Stop building infrastructure. Start shipping features.
The golden rule of Indie Hacking: If it's not your core value prop, outsource it.
In 2025, you can build a million-dollar SaaS by just gluing together 5 powerful APIs. Here is the stack I recommend for speed and scale.
1. Auth & Database: Supabase
Stop writing login forms. Stop configuring Postgres.
Supabase gives you a full backend-as-a-service.
Why: Row Level Security (RLS) means you can query your DB directly from the frontend securely.
Free Tier: Generous.
2. Payments: Lemon Squeezy (or Stripe)
Stripe is the king, but Lemon Squeezy handles the "Merchant of Record" headache (taxes, VAT) for you.
Why: If you sell globally, calculating VAT for 50 countries is a nightmare. Lemon Squeezy does it for you.
3. AI/LLM: OpenAI (via Vercel AI SDK)
If you aren't adding AI to your app, your competitor is.
Why: The Vercel AI SDK makes streaming responses (that cool typing effect) trivial in Next.js.
4. Emails: Resend
AWS SES is cheap but painful to set up. SendGrid has bad deliverability.
Why: Resend has the best DX (Developer Experience) of any email provider. You can write your emails in React.
5. Social Data: SociaVault
If your app needs to interact with social media (Influencer search, Trend tracking, Content analysis), do NOT build your own scraper.
Why: Scraping is a maintenance black hole. SociaVault gives you clean JSON data from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube without the headaches of proxies or captchas.
Use Case: "Monitor my competitor's TikTok growth" or "Find influencers with >5% engagement".
The "No-Backend" Stack
With these 5, you barely need a backend server.
Frontend: Next.js (hosted on Vercel)
DB/Auth: Supabase
Payments: Lemon Squeezy
Logic: OpenAI + SociaVault
Comms: Resend
You can ship an MVP in a weekend.
What's in your stack? Let me know in the comments. 👇