Getting Started With Open Saas

By Author: Ricardo Batista
Total Articles: 1
Comment this article

When building [AI Blog Articles](https://getaiblogarticles.com/) and [Meeting Reminders](https://meeting-reminders.com/), I decided to get started as fast as possible. So I looked for a free boilerplate and stumbled upon Open SaaS, which used YC-backed Wasp. It is a full-stack React + NodeJS + Prisma that takes 8 hours to get started with.

Their documentation is brilliant, and great support over Discord. I decided to list here the full walkthrough on how to set up the development environment so that it is a simple copy-paste for you.

For frontend deployment, I used Netlify (for the generous free package) and the recommended fly.io for server + database (also cheap package).

Run development commands

Start development database:
cd app && wasp start db

View development database in Prisma:
wasp db studio

Start development app:
cd app && wasp start

Start development blog:
cd blog && npm install && npm run dev

Run frontend deployment commands

Locate the folder:
cd .wasp/build/web-app

Install dependencies:
...
... npm install && REACT_APP_API_URL={your-server-URL} npm run build

Deploy preview:
netlify deploy

Deploy to production:
netlify deploy --prod

Every time there is a Wasp app rebuild (with wasp build), it will remove your .wasp/build/ directory. Until the GitHub issue is fixed, you need to update netlify.toml’s publish line to:

publish = ".wasp/build/web-app/build"

Run backend & db deployment commands

Locate the folder:
cd .wasp/build/

Deploy preview:
flyctl deploy --remote-only --config ../../src/shared/fly-server.toml
Every time there is a Wasp app rebuild (with wasp build), it will remove your .wasp/build/ directory. That’s why there is a copy of the file in app/src/shared/.

Run blog deployment commands

Locate the folder:
cd blog

Build the app:
npm run build

Deploy preview:
netlify deploy

Deploy to production:
netlify deploy --prod

Good luck with building, hopefully it will be faster now!

Other projects from the Founder:

- [Tramitit](https://tramitit.com/)
- [FidForward](https://fidforward.com/)