Today, building a Software as a Service (SaaS) application is easier than ever, at least on paper. With no-code tools like Webflow and serverless platforms handling the heavy lifting, you can spin up a functional product in record time. But getting from an idea to a successful launch? That’s where things get tricky.
It’s more than writing code. You need the right tools, a solid market approach, and a willingness to keep learning. The good news? If you know where to look, there’s a wealth of knowledge out there.
To simplify things, I’ve rounded up five must-watch video tutorials to guide you through the process. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just testing the waters, these videos will help you build, launch, and grow a SaaS app that makes an impact.
1. Building a Finance Manager SaaS Platform
The finance industry is a large sector with many market opportunities. Whether you are an entrepreneur launching a fintech startup or an individual hoping to solve a market problem, building a finance app can provide people with better tools to track expenses, budget effectively, and make informed financial decisions. By creating a finance app, you empower users to take control of their money through features like automation and statistics, giving them a better idea of how their money comes in and goes out.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build a finance manager app that tracks daily transactions, income, and expenses while visualizing them with clear graphs. You’ll also see how to add a point-in-time feature so users can analyze their data for specific date ranges. There’s a subscription-based element that unlocks premium features like connecting bank accounts and importing transactions, giving users more flexibility with their finances.
You’ll start by setting up Next.js for the project and then integrating route and API management using Hono. Shadcn UI makes UI prototyping faster, so you won’t have to build every component from scratch. The video also covers Clerk authentication for protected routes and demonstrates how Neon PostgreSQL fits in as a serverless solution for SQL databases.
You’ll use Drizzle ORM to manage TypeScript-to-Postgres mapping, so you will never have to juggle low-level SQL queries. Drizzle ORM helps maintain a safer interaction between your database and the Typescript project while enabling efficient schema management.
You won’t see how to connect bank accounts in this video, but you do get a neat way to import transactions. You can customize your table headers with predefined names, letting you decide which columns to keep or skip.
2. Build a SaaS App With Django, Stripe, Neon PostgreSQL, TailwindCSS, GitHub Actions
Knowing what tools, when, and how to use them remains invaluable in your programming journey. It is a huge part of being an innovator or pioneer and the foundation of being a great programmer.
This excellent tutorial will teach you how to build a foundational SaaS application using Django, covering authentication, data modeling, and payment integrations. You’ll understand why Python is a go-to language with its rich library ecosystem that streamlines common functionalities. There’s also a focus on setting up a scheduled production worker to sync user subscriptions at intervals.
You’ll start by configuring a Python project with Django to manage views, routes, and static files. The video also shows how to style the front end using Flowbite and TailwindCSS. The tutorial then walks you through preparing Django for a production environment and deploying it to Railway’s cloud platform via Docker containers.
The video explores subscription and payment integration in Stripe, showing how to handle recurring payments and manage user access based on their subscription status. Next, you’ll handle user authentication with Django Allauth by creating social authentication using GitHub authentication and linking user data with Stripe on registration.
This tutorial also highlights using PostgreSQL as the database option in the Django project, specifically focusing on Neon PostgreSQL. Neon is a managed form of PostgreSQL that eases development processes through its serverless architecture, allowing developers to focus on building rather than infrastructure management. The video tutorial emphasizes Neon's quick database setup and serverless approach, which means it can respond to the growing demand for your SaaS product, and the server only runs when you need it to run.
This is a beginner-friendly guide that helps you anticipate common pitfalls. You’ll learn to implement Stripe with Django in a way that gracefully handles subscription logic, user accounts, and data syncing, giving you a solid foundation to build and scale your SaaS product.
3. How To Build A $1,000,000 SaaS In 7 Hours
The saying “There is nothing new under the sun” might be true in some cases, but in others, innovation comes not from creating something entirely new but from improving existing ideas by addressing their weaknesses. Building a SaaS product doesn’t mean you must be original or a pioneer in the field of interest. In a competitive market, one or two key differences in its abilities could differentiate a good product from a great product. If you want to explore that, then this video is for you.
This video provides more insights into building SaaS solutions on already existing ones while improving on their weaknesses. It shows how to use the latest Next.js features to build a clone of ParityDeals, an application that offers discounts based on the user's country. The finished clone improves upon ParityDeals banner customization by introducing custom font sizes and manual CSS prefix configurations. There’s a permission-based system that differentiates users' access based on their subscriptions.
