Frequently Asked Questions

A boilerplate (or starter kit) is a pre-built codebase you start a project from instead of an empty folder — auth, payments, database, deployment, and project structure already wired and tested together. The good ones encode months of integration decisions: Stripe webhooks done right, auth edge cases handled, CI configured. You clone or buy it, rename it, and start on the part that's actually your product.

For a SaaS with auth + subscriptions + emails, realistically two to six weeks of integration work — not because any single piece is hard, but because wiring Stripe webhooks, session handling, transactional email and deployment correctly, together, is a long tail of edge cases. For simpler shapes (landing page, extension scaffold), it's days rather than weeks, but the consistency is worth as much as the time.

Paid kits ($99–$300 one-time, typically) make sense when you need billing, auth and email integrated and supported, and your launch window is worth more than the price. Open-source starters (create-t3-app, Epic Stack, Cookiecutter Django…) cover a huge share of the same ground, with full code ownership and community answers. Every listing here is labelled Open Source or Paid, with the price in the description.

Four things: the last update date (does it track current framework majors?), what's actually in the box (multi-tenancy? tests? or just auth + one Stripe plan?), the license terms (per-project vs unlimited projects), and refund policy. Our 'Honest limitations' section on detailed listings covers the first two for you.

Last release more than a year ago, docs referencing framework versions two majors behind, issues piling up without maintainer replies, and a Discord that's gone quiet. We check this before listing and re-verify the catalog regularly — dead kits are removed rather than left to waste your evaluation time.

Yes — that's the honest trade. A starter is a bundle of stack decisions (framework, ORM, auth provider, payment processor), and swapping a core piece later usually costs more than the kit saved. The tags on every listing show exactly which stack you're committing to, so you can pick one that matches decisions you'd have made anyway.

Almost always yes — most listed starters are MIT, Apache-2.0 or BSD licensed, which permit commercial use. Watch for exceptions: some 'open core' kits gate pro modules, and some templates are free for personal use only. Check the LICENSE file; our descriptions flag unusual licensing where we know about it.

Prices shown in descriptions were correct when the listing was reviewed, but vendors change pricing at will — launch discounts, price rises after milestones. Treat our price as an order of magnitude and check the vendor's site before deciding. If you spot a stale price, tell us and we'll fix it.

Every listing is reviewed by a human against four criteria: it must be a real starter (a codebase that scaffolds a working project — not a tutorial, not a component screenshot), actively maintained, honest about pricing and contents, and its URL verified live. We reject submissions that fail any of these.

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Go to /submit. Standard review is free and takes up to 4 weeks. Fast-track is $49, reviewed within 48 hours, with featured placement on your category page. You only pay if we approve — full refund on rejection.

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