Why Sushi Templates Beats Minimal Starters for Real SaaS Projects

Why Sushi Templates Beats Minimal Starters for Real SaaS Projects

Launching a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product involves far more than just building a cool feature. Solo developers, indie hackers, and early-stage startup teams quickly discover that “table stakes” features – authentication, payments, user management, admin dashboards, etc. – can swallow months of development time 1 2. To accelerate this process, many turn to starter kits or boilerplates. But not all starters are created equal. In this post, we compare Sushi Templates – a full-featured SaaS template – against popular minimal starters like Vercel’s Next.js SaaS Boilerplate, ShipFast, and create-t3-app. We’ll see why Sushi’s comprehensive approach is better suited for shipping real SaaS products quickly, while also discussing the trade-offs in a neutral, analytical tone.

Minimal Starters vs. Feature-Complete Templates

Minimal SaaS starters (e.g. create-t3-app or Vercel’s Next.js SaaS Starter) provide the bare essentials to get a project off the ground. They often include a basic tech stack setup (framework, auth library, database ORM) and perhaps a simple example page or two. For instance, Vercel’s official Next.js SaaS starter includes a landing page, basic email/password auth, Stripe integration, and a simple dashboard 3. The create-t3-app CLI similarly scaffolds a Next.js project with TypeScript, Prisma (database), NextAuth (authentication), tRPC (API), etc., but intentionally avoids adding features beyond the core stack – “we won’t add things like state libraries... but we will add things like NextAuth.js and integrate Prisma and tRPC for you.” 4. The philosophy of these minimal starters is to keep the initial codebase lean and let you build custom features yourself.

Sushi Templates, on the other hand, takes a feature-complete approach. It’s an MIT-licensed, production-oriented Next.js 15 boilerplate that ships with many of the pieces a real SaaS product needs on day one 5. The core idea is to save you those months of reinventing baseline features by providing them out-of-the-box 1 2. Instead of just a skeleton, Sushi delivers a “full‑feature starter: Auth, billing, credits ledger, affiliates, reservations demo, MDX docs, admin, and i18n are ready out of the box.” 6. In short, minimal starters give you a starting point, whereas Sushi gives you a complete foundation. Let’s break down the key differences in detail.

Out-of-the-Box Features and Integrations

One of the biggest advantages of Sushi Templates is the sheer number of features included from the start. It isn’t limited to login and a couple of pages – it’s built to cover all the common SaaS building blocks:

User Authentication & Accounts

Sushi comes with a robust auth system (called Better Auth) supporting email/password and Google OAuth sign-ins, secure session management, and role-based access control (RBAC) for admin roles 7 8. This means that user registration, login, and permission checks are already implemented and connected in the UI, not just stubbed out 9. Minimal starters usually have something for auth (e.g. NextAuth in create-t3-app, or a basic JWT setup in Vercel’s starter 10), but they might not include things like multi-provider OAuth or ready-made admin role enforcement. You’d likely have to extend those on your own.

Subscription Billing & Payments

Handling payments is critical for a real SaaS. Sushi integrates Stripe billing out-of-the-box – including Checkout sessions and webhook handling to finalize subscriptions 11 12. It even sets up a credits ledger system for usage-based billing or free trial credits 12. In contrast, minimal starters vary: Vercel’s Next.js SaaS Starter does wire up Stripe Checkout and a pricing page 3, which is great, but something like create-t3-app has no built-in payment integration (you’d start from scratch there). Even ShipFast, a popular paid boilerplate, covers Stripe (or LemonSqueezy) integration for subscriptions 13, but doesn’t inherently include a usage-based credits system or advanced billing logic. Sushi’s out-of-the-box billing setup means you can start charging users (one-time or recurring) immediately – a huge time saver for monetization.

Dashboard and Admin Panel

Real SaaS apps need internal tools – an admin interface to manage users, view orders, grant credits, etc. Sushi Templates includes a pre-built admin panel with server-enforced RBAC (read-only vs. read-write admin roles) 14 12. You get UI pages to administer users, orders, reservations, and more, all guarded by proper authorization checks. Minimal starters often omit admin UIs entirely or provide only a very basic user settings page. For example, create-t3-app doesn’t generate any admin dashboard; Vercel’s starter has a simple dashboard mostly for the end-user’s own data, not a full admin section. In a minimal starter scenario, you’d have to design and implement an admin panel from the ground up. Sushi delivers it out-of-the-box, which means for tasks like moderating users or adjusting accounts you already have a working starting point.

