts: Script handles cleanup automatically
• Database issues: Check .env and proxy connection
• Build failures: Try --no-cache flag on deploy

What's inside?

React App (client-panda/)

• Vite for fast development
• Base UI components that actually look good
• CSS modules because styled-components is overkill

Landing Site (landing-panda/)

• Astro for stupid-fast static pages
• Perfect for SEO and conversion
• No unnecessary JavaScript

API Server (server-panda/)

• Express.js 5 with TypeScript
• PostgreSQL because your data matters
• Deploys to Fly.io without drama

The opinionated bits

• Bun for package management (it's faster, deal with it)
• TypeScript everywhere (JavaScript is fine, TypeScript is better)
• No Docker in development (it's slow and you don't need it)
• Consolidated logging (see what's happening across all services)
• PostgreSQL (not MongoDB, fight me)

Getting serious

When you're ready to deploy and make money:

# Build everything
bun run build

# Deploy to Fly.io
bun run deploy

Everything deploys together. No orchestration nightmares, no separate hosting bills.

The real talk

I built this because I was sick of:

• Spending weeks on setup instead of building features
• Microservices for apps with 10 users
• Choosing between 47 different React frameworks
• Documentation that assumes you have a PhD in DevOps

This is for builders who want to ship products, not impress other developers.

Need help?

• Check the docs if you want the full story
• Look at individual project READMEs for specifics
• Open an issue if something's broken

Contributing

Make it better, but keep it simple. The goal is shipping products, not winning architecture contests.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for detailed guidelines on how to contribute.

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Built by developers who ship products, not hype.