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2 posts with the tag “webdev”

TurboReel: An Open Source AI Video Generator Built With Open SaaS

Peter is the creator of TurboReel, an open-source platform with a paid SaaS layer, that transforms how creators generate short-form video content. With just a prompt, users can produce polished TikToks and YouTube Shorts in moments.

But like any SaaS founder, Peter faced the challenge of turning his vision into reality without getting bogged down in repetitive technical setup. That’s where Wasp’s Open SaaS boilerplate came in.

In this post, we’ll cover three main things: what inspired Peter to kickstart the project, how he chose the tech stack to build on, and finally, how he made his first $100. Let’s dive in!

Reddit screenshot, 100 users

The Starting Point: Open SaaS Boilerplate

Peter’s journey to Open SaaS began with a simple Google search for SaaS boilerplates.

“I was looking for something that could save me time,” Peter recalls. “I came across a few options—some were free but basic, and others were paid but didn’t feel worth it. Then I found Wasp’s Open SaaS boilerplate.”

What stood out to Peter wasn’t just that it was free, but that it was open source. “I liked the idea of building on something maintained by a community, not locked behind a paywall”, he says. Intrigued, Peter explored Wasp further and discovered an engaging community that offered exactly what he needed to start building TurboReel.

Here’s a video presenting Open SaaS, generated with TurboReel 🐝

TurboReel’s Tech Stack

TurboReel lets users generate short explainer videos with minimal effort. Starting with a single text prompt describing the video’s purpose (e.g. “Create a video on building your SaaS with OpenSaaS”), you can produce professional grade TikTok and YT shorts without needing any video editing skills.

The platform’s open-source foundation unlocks development potential, while the paid SaaS layer helps with funding.

The tech behind TurboReel looks like this:

  • Open SaaS - a free, open-source React & Node.js SaaS starter
    • powered by Wasp, a full stack web framework for JS.
    • Combines React for the frontend and Node.js for backend.
    • Prisma handles the database.
  • OpenAI
    • Used for generating scripts and scenes in the videos.
  • Pollinations
    • Open-source platform for image and text generation.
    • Provides creative assets to enhance video quality.
  • Revideo
    • Library for programmatic video creation.
    • Replaces the previously used MoviePy.

Building faster with Open SaaS boilerplate

“The first thing that impressed me with Open SaaS was how much time it saved, I could start with wasp new saas and immediately have a functioning boilerplate. It gave me the foundation I needed to focus on my product, not the setup.”

The boilerplate included everything he needed:

  • Authentication via email, GitHub and Google
  • Running background jobs via pg-boss
  • Database management
  • Frontend-backend communication via a type-safe RPC layer
  • Deployment of the app with a single CLI command

One feature that particularly stood out was Wasp’s deployment commands.

“Usually, deployment takes time to set up properly, but with Wasp, it was as simple as running wasp deploy fly deploy.”

Here’s what Wasp’s config file looks like, through which you can define full-stack auth in a Wasp app.

Terminal window
app myApp {
wasp: {
version: "^0.15.0"
},
title: "My App",
auth: {
// 1. Specify the User entity
userEntity: User,
methods: {
// 2. Enable Github Auth
gitHub: {},
email: {
// 3. Specify the email from field
fromField: {
name: "My App Postman",
email: "hello@itsme.com"
},
// 4. Specify the email verification and password reset options
emailVerification: {
clientRoute: EmailVerificationRoute
},
passwordReset: {
clientRoute: PasswordResetRoute
},
},
},
onAuthFailedRedirectTo: "/login"
},
}

⭐️ Star Open SaaS repo and support tools that help you build fast!

Out-of-the-box Stripe integration

Another significant advantage for Peter was how Open SaaS handled third-party integrations. Setting up services like Stripe for payments often requires a lot of effort, but Wasp’s OpenSaaS streamlined the process - you just need to add your API key and you’re good to go.

“Payments are usually a huge headache, but Open SaaS made it so smooth. I didn’t have to spend weeks integrating Stripe—it just worked. That gave me more time to focus on TurboReel’s core functionality.

The power of open source

Both TurboReel and Wasp share a commitment to open source.

“The video generation space is complex. There aren’t many established solutions for what I’m trying to do. By making TurboReel open source, I’m inviting smart people to collaborate and help push the project forward.”

Getting first users

Reddit screenshot, 200 upvotes

Peter found interesting subreddits on Reddit and shared his product with users. He enabled everyone to sign up and create a few videos, to get feedback quite early. Lots of people in the creator community loved it, and based off of their feedback, he iterated furthermore improving the UI and the workflow.

