SaaS Application — hobby stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Domain and DNS
Your human-readable address on the web plus the DNS records that point it at your servers. Skipping this is not an option — users need a domain to reach you.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free: $0 - 1 zone, unlimited DNS queries, DDoS unmetered / Pro $20/mo - 20 page rules, WAF, image optimization / Business $200/mo - 100% uptime SLA, custom SSL, 100 rules / Enterprise custom ~$2000+/mo - 99.99% SLA, 24/7 support, unlimited / Route53 $0.50/hosted zone/mo + $0.40/M queries + $0.10/M LBR / Namecheap BasicDNS $0 incl, PremiumDNS $4.88/yr / DNSimple Starter $6/mo, $10/domain overage / NS1 Enterprise custom ~$1k+/mo
SSL/TLS
Encrypts traffic between your users and your servers. Without it browsers flag your site as insecure and you lose trust and search ranking.Pricing & free-tier limitsLet's Encrypt Free: $0 - 90-day certs, unlimited issuance via ACME, auto-renew / ZeroSSL Free 3x 90-day certs, Unlimited $10/mo / Cloudflare Universal SSL $0 included with proxied zone, Advanced $10/mo $120/yr - custom hostnames / DigiCert Standard OV $218/yr, EV $474/yr, OV wildcard $684/yr, $0 overage / DigiCert Enterprise EV $800+/yr vol / AWS ACM Free for AWS resources (ELB, CloudFront), Private CA $400/mo + $0.75/cert issued
Web Hosting / Backend Hosting
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Hobby $0 - 100GB BW, 6000 exec hrs, 100 hrs build, 1k serverless invocs/day / Pro $20/seat/mo + $40/100GB BW overage, $0.16/vCPU-hr, $0.18/build hr / Enterprise custom $2000+/mo / Netlify Free 100GB BW, 300 build min, 125k serverless invocs / Pro $19/seat/mo 25k serverless + $55/100GB over / Fly.io Free ~3 shared-1x 256MB VMs, $1.94/mo per 1GB RAM VM, $0.02/GB BW over, dedicated IPv4 $2/mo / Render Free 750 hrs, $7/mo starter $0.10/GB BW over / DO App Platform $5/mo starter, Pro $12/mo / AWS Elastic Beanstalk $0 + EC2 t3.micro $0.0104/hr ~$7.5/mo / ECS Fargate $0.04048/vCPU-hr + $0.004445/GB-hr ~$15-75/mo / EKS $0.10/hr control ~$72/mo + nodes
Cloud Platform
The underlying cloud account (AWS, GCP, Azure, or an all-in-one like Vercel+Supabase) that everything else is built on. Choose early — it is hard to change later.Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel + Supabase Free: $0 all-in - 100GB BW Vercel, 500MB DB, 50k MAU, 1GB storage, 2GB egress / Pro bundle $20 Vercel seat + $25 Supabase Pro (8GB DB, 100k MAU, 100GB storage, $0.125/GB DB over, $0.09/GB BW over) / Railway Free Trial $5 credits, Hobby $5/mo + usage $0.000463/vCPU-min, $0.10/GB RAM-hr / Netlify + Supabase Free same / AWS Lightsail $5/mo bundle (40GB SSD + 1TB transfer) / Amplify Hosting $0.15/GB served + $0.023/build-min / AWS Business Support $100/mo min (10% of AWS bill) / Enterprise $15k/mo min + Control Tower $0 + org costs / GCP Anthos $0.45/vCPU-hr
Database (PostgreSQL with multi-tenant ready)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsSupabase Free: 500MB DB, 50k MAU, 1GB storage, 2GB BW, 50k Auth MAU / Pro $25/mo - 8GB DB, 100k MAU, 100GB storage + $0.125/GB DB over, $0.00325/MAU over, $0.021/GB storage over / Neon Free: 0.5GB storage, 10GB transfer, 190 compute hrs, 1 project / Launch $19/mo - 10GB + $0.24/CU-hr over / Scale $69/mo - 50GB, PITR 30d / RDS db.t3.micro $0.017/hr ~$12.4/mo Single-AZ + storage $0.115/GB-mo + backup $0.095/GB-mo / RDS Multi-AZ db.t3.medium $0.068/hr ~$50/mo + same / Aurora PostgreSQL $0.12/hr per ACU Serverless v2 ~8.76/mo per 0.5 ACU min, storage $0.10/GB-mo + IO $0.20/M / Aurora Global +$0.12/ACU secondary + $0.20/GB cross-region / CockroachDB Serverless free 10GB, Dedicated $1.45/hr node ~$1059/mo, 3-node min ~$3k/mo/region / DO Managed PG $15/mo - 1GB RAM 10GB disk
File and Object Storage / Image and Media Storage
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsSupabase Storage Free 1GB, 50k objects, 2GB BW / Pro $25/mo incl 100GB storage + $0.021/GB over, $0.09/GB BW over / Cloudinary Free 25 credits ~25k images, 25GB BW, 25GB storage / Plus $89/mo 100 credits + $0.40/credit over / S3 Standard $0.023/GB-mo first 50TB, $0.09/GB egress first 10TB tier, $0.005/1k PUT, $0.0004/1k GET / R2 Free 10GB storage, 10M Class A, 10M Class B ops, zero egress free / Paid $0.015/GB storage after, $4.50/M Class A, $0.36/M Class B / Backblaze B2 $0.006/GB-mo storage, first 10GB download free daily then $0.005/GB, $0.005/1k download, $0.005/1k upload / Wasabi Hot $6.99/TB/mo min, no egress