Affiliates and Growth Loops

A standout feature of Sushi Templates is its built-in affiliate referral system 14. This provides invite/referral links, tracking of sign-ups via those links, and configurable rewards (e.g. bonus credits) for referrals – effectively a growth loop to encourage users to bring others. This kind of feature can significantly boost growth but is rarely included in starter kits. Popular minimal boilerplates like ShipFast focus on core features but don’t mention affiliate programs in their feature list. You’d normally have to integrate a service like Rewardful or build referral tracking yourself. Sushi has it wired in from the start, which is a boon for indie hackers looking to accelerate word-of-mouth growth without extra coding. As one user noted on social media, Sushi’s template stood out for having a “complete stack [with] real-world patterns” that incorporate such growth mechanics alongside the basics 15.

Content Pages (Docs/Blog)

Many SaaS products need static content like documentation, FAQs, or a blog for user education and SEO. Sushi comes with a docs/blog system powered by MDX (using Fumadocs) and even sets up SEO metadata and JSON-LD for those pages 11 16. Essentially, you can write markdown/MDX files for documentation or blog posts, and the template will serve them as nicely formatted pages with automatic metadata for SEO. This is a level of polish usually not found in minimal starters – for instance, Vercel’s starter has a marketing landing page and a pricing page but no built-in docs or blog section. ShipFast does include a blog in its feature list 17 (since a blog helps with content marketing), but if you were using a starter like create-t3-app or a generic Next.js template, you’d be configuring an MDX or CMS solution yourself. With Sushi, you can literally start writing your help docs or announcements on day one by dropping MDX files in the content folder 18 19.

In summary, Sushi Templates provides a far more feature-complete base than minimal starters. Auth flows, subscriptions, usage credits, referrals, admin tools, and docs are all pre-integrated. This comprehensiveness means you spend less time integrating third-party libraries or writing boilerplate and more time on your app’s unique logic. As a guide on SaaS boilerplates put it, a good template “comes with all those common features pre-built… so you don’t have to build them from scratch” 20 – Sushi embodies that philosophy. Minimal starters, by design, leave many of those features for you to add later (which could delay your launch by weeks or months).

Of course, including more features can make a template heavier or more to chew on initially. The trade-off is that with Sushi you might need to prune or ignore features you don’t need. However, since it’s open source (MIT licensed) and modular, you have full freedom to modify or remove parts as necessary21. It’s easier to remove a feature toggle than to build one from scratch; Sushi simply tilts the balance towards having more than enough from the get-go.

Built-In Internationalization (Multi-Language Support)

Another area where Sushi Templates outshines minimal starters is internationalization (i18n) support. In today’s global market, supporting multiple languages can significantly expand your user base, and it’s much simpler to bake in from the start than retrofit later. Sushi is built with global i18n in mind – it uses route-prefixed locales and a library called next-intl for localized routing and messages 22 23. Right out-of-the-box, the template has examples of multiple locales (e.g. /en, /zh, /es, etc. for English, Chinese, Spanish, ...) and all the plumbing to serve content in different languages 24. The messages for each language live in JSON files, and adding a new language is as straightforward as adding a new JSON and updating a config file 23 25. Even the built-in docs system supports localization – content can be provided in different languages under separate folders.

Most minimal starters do not include i18n by default. For example, the Next.js SaaS Starter on Vercel’s repo does not mention any multi-language capability – it’s effectively single-language unless you integrate Next.js i18n on your own. Create-t3-app doesn’t deal with i18n at all out-of-the-box; it would be up to the developer to add something like next-i18next or next-intl if needed. Even many paid starters assume an English-only initial launch. ShipFast’s marketing site and feature list, for instance, make no mention of multilingual support. The absence of i18n in starters is common because it’s seen as an optional feature, but if your SaaS plans to target non-English-speaking markets or just provide a better UX for global users, starting with i18n can save a lot of refactoring later.

