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Products that do what How I built a SaaS thanks to my wife does

I’m Michał, and I’d like to share with you the journey I went through with my wife and how, thanks to her, we built our first SaaS, PDFBolt (https://pdfbolt.com). I’ve been a developer for over 10 years. In 2020, I decided to build a side project to learn all aspects of app development—deployment, authentication, payments, frontend, landing pages, etc. While looking for project ideas, I came across the Indie Hackers community, where I found a simple HTML to PDF API project. The creator mentioned a lot of interest in it and that it was generating revenue. I thought I’d build…

  1. 1SP

    Several years ago, I had a client whose salespeople were using Excel to generate sales proposals. This was inefficient and the resulting documents looked awful, so I developed a new process for them using a no-code platform. It featured a web form that was tied to a workflow engine, and a fancy PDF got emailed to the customer to sign. When the client loved the solution, I knew I was on to something. However, the no-code platform wasn't very customizable, so I decided to rebuild the process as a SaaS product. The client's CTO wanted in and we became cofounders. Today, we passed the…

    2021

  2. 2MN

    Hi guys, I've created an open source web builder framework (https://grapesjs.com) years ago, which I'm still maintaining, and now I'm excited to publish a side project based on it, Grapedrop (https://grapedrop.com). It's a simple web page builder which allows you to design and publish your web pages very quickly. The project is still in beta with a lot of stuff to improve but I'd really like to share it and hear what people think about it and maybe also get some constructive feedback.

    2018

  3. 3TA

    Hello HN! It kept surprising me how much of a hassle it is to generate a PDF with decent HTML5 rendering from my SaaS apps. I tried several free libs and APIs but ended up with botched rendering a lot of times. So I set out to simplify this chore by creating an AWS hosted HTML to PDF conversion API that's based on Chrome. This API will allow a dev to just send the HTML to our API and get a PDF in response without having to worry about running and managing Chrome somewhere in their infra. I just finished the first version of my landing page and hosted pdf generation API…

    2018

  4. 4IO

    Hi HN, I'm Mohammed, a technical founder who loves shipping and giving back to the community. I'm open-sourcing the full-stack engine that powers my B2B product, apflow.co. What it is: A production B2B starter with a Go backend and Next.js frontend. Both are fully Dockerized with separate containers. No Vercel. No Supabase. Deploy the whole thing on a $6 VPS, or split frontend and backend across different providers. You own the infrastructure. The problem I was solving: Every SaaS starter I evaluated had the same issue: they locked me into someone else's platform. Vercel for hosting.…

    Dec 2025 · github.com

  5. 5IW

    hey hn, I have wasted too much time in my career creating PDF generation systems for invoices, quotes, activity summary, etc... I created this product so that I never waste my time on that again I hope I can help folks with this product, what do you think?

    2024 · transactional.dev

  6. 6IB

    My best friend and I developed a SaaS last month while working full-time: Chyrid (chyrid.com). It’s a tool for creating digital manuals without design or coding skills. Users build structured, polished documents with a drag-and-drop editor, and Chyrid handles the formatting—without using AI. We built it because most documentation tools are either too complex or too unstructured. A company is already using it for onboarding and process docs, but we’re still figuring out how to position it and who finds it most useful. Would love any thoughts on potential use cases or feedback on the concept.…

    2025 · chyrid.com

  7. 7

    AI builds your PDF templates, API generates your PDFs

    Feb 2026

  8. 8

    PDF generation API without the Chromium headache

    Jun 2026 · pdfpipe.xyz

  9. 9MF

    Promptly is my first SaaS Project. I built it because I wanted to refine my dev skills and also to have a central place to store my prompts for GPT, Midjourney, and other AI platform and systems. Would love some feedback on the website itself, as well as advice on how I should go about the marketing

    2023 · promptly.host

  10. 10CT

    I've noticed I kept doing the same things over and over again while building SaaS apps from scratch. So I thought, why not streamline the process? I launched a super flexible SaaS Starter Kit, CODEPILOT, that can be used for all sorts of SaaS building. My goal is to ensure I am are on the right track when it comes to technology, customizability, developer experience, and maintenance. It's built with the latest frameworks to ensure that your application is fast, secure, and scalable. I hope this boilerplate will help you as it helped me! Enis.

