All Phoenix SaaS Boilerplates and Starter Kits

Choosing the right Phoenix boilerplate for your next SaaS

What is a Phoenix SaaS boilerplate?

A Phoenix SaaS boilerplate, also known as a Phoenix starter kit, is pre-built foundation for building software applications. It's a collection of essential, customizable, and tested components that Phoenix developers can use to quickly build a complete SaaS without starting from scratch.

The exact feature set varies depending on the specific boilerplate but most of them include:

• User account management

• Billing systems

• Multi-tenancy

• Content Management System (CMS)

• APIs

• Background task handling

• Integrations with third-party tools (analytics, email, livechat, monitoring)

Many paid Phoenix SaaS starter kits offer additional benefits like dedicated support and access to private developer communities.

What are the benefits of using a Phoenix SaaS boilerplate?

Main advantages include:

• Time savings: Eliminates the need to build the (boring) basics from scratch.

• Focus: Allows developers to concentrate on building unique features and launching their SaaS to market.

• Risk reduction: Uses well-tested code, reducing common errors and security issues.

• Community support: Many Phoenix SaaS starter kits offer access to developer communities and include direct support from the boilerplate maker.

How to pick the best Phoenix SaaS boilerplate for your needs?

Here are the main aspects you should take into consideration when selecting a SaaS boilerplate or starter kit for your next software product.

Features

While most Phoenix boilerplates will include all key SaaS features (like billing, authentication, database, admin panel, etc.), some are more comprehensive and offer more use case specific features out of the box (such as serverless, waitlist, translations, AI SaaS templates, and more). Make sure to review the full list of features before making a pick.

Activitely developed

Make sure that the boilerplate's maker is committed to maintaining and improving the codebase over time. Have a look at the changelog and maker's Twitter to see how frequently the boilerplate is being updated. Ideally, pick a Phoenix boilerplate that's maker's main business rather than just a weekend fun project.

Documentation

Clear and comprehensive docs will help you save even more time. Many starter kits also have video tutorials and makers offering their help via email.

Other apps

Find out if there are other real SaaS products that were built using the Phoenix starter kit you're evaluating, especially similar to the one you're planning to build. If so, you can even reach to to their founders and ask about their experience working with that starter kit.

Longevity

As the Lindy Effect says, the older something is, the longer it's likely to be around in the future. So checking how long a boilerplate has been around can be a good proxy for estimating how much longer it's going to be maintained.

About Phoenix

Phoenix is a web development framework for Elixir that's built for productivity, scalability, and maintainability. It's known for its high performance and real-time capabilities and follows the server-side MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern.

Phoenix was created by Chris McCord and first released in 2014. Since then, it's been used by companies like Discord to handle massive real-time communication loads proving its impressive scalability (thanks to the underlying Erlang VM).

While it has its own conventions, Phoenix drew inspiration from other frameworks like Ruby on Rails, making it familiar to many web developers, which helped a lot with the framework's adoption rate.

Some of Phoenix's key features:

Built on top of the Elixir programming language and Erlang VM
Live view for real-time, server-rendered HTML
Channels for real-time communication
Presence for tracking user state
Ecto for database interactions and schemas
Built-in testing tools
Asset management with webpack (or esbuild in newer versions)
Plug-based modular architecture
Hot code reloading

Best Phoenix SaaS Boilerplates and Starter Kits

Phoenix SaaS Boilerplates

LiveSAASKit

Petal

Choosing the right Phoenix boilerplate for your next SaaS