56 | Building a SaaS is Less Scary Than You Think with James Perkins

In this episode, James Perkins talks about the SaaS he built, Roll Your Tweet, the tech behind it, and how much it costs to run.SponsorsVercelVercel combines the best developer experience with an obsessive focus on end-user performance. Their platform enables frontend teams to do their best work. It is the best place to deploy any frontend app. Start by deploying with zero configuration to their global edge network. Scale dynamically to millions of pages without breaking a sweat.For more information, visit Vercel.comZEAL is hiring!ZEAL is a computer software agency that delivers “the world’s most zealous” and custom solutions. The company plans and develops web and mobile applications that consistently help clients draw in customers, foster engagement, scale technologies, and ensure delivery.ZEAL believes that a business is “only as strong as” its team and cares about culture, values, a transparent process, leveling up, giving back, and providing excellent equipment. The company has staffers distributed throughout the United States, and as it continues to grow, ZEAL looks for collaborative, object-oriented, and organized individuals to apply for open roles.For more information visit softwareresidency.com/careersDatoCMSDatoCMS is a complete and performant headless CMS built to offer the best developer experience and user-friendliness in the market. It features a rich, CDN-powered GraphQL API (with realtime updates!), a super-flexible way to handle dynamic layouts and structured content, and best-in-class image/video support, with progressive/LQIP image loading out-of-the-box."For more information, visit datocms.comShow Notes0:00 Introduction1:01 Introducing James PerkinsTina CMS1:53 Parenting Tips3:51 Quick Rants: "No one is going to give you a tech job or development job based on social media process"5:43 Quick Rant: Educational Content is better within a Blog Post8:28 Roll Your TweetRoll Your Tweet10:35 Why is not intimidating to build a SaaS app and what tech stack are you using?Feed HiveNext.jsClerkPlanet ScalePrismaSend in BlueRender16:57 Sponsor: DatoCMS17:51 Question: Should you go ahead and build out the Payments piece early or wait until you actually have sign-ups?Paddle22:59 What prompted the change in the tech stack?24:00 How do you run the cron job?Crossover episode with Web Dev Weekly26:54 Working with the Database30:43 Sponsor: Vercel31:50 Developing By Yourself36:41 The Cost of Running Roll Your Tweet40:59 Sponsor: ZEAL41:53 Grab Bag Questions41:58 Question #1: What are you using for the analytics in your app?Plausible44:19 Question #2: Do you stream your work on your SaaS?44:56 Question #3: Will you repeat your tech stack one more time?46:43 Finding James Perkins OnlineTwitterYouTubeTwitch