You’ll set up Next.js with Shadcn UI and TailwindCSS for styling and then configure Clerk for authentication. The video covers Neon Postgres database branching for development and uses Neon to store product data, customizations, and subscriptions. Drizzle ORM handles database setup, including schema, migrations, and credentials.
One of the best parts of this tutorial is its use of caching. It implements three levels, global, user-specific, and ID-specific, to optimize data storage and retrieval based on relevance.
Additionally, it revalidates cached data and updates it correctly when changes occur, such as product edits or deletions. This keeps information up to date without delays, making the tutorial a great resource for enhancing existing product features.
4. SaaS Automation Builder
Automation eliminates many cognitive or physical limitations humans face, making it useful for time-sensitive or repetitive tasks. This makes it crucial in production as it improves productivity while potentially saving on labor. This tutorial demonstrates how to build an automation platform called Fuzzie. The finished SaaS app allows users to create and edit workflows by setting a trigger (Google Drive) with different actions. Each workflow has a draggable canvas with a minimap and controls for centering and zooming in or out of the canvas page. Users can save their workflow to a database or publish it.
The tutorial starts by creating a Next.js project and setting up Shadcn UI and Aceternity UI for premade front-end components, with TailwindCSS for styling. Next, you will use Prisma ORM to create data models and generate schemas for Neon's Postgres database. The tutorial also covers file uploads using Uploadcare, Clerk to handle authentication, and creating a billing system with Stripe that allows users to purchase different plans.
You can never overstate the importance of automation in small-scale to large-scale processes. This video buttresses it through its implementation and emphasizes the usability of features like the draggable canvas with a minimap, which allows users to navigate their workflows easily, adapting to the complexity and size of their projects.
5. SaaS AI Chatbot - Email Marketing, Next.js, Clerk, Neon, Uploadcare, Cloudways, Bun, Stripe, Pusher
At this time, it feels more like a disadvantage not to leverage some AI features within your SaaS product. Many software services use AI to improve product features, either as an agent or as a RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) embedded feature. This addition provides a great user experience, thus facilitating the better adoption of said product.
Here is a great tutorial on creating an artificially intelligent chatbot that acts as a sales representative. The chatbot is effective in:
- Starting a conversation with a website visitor and requesting their email address.
- Providing answers based on user responses.
- Sending a link to the user, which can take them to a portal page or a payment form, depending on the conversation flow.
- Managing conversation flow by sending an email notification to the business owner.
In this tutorial, you’ll add AI into custom domains and embed chatbots into websites. Authenticated users can track domain income, monitor data metrics, and customize chatbot appearance and greetings based on their subscription. The app enables chatbot training by letting business owners set bot training and help desk questions. Additionally, it supports product sales through Stripe integration, allows users to manage billing and subscriptions, schedule appointments manually or via the chatbot, and conduct email marketing based on captured leads.
In this tutorial, you’ll create a Next.js project with TailwindCSS and build custom authentication pages for Clerk without the watermark. This means you’ll create a custom Clerk authentication component, allowing you to have a UI without the Clerk branding in the authentication component. You’ll then set up file uploads using Uploadcare and create custom theming with Shadcn UI for light and dark modes. A real-time chat feature will be built using Pusher as a secure layer between the server and the client.
Toward the end, you’ll integrate OpenAI and use prompt engineering to customize chatbot responses. Neon will serve as the database, with Prisma ORM managing users, domains, chatbots, billing, help desks, and customer interactions.
This tutorial offers a hands-on guide to integrating AI for client interactions. While not entirely beginner-friendly, it demonstrates AI’s ability to manage early conversations and ensure prompt responses. The standout feature is its adaptive AI, which makes clients feel heard and enhances customer relations without the immediate interference of the business owner.
Final Thoughts
From finance management and subscription-based platforms to AI chatbots and automation tools, these five tutorials highlight the variety of directions your SaaS project can take. One feature that stands out across all these tutorials is using Neon PostgreSQL as the database of choice. No matter which technologies or frameworks you adopt, Neon can help you:
- Scale on demand without manual intervention
- Save time setting up and managing databases
- Integrate with TypeScript, Python, Next.js, and other common SaaS stacks
Building a SaaS product doesn’t have to be a giant leap of faith. With guides like these, modern platforms like Next.js and Django, and serverless databases like Neon, you can experiment, iterate, and ship faster.
Ready to start building your own SaaS app? Pick a tutorial, dive in, and take the first step toward launching your product. Whether building from scratch or improving an existing idea, the right tools and guidance can help you turn your vision into reality.
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