By budget
SaaS stack under $100/month
The $100/month SaaS stack covers seven slots — frontend, hosting, database, auth, payments, email, analytics — at a total cost ceiling that fits one founder's monthly budget for tools. Every slot is sized for launch-scale; the stack expands gracefully as traffic grows.
Who: Indie founders who want a complete SaaS infrastructure for under $100/month total, including analytics and monitoring.
Cost ceiling at launch scale: $60-$100/month total infrastructure, before Stripe fees.
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The 7 slots
Frontend + framework
Next.js
Same logic as the solo-founder stack.
Cost: free
Hosting
Free tier covers most launch-scale apps; $20/month Pro is the upgrade.
Cost: $0-$20/month
Database + auth
Supabase
$25/month Pro tier covers most pre-revenue SaaS.
Cost: $0-$25/month
Payments
No monthly cost — pure transaction fee.
Cost: 2.9% + 30¢ per charge
Transactional + marketing email
Resend for confirmation / receipt / password-reset; Loops for sequences and broadcasts. Two purpose-built tools beats one general-purpose one at this scale.
Cost: $0-$30/month combined
Analytics
Privacy-friendly, $9-$19/month, no consent banner required in EU.
Cost: $9-$19/month
Error monitoring
Sentry
Free tier covers 5k errors/month — enough for pre-revenue.
Cost: $0-$26/month
When NOT to use this stack
If you have non-trivial usage (>1M monthly requests, >10k subscribers, >100k transactional emails), one or two slots will cross the $100 ceiling and the stack expands.
Common mistakes
- Picking a 'cheaper' alternative for one of the slots that ends up costing more in time. Supabase replaces three tools; trying to assemble those three separately costs more time than the $25/month Supabase tier.
- Skipping error monitoring because 'I will check logs'. Sentry's free tier is enough to catch the first production bug you would have missed.
When to swap a slot
- Swap Plausible for PostHog when you need full funnel + session replay + feature flags — usually around the 50-paying-customer mark.
- Swap Loops for a heavier tool (Customer.io, Klaviyo) when you cross 5,000 subscribers and need cross-channel.
Tuned for these niches
Related categories
Related Brunson terms
Frequently asked
- Can I go even cheaper?
- Yes — the absolute minimum is Stripe + Resend free + one Next.js page on Vercel free, which is under $5/month. But you lose database, auth, analytics, and error tracking. Below $50/month total infrastructure, you are trading dollars for hours of your own time.
Other stack recommendations
Stack is right, but page is broken?
The free 90-second Launch Diagnostic looks at your live product page and labels the failure mode — Wrong Person, Weak Offer, or Weak Belief. The stack is necessary; the funnel is sufficient.