    2024 · codepilot.dev

  11. 11IB
  12. 12

    It's called learnfrom.co, a platform for creating, hosting and selling online courses. I started building it because I wanted to solve a problem I had with existing course platforms. I kept running into things I wanted to change, so I started building them myself. The problem: I wasn't really a software engineer. Instead, I started using AI to build the product. I'd describe what I wanted, let it write the code, test it, fix things when they broke, and repeat. That somehow turned into a real product. LearnFrom is now used by 100+ creators and businesses, with real students and real payments…

    12d ago · learnfrom.co

  13. 13V0

    I launched Open SaaS about a year and a half ago and surprisingly it’s become one of the most popular free SaaS boilerplate starters on github (https://github.com/wasp/open-saas). After 2 years of work total, I’m pleased to launch what I’m calling “Open SaaS v2.0”. Here’s a breakdown of all the features and updates I’ve made to it over time: * New Big, Shiny Things for v2.0 * - Complete redesign with Shadcn UI for a modern and consistent look (themeability coming soon...). - Script that autogenerates an LLM-friendly version of the documentation…

    2025 · opensaas.sh

  14. 14IM

    Hey HN, When I was learning to code I was always intrigued to see the guys on twitter making money with a SaaS. I always wondered how to make them and after a few months I developed my own. I wanted to share a Boilerplate for any new devs who are wondering how to start their own SaaS or wonder how things work. Boilerplate comes with Auth, Payments, UI and all the good stuff. Ali

    2024 · github.com

  15. 15

    25+ Free PDF Tools Online — No Signup, No Cost

    Jun 2026 · trysaasbox.com

  16. 16IB
  17. 17SN

    Hey HN I’m Daniel, a fullstack developer from Sydney Australia and founder at Saas Ninja (https://saasninja.io/). Saas Ninja provides a suite of simple tools/APIs on a monthly subscription basis that help Product Teams sell, monitor and develop their Saas Products. The idea for Saas Ninja came during my last employment contract working for a startup. We needed a number of monitoring tools for our product and each provider I researched was often over-complicated for what we wanted and was priced more towards a monitoring connoisseur than a startup developer. With looming…

    2018

  18. 18IB

    Hey HN, I had to create many invoices recently, it was pretty annoying doing the same things over and over. So i created this small tool that work well to create invoice and save them as template for re-usage. the ui is very easy and simple. I hope this tool will be helpful to you as it it to me. ps: you can move around without account Dorian

    2024 · invoicepdf.dev

  19. 19QB

    MVPaaS (mvpaas.com) provides the common elements that all SaaS apps require: A customizable landing page (with plan and feature sections), secure credit card and subscription handling, and user authentication. When a user signs in they will be redirected to your backend(with a token) where you can provide the core functionality of your SaaS offering. I've setup a starter Rails App that you can use to build the core of your SaaS app. I've also setup a deploy to Heroku button so you can get up and running right away. MVPaaS and this starter app makes it really easy to turn your side project…

    2017

  20. 20IB

    Hey HN, I kept seeing the same question asked over and over in startup communities: "What tech stack should I use for my SaaS?" The answers were always scattered, opinionated, and never accounted for budget or team size. So I built appstackbuilder.com — you tell it your monthly budget, app type, team size, and skill level, and it recommends a full stack (auth, database, hosting, payments, analytics, etc.) with actual pricing for each tool. A few things that make it different from generic advice: - It accounts for team size when calculating costs (e.g. Clerk charges per user, Linear charges…

    Feb 2026 · appstackbuilder.com

  21. 21P5

    Hi HN! I built PDFly — a PDF toolkit that runs entirely client-side. No file uploads, no server processing, no account needed. It has 56 tools including merge, split, compress, convert, redact, compare, and an AI chat feature to ask questions about your PDF content. Everything runs in your browser using [mention your tech stack if relevant, e.g., WASM/JS libraries]. Would love feedback on the tools, UX, or anything else!

    Jul 2026 · pdfly.uk

  22. 22AF

    Hi HN, I built a collection of 40+ PDF tools using Kimi k2.5 (with about $50 worth of credits) and a lot of “vibe coding”. The site: https://pdfuck.com (almost forgot I owned this domain ) What it does: 40+ PDF-related tools Completely free No downloads, everything runs in the browser All processing is done locally in your browser for better privacy It’s deployed on Cloudflare, so the running cost is basically close to zero. This started as a small experiment and slowly grew into a fairly complete PDF toolbox. I’d really appreciate feedback on performance, UX, and what tools you…

    Feb 2026 · pdfuck.com

  23. 23ES

    Hi HN, I got tired of rebuilding the same boilerplate for every side project — auth, billing, dashboards, waitlists, email flows, SEO metadata, launch pages… you know the drill. Most “SaaS starters” still require stitching together a bunch of external tools — Zapier, Intercom, Mailchimp, analytics, Stripe, etc. That ends up being fragile and expensive. So I built EliteSaaS to solve that. What’s included: • Auth, user management, password reset • Stripe subscriptions (recurring billing + coupons) • Admin dashboard, user table, impersonation • Built-in email flows and campaign manager (uses…

    2025 · elitesaas.dev

  24. 24MF

    After a month of diving into Next.js for the first time, I built a cool app that helps SaaS founders connect with users, tweak their offerings, and boost revenue. You can easily add feedback forms to your website to gather and analyze customer feedback whenever you want. It has a 30-second setup, requires no coding, and is compatible with WordPress, etc. Tell me, guys, what do you think, knowing I'm just a beginner?

    2024 · feedyourback.com

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