A line-by-line breakdown of what fits inside our entry-tier $7,000 SaaS sprint, what doesn't, and how to stretch the budget without compromising on auth or billing.
What you actually get
- Authentication: email + password, password reset, magic link login.
- Multi-tenant data model: users, teams, roles (owner/member). Built right from day 1 — retrofitting tenancy later doubles the cost.
- One core feature, fully built. Not three half-built. We pick the ONE thing that demonstrates value and ship it polished.
- Stripe billing: subscriptions, trial period, customer portal for upgrades/cancels. Webhook-driven so it's resilient.
- Admin dashboard: see users, teams, MRR. Nothing fancy — but you can answer "how many trials converted last week?" without opening the DB.
- Marketing site: 1 landing page, 1 pricing page, 1 thank-you page. Not 8.
- Deployed live on AWS Lightsail Sydney or Hetzner. Custom domain, SSL, daily backups.
What's NOT included
- Mobile apps (add $9k–$14k for iOS+Android).
- Marketing automation (Klaviyo / Customer.io setup).
- Custom integrations beyond Stripe (Slack, Zapier, etc).
- Custom illustrations or animations.
- Analytics beyond Plausible/PostHog default events.
"Brandwings shipped our SaaS MVP in 5.5 weeks for $6,800. We hit 12 paying customers in the first month — and the codebase is clean enough that our internal dev took it over without rewrites."
SaaS founder · Brisbane · 2025
How to stretch the budget
- Cut the second feature. Founders always want "and also". Don't. Ship one thing well.
- Use Tailwind UI / shadcn / Radix. Zero design debt, world-class look, no custom design fees.
- Skip the custom email designer. Resend/Postmark transactional templates are good enough for v1.
- Defer onboarding flows. Personal onboarding calls for first 20 users teach you what to automate later.
The 6-week timeline
- Week 1: kickoff, scope lock, design system, auth scaffold.
- Week 2: data model + multi-tenancy + admin shell.
- Week 3–4: core feature build.
- Week 5: billing, marketing site, polish.
- Week 6: deploy, test, hand over.