For the past couple of weeks I have been working on building a software business which would typically be classified as a SAAS. I prioritized building as quickly as possible and cheaply as possible. My tech stack includes:

  1. Next.js
  2. Tailwind css
  3. Firebase
  4. Python, for Firebase cloud functions
  5. Vercel Firebase is a product of Google with some generous free tiers. Obviously, this comes with the risk of vendor lock-in and potential higher costs in the long term, but I do not believe it makes sense to trade off longer implementation time for a hypothetical long term benefit when an idea has barely been validated yet. Vercel, is another company with decently generous free tiers. It is the easiest place to deploy a Next.js web app. In the long term I would migrate this to be purely hosted on AWS, as Vercel is just a wrapper around AWS anyway. But again this is the quickest way to go from zero to launched.

All of this has come at a total cost of a whopping $2.20 to host thus far. I am a software engineer by trade so I can avoid paying upfront developer fees.

I often find, especially in the software engineering world, there is a ton of premature optimization. The number one priority should be validating an idea and becoming cash flow positive. The tools used to get there are truly just a means to an end.