With Sushi Templates, internationalization is a first-class citizen, not an afterthought. It means your landing pages, UI text, emails, and docs can all be translated from day one. This is especially useful for indie SaaS makers who want to tap into non-English markets or who operate in regions where supporting the local language is key. The fact that Sushi’s routes are locale-aware and it provides a clear structure for messages ensures predictable i18n behavior26. By contrast, adding i18n to a minimal starter after you’ve built much of the app might require reorganizing routes or auditing every text string in your UI. Sushi’s approach lets you avoid that pain by having the architecture in place upfront.

Admin Tools and Growth Features (Affiliates, Credits, etc.)

Beyond the user-facing features, operational and growth tooling is another differentiator. As your SaaS grows, you’ll need admin capabilities and perhaps built-in growth loops (like referral programs or usage incentives) to scale effectively. Sushi Templates is unique in that it includes several of these “business-side” features out-of-the-box:

Admin Panel with RBAC

We touched on this earlier, but it’s worth emphasizing. Sushi’s admin interface isn’t just a UI dashboard; it’s enforced at the server level with Role-Based Access Control. Admin routes and actions are protected by the Better Auth system, which checks user roles defined in the database 7 14. There are two roles by default – read-only admin and read-write admin – which you can assign to team members or co-founders to safely manage data 12. This means that from day one you have a way to, say, mark a user as an admin and let them log in to perform privileged actions (like issuing credits or viewing all users). Minimal starters typically don’t include such robust admin permission setups. Vercel’s SaaS starter does have an Owner vs Member concept for teams 27, which is a form of RBAC on a small scale, but it’s more for end-user roles within a team context rather than an overall admin console for the SaaS owner. Other starters might not have any admin roles wired up at all. The danger of not having admin tooling is that founders end up doing ad-hoc SQL queries or writing one-off scripts to manage users, which is error-prone. Sushi gives you a safe admin UI and role system from the start, making operations smoother.

Affiliate/Referral System

Sushi includes an affiliate referral feature to help grow your user base 14. Users can invite others via special links, and the system tracks those sign-ups and rewards the referrer (for example, with account credits or other perks). This kind of growth loop can be powerful: it effectively turns your users into your marketing team by incentivizing them to bring friends or colleagues. Implementing an affiliate system from scratch involves creating referral codes or links, tracking database entries, and issuing rewards – not trivial work. Minimal starters almost never include this because it’s beyond “minimum viable features.” As a comparison, the ShipFast FAQ suggests using a third-party like Rewardful for referrals (since they even include a discount for Rewardful in their package) 28 – meaning if you wanted referrals, you’d likely integrate an external service or build it yourself. Sushi having this built-in is a boon for indie hackers who plan to leverage word-of-mouth and viral loops from the outset. It’s one less integration to worry about, and because it’s built on your own database, you have full control over how rewards are granted (e.g. tying it into the credits ledger for usage-based rewards).

Credits and Usage Tracking

The concept of credits in Sushi is essentially a built-in way to support usage-based billing or free trial allotments. The template includes a simple credits ledger that records credits granted and consumed 12. This can be used for SaaS models where users buy credits (say for API calls or transactions) or as part of trial plans (“You have 100 credits to use this month” etc.). Having this pre-built saves a ton of time if your SaaS is not strictly subscription-based or if you want to offer both subscriptions and pay-as-you-go options. Minimal starters generally do not have anything like this; they stick to subscription billing at most. If you needed a usage tracking system on a minimal starter, you’d design the database tables and logic yourself. Sushi provides a template for it, again accelerating development of real-world billing models.

Other Growth/Operational Features

Sushi’s completeness extends to things like a reservations module (useful as a pattern for scheduling or booking features) 29 and even email tooling (the docs mention guidance for using Resend, a transactional email service 30 31). It also has clear SEO optimizations (through the MDX content frontmatter which feeds into Next.js metadata for proper titles, descriptions, OpenGraph tags, etc. on each page 16). These might not all be needed in every project, but they serve as reference implementations of common SaaS needs. Even if you don’t run, say, a booking calendar in your app, seeing the pattern for how Sushi implements a reservation system with Stripe deposit payments and calendar invites can inform how you build other features. Minimal starters by nature won’t provide these “extra” patterns.

