The Best Next.js SaaS Starters of 2025: A Comprehensive Review
IdeKit Team
Development Insights
In 2025, building a SaaS from a blank create-next-app is a competitive disadvantage. The "SaaS Boilerplate" market has exploded, offering developers fully pre-configured stacks with Authentication, Payments, Database ORMs, and UI libraries ready to go.
But with so many options—ShipFast, ShipStation, IdeKit, Bedrock—which one is actually worth the money?
We audited the top contenders based on code quality, design aesthetics, and developer experience.
1. The "All-in-One" Heavyweights
These kits try to do everything. They include email marketing, blog engines, customer support bots, and more.
Pros: You get a massive amount of functionality out of the box. Cons: They are often bloated. If you don't need the blog engine, you have to spend hours ripping it out.
2. The "Clean Slate" Minimalists
These provide just the essentials: Auth (Clerk/NextAuth), Database (Supabase/Postgres), and Payments (Stripe).
Pros: Extremely educational and easy to extend. Cons: You still have to build most of the UI components yourself.
3. The "Design-First" Premium Kits (like IdeKit)
This is the trending category for 2025. These kits realized that functionality is easy to replicate, but design is hard.
Why Design Matters in 2025 Users judge your SaaS in the first 50 milliseconds. A generic Bootstrap or default Tailwind look doesn't cut it anymore. Premium kits offering "Linear-style" or "Vercel-style" aesthetics give you an immediate trust boost.
Our Top Pick: The Balanced Stack
For most solo founders, we recommend a stack that includes:
- Next.js 15 (App Router): The new standard.
- Supabase: For database and auth (or Clerk for auth).
- Stripe: Don't get cute with merchant of records unless you have to; Stripe converts best.
- Shadcn UI: The most flexible component library.
Conclusion
If you are building to learn, build from scratch. If you are building to earn, buy a kit. The $100-$300 investment saves you easily 40-50 hours of setup time. That's a developer hourly rate of $2.50. Value your time.
SaaS Launch Kit
The complete infrastructure for launching a SaaS business. Includes a Next.js 14 application skeleton, high-converting marketing pages, blog system, and waitlist functionality.