Building Laravel Saas: Part 1/5 - Choosing Starter Kit

[00:00] Hello guys, today I'm starting a new

[00:01] series of videos on this channel.

[00:03] Building a typical Laravel SAS. And

[00:06] first the reminder, today is the last

[00:08] day for Black Friday deal for Laravel

[00:10] Daily to get 40% of yearly or lifetime

[00:13] membership. And this video may convince

[00:15] you to do that if you haven't taken the

[00:17] membership yet. So I'm starting a new

[00:20] course on Laravel Daily, Typical Laravel

[00:22] SAS. And here on the YouTube channel, I

[00:24] will publish first five videos today and

[00:27] then the rest of the week. And the topic

[00:29] of this first video will be choice of

[00:31] starter kit. So for now, I have three

[00:34] videos published as a course. You can

[00:36] watch them right now on Laravel Daily.

[00:38] And my plan is to shoot one video per

[00:40] day or roughly like that and publish

[00:43] more lessons, which probably will be the

[00:46] longest course on Laravel Daily ever

[00:48] because I want to get deeper. I recently

[00:50] talked oneonone to a lot of Laravel

[00:52] Daily members and I realized a lot of

[00:54] them want to create SAS whether for

[00:56] themselves as a product or for clients.

[00:59] So I tweeted a few ideas and then after

[01:01] some feedback and request from the

[01:03] community I landed on this plan of a

[01:06] typical Laravel SAS. So the idea is that

[01:08] if you master those topics like use a

[01:11] rose multi-tenency subscription and then

[01:13] a few more extra functions you will be

[01:16] ready to deliver kind of like 70% of

[01:18] typical projects with Laravel. Of course

[01:21] that 70% is number out of thin air but

[01:24] you get the idea. Many Laravel project

[01:26] can be boiled down to pretty typical SAS

[01:29] and for this case for each topic I want

[01:31] to get deeper explaining why behind the

[01:33] decisions for example to choose the

[01:35] starter kit to choose the model of

[01:37] multi-tenency to choose various

[01:40] subscription and billing options that's

[01:42] why the videos will be longer. So for

[01:44] example, the first video that you will

[01:46] watch right now in a minute after I stop

[01:48] talking with the intro will be about

[01:50] starter kit choice. An 8-minute video

[01:52] explaining why I chose certain specific

[01:55] starter kit for Laravel 12 with all the

[01:58] variety of starter kits now available. I

[02:00] will pick the one that requires the

[02:02] least prerequisites and upfront

[02:05] knowledge while using the most modern

[02:08] versions of the full stack ecosystem

[02:10] around Laravel. Maybe you can guess

[02:13] that. So, if you are intrigued which

[02:14] starter kit I chose for this video, you

[02:16] should watch until the end. So, yeah,

[02:18] enough intro. Let's dive into choosing

[02:20] the starter kit for a typical SAS. And

[02:22] again, today is the last day, so-called

[02:25] Cyber Monday, for 40% off yearly or

[02:28] lifetime membership. In this video, I

[02:30] want to start creating my SAS project.

[02:32] And first, I run Laravel new and then I

[02:35] immediately have the question, which

[02:37] starter kit? Over the years in Laravel,

[02:40] there were a lot of starter kits. and

[02:42] what is the actual current way to choose

[02:45] and in this video I want to not just

[02:47] choose but explain you why and what are

[02:50] the options and what may be better

[02:51] option for your case for a different

[02:54] project. So currently if you Google

[02:56] Laravel starter kits of course you land

[02:58] on the official page of starter kits

[03:00] which show three official Laravel 12

[03:03] starter kits react view and livewire. If

[03:06] you choose one of them, basically the

[03:08] prerequisite is that you work with one

[03:10] of those full stack technologies, which

[03:13] may be a problem if you're just a

[03:15] back-end developer wanting to create

[03:17] your SAS without learning React viewer

[03:19] LiveWire. The problem is that there's no

[03:22] plain blade starter kit, which makes me

[03:24] turn to older generation of starter

[03:27] kits. So if we take a look at the

[03:28] documentation of Laravel 11 starter

[03:30] kits, we have Breeze and Jetstream which

[03:33] were both released during Laravel 8

[03:35] release and they are still supported in

[03:37] Laravel 12 and they promise to be

[03:40] supported in the future versions. So you

[03:42] could choose Laravel Breeze for example

[03:44] if you just want breeze and blade and I

[03:47] have a separate tutorial on Laravel

[03:49] daily how to use breeze in Laravel 12.