In essence, Sushi Templates doesn’t stop at the basics; it includes the kind of tools that help you run and grow a SaaS business. For a solo developer or small team, this is valuable. It’s not just about building faster but also about being able to operate and scale the product after launch. By having an admin panel, referral system, and flexible billing from the start, you’re set up to handle growth without scrambling to add those weeks or months later.

Production-Grade Architecture and Tech Stack

Feature checklists aside, the quality of the architecture and tech choices matters a lot for “real” projects. A prototype can cut corners, but a real SaaS should be built on solid foundations: a reliable database, clear code structure, maintainable configurations, etc. Here, Sushi Templates emphasizes a production-grade stack and developer experience, whereas minimal starters vary in their depth on this front.

Database — Postgres with Drizzle ORM

Sushi opts for a SQL database (PostgreSQL) with the Drizzle ORM for type-safe queries and explicit migrations 32 33. The Drizzle schema in TypeScript is the single source of truth for the data model, and the template uses drizzle-kit to generate and run migrations, ensuring your database schema stays in sync with the code 33. This setup is robust and industrial-strength – Postgres is battle-tested for production, and using an ORM that enforces types at compile time helps catch errors early. Many minimal starters also use Postgres or another SQL DB (Vercel’s starter uses Postgres+Drizzle as well 34; create-t3-app defaults to Prisma which typically uses Postgres/SQLite depending on config). So in terms of database, the difference is not that Sushi uses Postgres (others do too) but that Sushi’s template is already wired with a comprehensive data model supporting the aforementioned features – user tables, account relationships, subscription records, credit ledger, referral tracking, etc. It’s not an empty schema. You get real tables and relations reflecting a SaaS product’s needs, all managed via migrations. A minimal starter might give you just a user table and maybe a subscription table, expecting you to design any additional models. With Sushi, a lot of that schema design work (and integration code) is done for you in a proven way 9 35. This can reduce architectural mistakes because you’re following patterns “proven in the wild” from real products 35.

Typed Configuration and Health Checks

In a production system, you want confidence that your environment is configured correctly and that the app can be monitored. Sushi provides explicit environment templates and a health check endpoint for operational clarity 36. The repository includes clear .env.example files (with required keys like BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET, etc. listed) and likely uses runtime validation for env variables (ensuring you don’t deploy with a misconfigured setting). It also has a ready-made /api/health route which returns a simple status (HTTP 200 with { status: "ok" }) 24. This is very useful for setting up uptime monitoring or load balancer health checks in production. Minimal starters rarely include a health endpoint by default – it’s something you’d add if you know you need it. They also might not emphasize env config beyond a basic example file. Sushi’s documentation explicitly notes the health URL and env setup in the quick start 37 31, highlighting that it’s built with deployability in mind. It’s those small details that make it “production-ready from day one” rather than just a dev proof-of-concept 38.

Modern Framework (Next.js 15) and Best Practices

Sushi Templates is built on Next.js 15 with the App Router, React Server Components, and Tailwind CSS 39 40. It embraces the latest Next.js features and a modern frontend stack (Tailwind for styling, which many developers love for speed). Minimal starters generally also use Next.js (create-t3-app uses Next.js 13+ with App Router support, Vercel’s is Next 13/14 likely, ShipFast is Next.js as well). So all are modern in that sense. The difference is that Sushi is actively kept up-to-date with the cutting edge (Next 15, which is very recent), and includes a lot of developer experience niceties: configured ESLint rules, Prettier or formatting guidelines, maybe even Turbopack/Webpack toggles and other dev tools 41 42. The template repository has conventions for scripts (build, lint, migrate), and the docs guide you on how to extend it properly. This means less time fighting configuration and more focus on features. Some open-source starters can lag behind on updates if maintainers don’t keep up. Sushi’s author has demonstrated a commitment to maintenance – for example, upgrading the template to Next.js 15 and the latest libraries promptly. This active maintenance is crucial for early-stage teams who can’t afford their boilerplate to stagnate or break with new framework releases.

