Ask HN: Solo developer – Recommended architecture/patterns for building a SaaS?
Across SaaS offerings there are some common functionalities that must be built but as a solo developer my time and resources are limited.
* Authentication / Authorization
* Usage monitoring
* API Gateway
* Billing calculations
* Invoice generation and sending
* Customer support (including portal to manage account)
I have left the specifics of the software out on purpose however it is primarily REST API based.
So far I have looked at building on top of Kubernetes with Keycloak for auth; Kong (free) for API gateway; cron jobs to calculate daily bills, update a database and send monthly invoices. It's ugly, takes more time than I would like to spend to maintain and develop and means I lose time spent working on my core business.
Are there any best practices/design patterns/architectures for building a small-medium scalable SaaS platform?
I am open to experiences with managed services and heavy vendor lock-in as previously I tried to avoid it but the flexibility (that I have not used) is a tradeoff with time and effort required.
So far I have looked at building on top of Kubernetes with Keycloak for auth; Kong (free) for API gateway; cron jobs to calculate daily bills, update a database and send monthly invoices. It's ugly, takes more time than I would like to spend to maintain and develop and means I lose time spent working on my core business.
Are there any best practices/design patterns/architectures for building a small-medium scalable SaaS platform?
I am open to experiences with managed services and heavy vendor lock-in as previously I tried to avoid it but the flexibility (that I have not used) is a tradeoff with time and effort required.