Stacknaut vs Building from Scratch
You can absolutely build everything yourself. The question is whether you should.
This isn't a comparison of features — it's a comparison of time, risk, and what you get for $199 vs doing it all from zero.
What You'd Build Yourself
To get to the same starting point as Stacknaut, here's what you'd need to set up:
| Component | Estimated Time | What's Involved |
|---|---|---|
| Project scaffolding | 2–4 hours | Monorepo setup, TypeScript config, path aliases, shared packages |
| Auth (magic link) | 4–8 hours | Token generation, email sending, verification flow, session management |
| Auth (Google Sign-In) | 4–6 hours | OAuth flow, ID token verification, account linking |
| Stripe billing | 4–8 hours | Checkout sessions, webhooks, subscription management, customer portal |
| Transactional emails | 2–4 hours | Email service setup, templates, delivery testing, SPF/DKIM/DMARC |
| Server provisioning | 8–16 hours | Terraform config, firewall rules, SSH hardening, DNS |
| Deployment pipeline | 8–16 hours | Dockerfiles, Kamal or similar setup, zero-downtime deploys, health checks |
| Reverse proxy & SSL | 2–4 hours | Caddy or nginx config, certificate management |
| SEO setup | 2–4 hours | Pre-rendering, meta tags, sitemap, canonical URLs |
| AI agent configuration | 4–8 hours | AGENTS.md, documenting conventions, testing with agents |
| Total | 40–78 hours |
At any reasonable hourly rate, 40+ hours of work costs far more than $199. And these are optimistic estimates — they assume you know how to do all of this and don't hit unexpected issues.
The Hidden Costs
Time is the obvious cost. But there are others:
Debugging unfamiliar integrations. Stripe webhooks have edge cases. Magic link token expiry needs careful handling. Google OAuth has quirks with different account types. You'll spend hours on problems that have already been solved.
Production gaps. A prototype auth flow works differently from a production one. Did you add rate limiting? Session refresh? Secure cookie flags? Proper error handling for expired tokens? These details matter and they take time to get right.
Infrastructure experience. If you haven't provisioned servers, configured firewalls, and set up zero-downtime deploys before, you're learning while building. That's valuable experience, but it's also time you're not spending on your actual product.
AI agent context. Without an AGENTS.md and well-documented conventions, your AI coding agent will write inconsistent code. You'll spend time correcting it, or worse, you won't notice the inconsistencies until they cause bugs.
What You Don't Get from Scratch
Even if you build everything yourself, you won't have:
- 30 years of production experience baked into the architecture decisions
- Battle-tested patterns from real shipping SaaS products (MyOG.social, TheBlue.social)
- Pre-configured AI agent context that makes your coding assistant immediately productive
- A known-good integration between all the pieces — auth, billing, deployment, and infrastructure that work together because they were tested together
When Building from Scratch Makes Sense
There are legitimate reasons to build from scratch:
- You need a fundamentally different architecture — event-driven, microservices, or a stack Stacknaut doesn't cover
- Learning is the goal — you want to understand every piece by building it yourself
- You have specific constraints — regulatory requirements, specific cloud providers, or frameworks your team already knows deeply
- You already have most of it — you've built SaaS apps before and have your own boilerplate
When Stacknaut Makes More Sense
- You want to ship fast — skip weeks of setup and start building your product
- You want production-grade from day one — not a prototype you'll need to harden later
- You want to focus on what makes your product unique — not auth and billing plumbing
- You use AI coding agents — and want a codebase they can work with effectively
- You want to own your infrastructure — your server, your code, low ongoing costs
The Math
| Building from Scratch | Stacknaut | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to production-ready foundation | 40–78 hours | Hours (clone and deploy) |
| Cost | Your time (40+ hours × your rate) | $199 |
| Infrastructure included | No (additional research + setup) | Yes |
| AI agent config | No (write it yourself) | Yes |
| Production-tested | No (tested by you alone) | Yes (shipped real products) |
| Ongoing server cost | Depends on your choices | ~$14/month (Hetzner) |
The Bottom Line
Building from scratch is a valid choice if learning is your goal or your requirements don't fit Stacknaut's stack. But if you're an indie developer who wants to ship a SaaS product and start generating revenue, spending 40+ hours on plumbing instead of product is an expensive decision. Stacknaut gives you a production-ready foundation for $199 so you can focus on what actually matters — building something people want to pay for.