UI Components and Design

Both Sushi and minimal starters come with some pre-built UI components. Sushi uses shadcn/UI (Radix + Tailwind) according to its stack, which provides a set of accessible, themeable components like modals, dropdowns, tables, etc., used in the template. ShipFast similarly touts “battle-tested UI components” and Tailwind styling 43. Vercel’s starter includes a basic design system via shadcn as well 44. So in terms of UI, Sushi is on par with or ahead of minimal starters – you won’t be staring at a blank canvas. Instead, you can leverage the included components and Tailwind classes to quickly build out interfaces consistent with the landing page and dashboard styles already provided.

In summary, Sushi Templates treats your SaaS project as a production application from the start, not a toy. It emphasizes type-safety from database to API to UI, includes infrastructure considerations like health checks and env configs, and uses a stack favored by industry best practices. Minimal starters might get you to “Hello World” faster with less code, but they may require significant re-architecting or augmenting later to meet production needs (e.g. adding migrations, restructuring for env configs, writing a health check, etc.). With Sushi, those concerns are addressed upfront, giving you greater confidence as you approach launch.

Documentation and Active Maintenance

Another practical benefit of Sushi Templates is the wealth of documentation and guidance that comes with it. The creator has provided MDX guides for every major feature: authentication setup, billing integration, database usage, admin roles, deploying Google OAuth, etc. 45. The documentation is embedded in the project (and also available on the Sushi Templates site) so you can easily follow along and understand how things are implemented. For example, there are guides like “Accounts, Orders & Credits – Understand how users, orders, and the credits ledger work together” and “Invite, Affiliates & Rewards – How referrals are tracked and rewarded”, among others 46 47. This means as you use the template, you’re not left guessing how to customize it – you have a reference explaining the architecture and code, which significantly lowers the learning curve despite the template’s breadth. It’s like having an instruction manual for your SaaS foundation.

Minimal starters tend to have much lighter documentation, if any. Create-t3-app has a docs site, but it mostly covers how to use the CLI and the included stack (e.g. how to use tRPC or NextAuth) rather than how to build SaaS features on top of it48. In other words, they document the tooling, not a product architecture – because providing a product architecture is outside the scope of a minimal starter. Likewise, a GitHub README for something like the Next.js SaaS starter will tell you how to set up the project and maybe list features, but it won’t teach you why things are structured a certain way or how to extend them in a real-world scenario beyond a few notes. And if the maintainers haven’t updated the README for new changes, you might be on your own to figure it out. Paid starters like ShipFast do come with documentation for setup (and possibly some “how to ship” guides as they claim49), but those may not be as in-depth on code-level understanding, and they’re accessible only after purchase.

The active maintenance of Sushi is another plus. Because it’s open source on GitHub and relatively popular, issues and improvements can be tracked publicly. The author, Pansa Legrand, actively updates it (as evidenced by support for cutting-edge Next.js and a stream of blog posts on the site addressing various SaaS topics). When choosing a boilerplate for a long-term project, you want to ensure it won’t be abandoned – stale dependencies or unpatched vulnerabilities in an unmaintained starter can become a headache. Sushi’s development pace, along with its MIT open-source license21, gives peace of mind that you can either get updates or fork and maintain it yourself if needed. In contrast, some minimal starters might be one-off releases or side projects that don’t receive continuous updates. If a key dependency breaks, you might have to fix it without upstream help. And some commercial starters depend on the author’s ongoing business; if they discontinue it, you might not get updates. Always consider the bus-factor and longevity. Sushi’s model (open code + strong documentation) means even if one day it stops being updated, you have all the knowledge and rights to maintain your copy.

Support and Customization (Consulting vs. Community)

When you use a boilerplate or template, another aspect to consider is what support is available if you run into issues or need to tailor it to your needs. Here the approaches differ:

Sushi Templates — Author Consulting

Uniquely, the author of Sushi offers paid consulting services to help users adapt the template to their specific use case or to assist with deployment 50. This means if you’re a solo developer and you need an expert’s help in, say, customizing the Stripe integration for a different pricing model, or modifying the auth to work with an enterprise SSO, you can reach out and get hands-on guidance (for a fee). Essentially, you have the option of one-on-one support from the person who built the template, which can be invaluable to overcome hurdles quickly. This is almost like having a part-time mentor or contractor who already knows the codebase intimately. The availability of consulting can significantly de-risk using the template for an early-stage startup because you know you can get expert help if you hit a roadblock. Not many templates offer this. Sushi’s author even states in the docs that if you want the template “tailored to your product or to validate your MVP quickly,” you can reach out for help 51.

