Curator notes on stacks worth shipping, each one picked, tested and documented.
70 posts
Vercel, Railway, and Render all deploy Next.js, but they own different amounts of your backend. A 2026 decision guide with real costs, free-tier traps, and a self-host escape hatch.
Resend, SendGrid, Postmark and Amazon SES compared on real 2026 pricing, free tiers, deliverability, and the open-source react-email layer, with a decision guide for Next.js SaaS builders.
Stripe acquired Lemon Squeezy and now sells its own merchant of record, so the real 2026 question is whether you rent that role to Paddle, Polar, or Stripe, or stay a raw Stripe processor. Real fees, honest tradeoffs, and which your Next.js SaaS should pick.
Neon or Supabase for your Next.js SaaS starter in 2026? A curator's honest, source-checked head-to-head: it is not two databases, it is a database vs a whole backend. Branching, scale-to-zero, the pricing that changed, and where each one loses.
Drizzle or Prisma for your Next.js SaaS starter in 2026? A curator's honest, source-checked head-to-head: bundle size, serverless, the Prisma 7 Rust-free rewrite, migrations, and where each one loses.
Better Auth vs Clerk vs Auth.js vs Supabase Auth for a Next.js SaaS in 2026: verified pricing, self-hosted versus managed, AI-agent auth, and when each one wins.
An honest gallery review of Payload CMS in 2026: the five ways to deploy the Next.js-native backend, what it really costs, and where it loses.
A hands-on July 2026 scorecard of ten open-source and source-available Next.js SaaS and AI starters, ranked across six axes with real GitHub stars and exact licenses.
A hands-on July 2026 review of Convex, the reactive backend and database for Next.js: five deploy paths, real free-tier cost math, the FSL license fine print, and where it loses to Supabase and Neon.
ShipGarden's hands-on June 2026 review of Inngest v1.34 (v1.34.0 stable shipped June 29, JavaScript SDK v4.11.0 on npm) as the open-source durable-execution platform for Next.js apps. Five deploy paths, real cost-per-10k-executions math, an honest compare-side against Trigger.dev v4, the SSPL license question, and where v1.34 still bites.
ShipGarden's hands-on June 2026 review of Refine v5 (@refinedev/core@5.0.12) as the open-source React framework for an admin or internal-tool starter. Five deploy paths, real per-month costs, an honest react-admin / Appsmith / ToolJet comparison, and the v4-to-v5 migration story you should plan for.
ShipGarden's hands-on June 2026 review of Trigger.dev v4 (v4.4.6 stable, v4.5.0-rc.7 in flight) as the open-source background-jobs platform for Next.js apps. Five deploy paths, real cost-per-10k-runs math, an honest read against Inngest and Convex, and where v4 still bites.
