Build a SaaS Template

[jacobsfletch]

There's been a growing need for a new SaaS starter template, and so it's time we start outlining some of the features and requirements of this work. We came close to shipping a SaaS template earlier this year, but after building out the Website Template and Ecommerce Template, that work was put on hold in order to build out Payload Cloud and support one-click deployments. But this timeline wasn't all bad, because we built Payload Cloud using Payload. Needless to say, we learned a lot about subscriptions and recurring payments.

As a starting point, we can duplicate the Website Template, it contains everything we need from page building to front-end rendering (and includes an auth flow) so we can immediately focus on the subscription management aspects of this template. Same goes for the basic Stripe integration from the E-commerce Template (the plugin, product connection, etc.). Much of this can get carried over—but subscriptions are billed entirely differently than one-off payments, so this is where the jumping off point will be for the SaaS template. Fortunately, most of this can be taken directly from our Payload Cloud implementation, so it does not have to be rewritten from scratch. Aaand same goes for the front-end. We can carry over much of the code from our open-source website.

Going off the cuff, need to create some new collections (more details to come):

1. plans which are products with recurring payments
2. teams which will subscribe to plans using a billing email
3. users who will join teams with a given role

Then we need to open up various custom endpoints which our front-end will hit (more details to come):

1. Install the @payloadcms/plugin-stripe plugin to make using the Stripe API and handling Stripe webhooks much easier
2. Build a /create-setup-intent endpoint for setting up new payment methods on the front-end
3. Build a /create-subscription endpoint to verify payment methods and ensure default payments are set, etc

On the teams collection, some custom endpoints (more details to come):

1. /teams/:id/customer proxy to the related Stripe customer
2. Same with .../subscriptions, .../invoices, .../payment-methods, etc.
3. All the team management related endpoints like .../accept-invitation, .../send-invitation, etc

As for the front-end, we need to handle:

1. Free trials
2. Checkout
3. Billing management
4. Team and account management

More to come. This is a living document that will be continually updated in greater detail and to better reflect direct feedback from the community. Please join the conversation and/or upvote this discussion if you think this work should be prioritized!

[octalpixel]

Love to know how this is going about

[ydemetriades]

I would really be interested on this as well. Do we have an update on this? :)

(I know that you are quite busy right now with v3 and all those goodies that you are preparing!!)

[grantspilsbury]

I would love to be able to use a subscription template. Any progress?