[03:51] So you choose non-starter kit and then

[03:52] install breeze separately and you get

[03:55] something like this play and blade with

[03:57] tailwind and then you create things on

[03:59] top and to be honest I thought for this

[04:02] SAS project to choose Laravel breeze to

[04:05] avoid prerequisites of react view or

[04:07] live wire but the problem with breeze

[04:10] and jetream is that it's based on

[04:12] tailwind 3. So even the structure of how

[04:15] Tailwind is used in Laravel project for

[04:17] Breeze, it's a bit different with files

[04:19] like Tailwind config.js and other a

[04:22] little outdated structure. So it does

[04:25] still work and you can use breeze if you

[04:28] don't care about Tailwind version. And

[04:30] yes, you can upgrade Tailwind 3 to

[04:32] Tailwind 4 in Breeze and I have a

[04:33] separate tutorial for that. But people

[04:35] in the comments are reporting that this

[04:37] automatic tailwind upgrade works well

[04:41] for simple projects but not necessarily

[04:43] for bigger projects with more

[04:45] dependencies. Then you have quite a lot

[04:47] of manual work to upgrade various

[04:49] components which kind of beats the

[04:51] purpose of starter kit. Starter kit by

[04:54] definition should be easy to install and

[04:56] then you can easily move on to create

[04:57] your custom code. Right? And if you want

[04:59] to choose laravel gestream it has two

[05:02] problems. First problem the same thing

[05:04] it's tailwind threebased and also here

[05:07] you still have prerequisites of either

[05:09] available stocks here you see available

[05:12] stocks livewire blade or inertia view so

[05:14] it's not plain blade and this was

[05:16] actually the reason why Laravel breeze

[05:18] was created in the first place so back

[05:21] in Laravel 8 days first Taylor released

[05:23] jetstream and then the community asked

[05:25] so what about plain blade and Laravel

[05:28] breeze was the answer for that so what

[05:30] we covered so far option one official

[05:32] starter kit not ideal because they have

[05:33] prerequisites. Option two, breeze and

[05:36] jesterream also not ideal because

[05:38] tailwind 3 and other prerequisites. So

[05:40] then you may turn to community starter

[05:43] kits unofficial not firstparty starter

[05:45] kits and for that I found a website

[05:47] called Lara kits which lists a lot of

[05:49] starter kits so we can browse them for

[05:51] example order by downloads and of course

[05:54] the official starter kits have the most

[05:57] amount of downloads but also on top of

[05:59] that there are things like Genesis

[06:01] filament starter kits our own Laravel

[06:04] daily starter kit which is plain blade

[06:07] and others but I've browsed around those

[06:09] starter kits And the problem with all of

[06:11] those, well actually two problems. First

[06:14] problem, if the starter kit was created

[06:16] at some time, you don't have any

[06:18] guarantees it would be updated because

[06:21] quite often starter kits are created for

[06:23] their own usage for that company or that

[06:26] developer. And I see quite often they're

[06:29] not updated to latest version. So it's

[06:31] starter kit for the time being. And also

[06:34] then for each starter kit, you would

[06:35] still need to learn their code, learn

[06:38] the documentation, which is not ideal

[06:40] either. So as much as I like our own

[06:42] Laravel daily starter kit, it was

[06:44] created for our own needs, but I would

[06:47] really recommend firstparty starter kits

[06:50] in most cases. Finally, before I reveal

[06:53] which starter kit I will choose for this

[06:54] SAS, I need to mention paid starter

[06:57] kits, premium starter kits. I'm not

[06:59] affiliated with any of them but two of

[07:01] them are really popular on the market

[07:03] which is Sassy Kit and Lara Fast. So

[07:06] they would give you full SAS

[07:08] capabilities of Laravel and also

[07:10] Filament on top. So if you want to just

[07:13] pay money and have a lot of features

[07:14] inside you can pay roughly $200. The

[07:17] price is similar for both. So Larfast at