Within a few days, he was able to get first paying customers, which proved that his MVP was going in the right direction. Plans for the future? The sky is the limit!

Ready to Build Your SaaS?

Get started with Wasp today, or explore the Open SaaS boilerplate to see how it can work for you.

Should You Use an Open-source SaaS Boilerplate Starter or a $300+ Paid One?

SaaS boilerplate starters became a very popular thing in the web dev community, and also a pathway to a luxury lifestyle for those behind them, sometimes making north of five figure amounts per month.

Twitter screenshot

On the other hand, there’s also been a rise of the open-source SaaS boilerplate starters, that cover various stacks and offer similar features as their paid counterparts, but completely for free and with an active community alongside.

So, what’s the catch? Why pay $300 or $500 for something that you can simply get for free? Are there any trade-offs you should be aware of, and what are the pros and cons of each option?

As it usually turns out in the real world, the answer isn’t completely black and white and depends on what you need (your requirements) but also what you want (your personal preferences).

The goal of this article is to break these further down and give you an objective, simple framework to follow when choosing a boilerplate starter for your next project. So, let’s get into it!

Why a sudden craze with all these starters? SaaS-es are not a new thing at all

We have all been building web apps and SaaS-es for decades, you may rightfully observe, so why this became a thing just now? It seems like everybody is making their own starter today and getting a ton of excitement (and money) from the community.

The answer is that the complexity of building a SaaS (or in another words, a web app) in the last ten years increased tenfold. Partly it is due to the evolution of the underlying architecture (we switched from monolithic, server-based approach to “rich client ↔ backend”) which introduced more moving parts into the equation, and partly due to the explosion of options for each part of the stack.

If you were about to build a SaaS fifteen years ago, you pretty much knew you’d go with either Ruby on Rails, Laravel, or Django, depending on which language and community you preferred. These would come as a batteries-included solution, give you their best defaults and you’d be up and running in a matter of hour(s). You got a single, well-tested path to follow and not much decisions to make.

If you sit down and try to do the same today, your head would probably get dizzy after a few hour(s) of merely reading about all the possible options you could go with:

  • What to use for the frontend? Something mainstream as React, Vue or Angular, or something more sexy and bleeding edge like Svelte or Solid?
  • Should I use a React framework e.g. Next or Remix? Or just go with React + Vite?
  • Do I need SSR and SSG? Or should I just stick with CSR?
  • What should I use as an API layer? Good ol’ REST, or maybe GraphQL, or maybe even typesafe RPC?
  • What to choose for the backend? Do I use something lightweight like Express.js with Node/Bun/Deno or a full-blown solution such as Nest.js/Django/Rails? Or maybe finally try Phoenix/Livewire combo everybody has been talking about? Do I go serverless or not?
  • What about the database and ORM? Relational or non-relational? Should I write raw queries or use a full-blown ORM such as Drizzle and Prisma? If yes, which one?
  • What are my hosting options? Am I going to get locked in with a single provider? What if I want/need to host my app somewhere else?

These are just some of the questions you need to start thinking about when deciding how to start your SaaS in 2024. As you can see, it’s more then enough to make your head spin and even if you’re a seasoned developer and makes you feel like you need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the right combination.

This is why people today turn to SaaS boilerplate starters and gladly even pay for it. It means somebody else did the legwork and (hopefully) made a sensible decision on the stack which will remain current and easy to maintain in the years to come.

Now that we gave some context to the sudden rise of SaaS starters, let’s back to the original question - why pay for something when there is an open-source, free version of it? Let’s take a look at some of the factors that come to play.

With an open-source SaaS starter, you know exactly what you’re getting into

By the definition of open-source, you can see and examine the full code of the starter in advance, before committing to using it for your project.

Although it’s not likely you will go through every line of code beforehand and try to understand it all (that’s why you’re looking for a starter in the first place), you can check it out and see how you like it - e.g. the style of the code, readability and how well documented and tested it is.

You can also see the repository’s activity stats - number of open and closed issues, features in progress, commit frequency and how fast are things being resolved and new features added.

Open SaaS screenshot

Paid, closed-source starters, again by definition, offer at best a fraction of these benefits. You can see the value proposition as the author designed it - some hand-picked testimonials, a demo and potentially have a peek at the docs.

With a paid starter, you become a member of an exclusive tribe (aka Air Jordans Effect)

The most popular paid boilerplates today often come from well-known developers, or “indie makers,” who’ve already built successful products. Buying their boilerplate feels a bit like joining an exclusive club—it’s as if you’re tapping into their expertise and using the same tools they once used to succeed.