Minimal Starters — Community or Self-Support

With open-source minimal starters like create-t3-app or Vercel’s, support usually comes from the community (forums, GitHub issues, Discord channels) or your own debugging skills. There might be a Discord for create-t3-app (since it’s community-driven) or discussion threads on GitHub where you can ask questions. And of course, since those technologies are popular, you can find general help (e.g. how to do X with NextAuth or Prisma) on StackOverflow, etc. But you likely won’t have the original author guiding you directly on how to extend their minimal starter – because extending it is supposed to be your job. With paid starters like ShipFast, you often get access to a community of other users (ShipFast advertises a Discord with 5,000+ makers and a leaderboard community 52). That can be motivating and useful for peer support, but again you’re not guaranteed personalized help for your specific application. The ShipFast maker (Marc) is active in marketing and might answer some questions, but it’s not the same as a consulting arrangement. In short, minimal or commercial starters generally follow a DIY support model – you or your team must handle customizations, possibly with community advice, whereas Sushi explicitly provides an avenue for expert support if you want it.

Flexibility and Lock-In: Another concern related to support is the flexibility to customize the codebase without breaking things or losing the ability to upgrade. Sushi being open source (MIT) means you have full flexibility – you’re not locked into any proprietary platform. The “framework prison” myth (fearing lock-in to a template’s structure) is addressed by Sushi’s philosophy: it’s a starter, not a framework – all code is yours to modify and there’s no hidden service forcing you into a pattern 53 54. Minimal starters are also usually open source (create-t3-app is MIT, Vercel’s is MIT), so they’re similarly flexible. The difference is just that with Sushi you have more pre-built code to modify. Some might argue that more code means more to potentially change (which is true if your needs diverge greatly from what’s provided), but since it adheres to standard technologies (Next.js, Drizzle, etc.), you’re free to alter or replace parts. The consulting offer just adds an extra safety net that if a customization is tricky, you could even hire the author to implement it, ensuring it’s done in a clean way. This is something you cannot do with most open-source starters (the authors typically don’t offer private support), and with closed-source ones you might not have the option to change core parts if they’re packaged as a library.

In summary, from a support perspective, Sushi Templates provides a unique blend: the robustness of an open-source community-driven project and the option for commercial-level support directly from its creator. This can be very appealing to small startup teams who need to move fast – you get the speed of a template and the ability to get expert help quickly if needed, without hiring a full-time engineer just for boilerplate work.

Conclusion: Shipping Real Products Faster (Trade-offs and Takeaways)

For solo devs and small teams aiming to ship a real SaaS product fast, Sushi Templates offers a compelling head start over minimal starter kits. By being feature-complete out-of-the-box, it saves you from spending weeks or months on the “boring” but necessary plumbing that users expect 1 2. Features like multi-language support, billing, admin dashboards, and referral programs are not glamorous or unique to your app – but they are often needed, and Sushi delivers them already built (and built following best practices) 20. This means you can focus earlier on your app’s unique value proposition. In practical terms, using a full template like this can let you launch in days or weeks instead of months 55, which in turn lets you start getting real user feedback and revenue sooner 56.

On the other hand, minimal starters still have their place. If your project truly only needs a very small scope or you’re just prototyping an idea without many standard SaaS features, a minimal starter or custom setup might be sufficient. They keep initial complexity low and may be easier to comprehend end-to-end when you only have a couple of features to worry about. Additionally, some developers prefer minimal bases if they intend to use completely different solutions (for example, a different payment provider than Stripe, or no need for a credits system or i18n). In such cases, the extra code in a full template might feel like overkill. However, it’s worth noting that Sushi’s modular, open approach mitigates this – you can disable or remove modules you don’t need. And the time you spend stripping out a feature from Sushi is typically far less than the time to implement one that isn’t there in a minimal starter.