Authentication and Identity (basic + org invites)
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsSupabase Auth Free incl - 50k MAU, unlimited OAuth, magic link, MFA / Clerk Free 10k MAU, 10 orgs, unlimited social, 1k machine-to-machine / Pro $25/mo + $0.02/MAU over 10k, Organizations add-on $25/mo per org bundle / Auth0 Free 7.5k MAU, 2 social, passwordless / Developer $35/mo 1k MAU + $0.07/MAU over + MFA $0.10/MAU / Professional $240/mo 1k MAU, $0.25/MAU over + enterprise conn $100/mo / WorkOS Free 1M MAU, 10 SSO, $0 / AuthKit Pro $99/mo 100k MAU / Firebase Auth Free 50k MAU/day, Identity Platform $0.01/MAU after first 50k/mo / Okta Workforce Starter $2/user/mo, MFA $3/user/mo
Subscription Billing API (Stripe Billing test mode)
Moves money — charges, payouts to sellers, taxes, fraud checks. Highest-stakes integration: get it wrong and you break compliance or lose revenue.Pricing & free-tier limitsStripe Billing Test Mode $0 - free test mode, unlimited test customers, no fees, free Customer Portal test / Live 2.9% + 30c per txn + Billing 0.5% recurring volume, Portal $0, Smart Retries 0.5% / Scale 0.7% capped $100k/yr + custom + Enterprise 0.4-0.5% + $2k/mo platform / Paddle Sandbox $0 test only / Live Standard 5% + 50c per txn includes MoR tax + billing / Growth 5% custom cap / Chargebee Starter $0 - $0-200k billing $0 + $299/mo Growth $599/mo $0.6/order over / Enterprise custom $1500+/mo / Zuora Starter $500/mo + per invoice $0.50 / Recurly $250/mo base + 0.5% revenue over $250k / RevenueCat Free 2.5k MTR
Transactional Email API / Email Delivery
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsResend Free 3k emails/mo, 100/day burst, 1 domain, 1 API key / Pro $20/mo - 50k emails + $0.0004/email ($0.40/1k) over, unlimited domains / Scale $90/mo 100k + same overage / SendGrid Free 100/day (3k/mo) / Essentials $19.95/mo 50k emails, $0.0004/email over, $15/mo dedicated IP optional / Pro $89.95/mo 100k + $30/mo IP + $0.0004 over / AWS SES Free 3k/mo if EC2 hosted else $0.10/1k emails + $0.12/GB attachments, dedicated IP $24.95/mo / Postmark Free 100/mo / Pro $15/mo 10k + $1.25/1k over / Mailgun Free trial 100/day / Foundation $15/mo 10k emails $1.20/1k over / SparkPost Free 500/mo test
Source-code Repository
Where your source code lives and is collaborated on. Non-negotiable for any team or serious project.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free $0 - unlimited public/private repos, 2k Actions mins/mo Linux, 500MB storage, 120 CI/CD + Codespaces 15GB / Team $4/user/mo - 3k Actions mins, 2GB storage, CODEOWNERS, protected branches / Enterprise Cloud $21/user/mo - 50k Actions mins, SAML, audit log, 99.9% SLA, 50GB reg packages / Enterprise Server self-hosted license ~$21/user/mo custom, air-gap / GitLab Free $0 - 5GB storage, 400 CI mins / Premium $29/user/mo 10k CI mins, 99.95% SLA / Ultimate $99/user/mo - security scanning, compliance / Bitbucket Data Center $54k/yr 1000 users + $2k/support
CI/CD and Deployment Automation
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions Free 2k mins/mo Linux, 500MB cache, 1k macOS mins / Team 3k mins + 2GB storage / Enterprise 50k mins, hosted runners $0.008/min Linux, $0.032/min Mac, $0.02/GB cache over / CircleCI Free 6k credits (600 build mins Linux) / Performance $15/mo + $6/user/mo + 30k credits, $0.0006/credit over, $15/credit pack / Vercel Auto-Deploy $0 Hobby, Pro $20/seat/mo - 1000 build hrs + $0.18/build hr over / AWS CodePipeline $1/pipeline active/mo + CodeBuild $0.005/min Linux small / Harness Free 1k builds/mo / Team $25/user/mo 5k builds / Enterprise $75/user/mo + $0.10/build min over / Jenkins OSS $0 self-hosted, CloudBees Enterprise $80k/yr / ArgoCD OSS $0, Akuity Enterprise $500/mo
How this hobby saas application checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a hobby saas application build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.