Marc promo banner

It’s like wearing a jersey signed by a famous athlete or a perfume co-created by a pop star. It won’t guarantee instant success, but it gives you a sense of connection and inspiration. You’re reminded that someone else turned these same tools into something great—and that you could do it too!

In the long run, this mindset might matter even more than the tools themselves. When things get hard, feeling part of that “club” could be what keeps you going, and taking your idea one step further.

Security: in open-source, everyone is a reviewer

Paid boilerplate starters are mostly an effort of a single person. It is the type of project that, past the initial development phase, doesn’t require a full-time attention and is more of a seasonal nature (e.g. updating libraries to the latest versions). That makes it a perfect workload for a single person and also makes it much more profitable rather than splitting the margin with the team. If there was a whole team behind, it probably wouldn’t cost $500, but rather $2000.

Dave Shipfast tweet

Recently, there was a security incident with one of the popular paid starters that allowed external parties to send unauthorized web hook requests, which caused a lot of ripples in the online community of builders.

It is a good reminder that, while it’s important to ship quickly, security isn’t something that can be skipped over. And while nobody can guarantee the security of any SaaS starter, be it paid or open-source, the fact is that in open-source projects there are much more people involved in both development and code review. Since the code is freely available, you’re also free to review it yourself, use any pen-testing tools on it or ask another expert to check it before committing to it.

With a paid SaaS starter, the bus factor is 1, with open-source you get the full community support!

A paid SaaS starter typically depends on a single maintainer. Since the code is closed source, nobody else has access nor rights to it, and if for any reason the author becomes unable or unwilling to continue working on it, that’s the end of the story. No support, updates, nor anybody to turn to with questions.

On the other hand, an open-source boilerplate starter like Open SaaS is a living organism, with a number of contributors behind it. As with any open-source project, there will typically be a smaller core team which does the bulk of the work and steers the project (and that might as well be a single person in the start), but anybody can join at any point, and they will. As the project grows and becomes more used, more and more people will start adding fixes and features they need themselves and take ownership of the specific parts.

Open source stats from opensaas

Another thing to account for is it takes a long time for SaaS starter business to become more than a side income, and only a fraction of builders will ever come to that point. That means most of boilerplate creators will still have a full-time job or other engagements going on. Which means they will have a limited time for customer support and adding new features.

Open-source SaaS starter === unlimited updates. Closed source? Sometimes.

An another direct benefit of the SaaS starter code being open-source is that you will have an immediate access to all the updates, as soon as they get released. That includes both security patches, version bumps and completely new features.

Commits to open saas

With closed source, it varies a lot from one starter to another. Some offer updates as an upsell (e.g. basic and pro tier), some offer a limited time updates (e.g. 1-year), and some promise a lifetime of updates.

Free updates vs pay for everything

With a paid SaaS starter, you might need to buy a “license” for every new app

Another thing to be aware of is that, with paid starters, there often might be a limit to the number of apps you are allowed to start with a single starter purchase. It is typically phrased in terms of “licenses”, and if you exceed a limit you’re legally required to buy a new one, although you already own the starter code.

Boilerplate licenses

Again, this is not the case with all paid starters (some offer unlimited projects with a single purchase), but it is a common pattern worth checking before buying.

With an open-source starter, there naturally isn’t any such limit - the full source code is publicly available and you’re free to use it in any way you see fit.

With an open-source SaaS starter, you can add new features yourself!

One of the most exciting benefits of the open-source approach is that anybody can contribute! If there is a feature you’re missing or want to improve, you can simply do it yourself it and create a pull request. Then, the core maintainers will review it, give advice and point you in the right direction if needed. Once it gets merged, it is available for everyone to use!

Community contributions

Summary

Now that we have gone through the main differences between open-source and paid SaaS starters, let’s give it a bird’s-eye view:

CostLifetime updatesUnlimited appsMaintainersCommunityAir Jordans EffectEasily contribute
Open-source SaaS starter$0YESYESManyBig, publicRarelyYES
Paid starter$300+DependsDependsTypically oneSometimes, privateOftenNo

This is a useful list to be aware of when making a decision which route to go, but in the end there is no one answer that will fit all. Your decision will depend on what exactly you’re looking to build and which tech stack you prefer using.

Also, the factors above will not be equally weighted by everyone - one person might be excited about being a part of a wider community and being able to easily contribute to the project, while other most appreciate the fact there is a strong online personality they can follow and get inspired.

In the end, the only important thing is to take action and successfully ship that application you’ve been thinking about for so long. Good luck!