Let’s briefly compare with the specific examples mentioned:

• Vercel’s Next.js SaaS Starter (minimal starter by Vercel/Next.js team): It gives a solid Next.js + Postgres foundation with auth and Stripe3, but it’s essentially a base app – no i18n, no affiliates, no credits system, and a very lightweight admin setup. It’s great for learning or as a clean slate, but beyond the basics, you’re on your own to add features.
• ShipFast (paid boilerplate): It’s closer to Sushi in philosophy, including things like a landing page, email integration (Mailgun), payments (Stripe/LemonSqueezy), a blog, and some UI components13. It has helped many makers launch faster. However, it doesn’t mention built-in i18n or an affiliate system. Its database flexibility (Mongo or Supabase) is nice for quick start, but those choices may not be as scalable or structured as Sushi’s SQL + ORM approach. Also, being a paid product, you rely on the author for updates (closed source). Sushi being open-source with similar or broader features provides more freedom and arguably a more “real-world” tech stack for scale (Postgres over Mongo for most SaaS scenarios).
• create-t3-app (minimal open-source stack): This is fantastic for a typesafe full-stack development experience. It sets up a lot of developer tooling (TypeScript everywhere, tRPC, Prisma, NextAuth) which is great for code quality. But it pointedly does not include any actual SaaS features beyond accounts. You start with essentially a tech demo – no UI for billing, no marketing site, no admin panel. Everything beyond the initial scaffold is up to you. This can be liberating if you want full control, but it is time-consuming. For a “real” SaaS that you want to ship and monetize, using create-t3-app means you’ll be spending a considerable chunk of time building what Sushi or other templates would have given you pre-made.

Ultimately, Sushi Templates “beats” minimal starters for real SaaS projects in the sense that it addresses the needs of a production-ready, revenue-generating app from the start. It’s not just about coding faster, but about shipping a product that’s already equipped to handle users, payments, growth, and scale. As the SaaS template guide on Sushi’s site reminds us, a quality boilerplate is like an accelerator – “it handles the undifferentiated heavy lifting, so you can build the features that truly matter for your users”57. That encapsulates the benefit: you get to spend your precious time on your app’s special sauce, not reinventing login forms or subscription logic for the Nth time58.

Neutral perspective: Every team should evaluate their needs. If you have very custom requirements or enjoy building infra from scratch, a minimal starter might suit you better. But if your goal is to launch a real SaaS business quickly and reliably, Sushi Templates provides a proven, well-documented foundation that covers the common requirements in one package. It bridges the gap between a DIY starter and a fully custom build, giving you the best of both: speed and comprehensiveness, without significant lock-in. For solo developers and indie hackers especially, that means you can achieve in a week what might otherwise take months – and for a startup, that difference is everything.

Sources

Sushi Templates Documentation – “About Sushi SaaS — What It Is and Why It’s Reliable”[5][6][9][11][12][16][21][26][32][33][35][36][41][42][45][46][47][50][51] https://www.sushi-templates.com/en/blogs/about

Sushi Templates Documentation – Feature Guides and Quick Start[22][14][37] https://www.sushi-templates.com/en/blogs/quick-start

Next.js SaaS Starter (Vercel) – README and features[3][10][27][34][44] https://github.com/nextjs/saas-starter

create-t3-app Documentation – Introduction (philosophy of minimal design)[4][48] https://create-t3-app-docs.vercel.app/en/getting-started

ShipFast Boilerplate – Feature list and FAQs[13][17][28][43][49][52] https://shipfa.st/

“Why Use a SaaS Template (and When You Shouldn’t)” – Sushi Templates Blog (on time savings and features)[1][2][20][53][54][55][56][57][58] https://www.sushi-templates.com/en/blogs/why-use-a-saas-template

Pansa Legrand (@WenzhuPan) / X[15] https://x.com/WenzhuPan

Medium – “SaaS Boilerplate Comparison 2025” (R. Padovani) – noting minimal features vs complete solutions[59] https://rafael-padovani.medium.com/i-compared-the-top-saas-boilerplates-heres-what-i-discovered-ee52a88b45c4