[07:20] the moment is $1.99 size kit the

[07:22] cheapest version is $239. And then you

[07:25] have the list of features something like

[07:27] this. So it's not starter kit, it's more

[07:29] like SAS full kit. But then this is of

[07:32] course another dependency. So you need

[07:33] to learn how that starter kit works. You

[07:36] may not like some of their technical

[07:37] decisions or structure or choice of tech

[07:40] stack. But if you care about launching

[07:42] your SAS quickly, this may be the

[07:44] quickest way. Just pay money and have

[07:47] full package. And now let's get back to

[07:49] our terminal and I will choose one of

[07:51] the starter kits and I will explain why.

[07:53] So, Laravel new gives us the choice of

[07:55] these starter kits. And I will choose

[07:57] Livewire because LiveWire is the closest

[08:00] option to plain Laravel and Blade. And

[08:03] you can actually even skip using Live

[08:05] Wire for custom features on top of the

[08:07] starter kit. Let me show you that in

[08:09] action. So, let's choose LiveWire and

[08:11] let's follow the default installation.

[08:14] So, built-in authentication. No, I don't

[08:16] want to use Laravel Vault. I'm good with

[08:19] best Laravel boost for now. Let's skip

[08:21] that one. And yeah, the installation

[08:23] goes on. It will finally ask us to run

[08:26] npm install and npm run build. And yeah,

[08:28] it's [clears throat] good. And now in

[08:29] the browser, if we launch SAS.est

[08:32] powered by my local Laravel herd, we

[08:34] have the homepage. And if we try to

[08:36] register, this is the form powered by

[08:38] LiveWire. But the thing is for now, we

[08:41] don't need to change anything in the

[08:42] code. So we don't really need to use

[08:44] LiveWire actively or know about it. It

[08:47] just works. We create account and we're

[08:49] inside the dashboard. And if we take a

[08:51] look at the code now, here I am in the

[08:53] routes web. And as you can see, it's

[08:56] pretty similar to default Laravel. So

[08:58] route view, route get. And for some

[09:02] settings, it uses livewire components,

[09:05] which act kind of like Laravel

[09:07] controllers in this case. But then

[09:09] basically on top of that, we can create

[09:11] controllers blade views, which would be

[09:13] just reusing the main layout. But the

[09:16] main point is that we can do it without

[09:18] using LiveWire. So let's do exactly

[09:21] that. Make view pages about which

[09:23] creates empty blade and then in the

[09:25] route for example let's add here about

[09:29] and about page and of course the page is

[09:31] pages about. Okay. Now let's go to the

[09:34] dashboard blade page which is X layouts

[09:38] app. Copy from there pages about. Paste

[09:41] here. And then let's change the

[09:43] dashboard to about powered by cursor

[09:45] tab. And in here, I'm not sure which

[09:47] part is responsible for the main thing,

[09:50] but let's just type about page and leave

[09:52] it as is. And finally, we go to sidebar

[09:56] blade, which is powering the menu of

[09:58] LiveWire. And here we have Flux

[10:01] components, but we don't need to care

[10:03] much about them. It's using Flux library

[10:06] free version. And we can just copy paste

[10:09] without really even digging deeper how

[10:11] it works. And if we hit tab, cursor

[10:14] would auto suggest route about. Now if

[10:16] we refresh our page refresh, we have

[10:19] about here with the design and with the

[10:21] page text here inside. And as you can

[10:24] see, I haven't written any code of

[10:27] LiveWire, which means that LiveWire

[10:29] starter kit provides the O functionality

[10:31] with LiveWire and is closest as you can

[10:34] be to plain Laravel Blade and good old

[10:37] Laravel controllers with routing, but

[10:40] also you have the most modern version of

[10:43] Tailwind and also in the settings

[10:45] including pretty recently added two

[10:47] factor authentication. So yeah, this is

[10:50] the logic behind the choice of starter

[10:52] kit for SAS application and in the

[10:55] future videos we will build features on

[10:56] top of this starter kit.