A multi-tenant shell you won't have to rewrite in six months.
Auth, billing, RBAC, workspaces, Stripe subscriptions. Production-grade architecture, 4 weeks to first paying customer, monthly subscription delivery.
Who this is for
Technical founder with a validated B2B idea who needs multi-tenancy, subscription billing, auth, and RBAC right the first time — because a mid-GTM rewrite kills momentum.
The pain today
- Open-source SaaS boilerplates that need 3 weeks of cleanup before a real feature ships
- Fear of schema-per-tenant vs row-level tenancy decision made under pressure
- Stripe subscription plumbing that breaks on upgrade/downgrade edge cases
- SSO asked for by first enterprise prospect six months in
- Worry that the MVP architecture won't survive the first 10 real customers
The outcome you get
- Multi-tenant shell in 4 weeks: auth, workspaces, billing, RBAC, Stripe
- Schema choice (per-tenant vs row-level) made with data, not guesswork
- Stripe subscriptions with proration, mid-cycle changes, dunning, tax
- SSO-ready architecture so enterprise doesn't force a rebuild later
- Ready for first paying customer day one of week five
Schema-per-tenant vs row-level tenancy
Two architectures with different trade-offs. Row-level tenancy (tenant_id column on every row): simpler, works for 99% of B2B SaaS, scales to tens of thousands of tenants, migrations hit everyone at once which is usually what you want. Schema-per-tenant (one Postgres schema per tenant): stronger data isolation, better for compliance-sensitive industries (healthcare, finance), migrations per tenant which is powerful and scary, harder to operate past 1,000 tenants. Most B2B SaaS should use row-level tenancy and add application-level isolation (middleware filters every query by tenant). Schema-per-tenant becomes right when you have big-dollar enterprise customers demanding data residency proofs or HIPAA BAA requirements.
Stripe subscriptions and seat-based billing
B2B SaaS pricing is almost always per-seat or tiered. Stripe's Products and Prices handle the data model. The plumbing that breaks on DIY boilerplates: prorating seat count mid-cycle (customer adds 5 seats on day 12 of a 30-day cycle — Stripe handles it if you call the API right), upgrading plan with instant credit and new charge, downgrading at period end, dunning on failed payments (3 retries, then suspend the workspace vs cancel vs email a specific contact). I wire all of these into the standard shell so your billing logic isn't another 4 weeks of work when first customer churns over a $20 proration bug. Tax via Stripe Tax — compliance in every US state plus EU VAT.
SSO and workspace switching patterns
Day one auth: email/password + magic link + optional 2FA. That carries you to first 10–50 customers. When the first enterprise prospect asks for SAML SSO (they will, around customer 10–20), the architecture needs to accept it without a rewrite. I build with Clerk, Auth0, or WorkOS from day one, all of which treat SAML and SCIM as upgrade paths from the standard auth. Workspace switching (same user, multiple tenants) is handled by the auth layer too — critical for B2B because champions will have 2–3 workspaces (their own company plus clients or testing). Getting this right early saves a significant headache later.
Case study: GigEasy multi-employer platform
GigEasy's MVP was itself multi-tenant — multiple employer clients managing their worker pools through the same platform, with data isolation between employers and unified platform operations. Laravel + React + PostgreSQL + Redis + AWS, shipped in 3 weeks vs the 10-week industry norm. The tenant model (employer as tenant, worker as user belonging to one or more employers) held through investor demo and ongoing buildout. The same architectural choices — row-level tenancy with application-layer filtering, Stripe subscriptions per tenant, RBAC scoped to tenant + role — apply to most B2B SaaS MVPs. The shell is boring; the product you build on top of it is the differentiator.
Monthly retainer pricing
Multi-tenant SaaS builds fit the Applications Standard tier at $3,499/mo, or Pro at $4,500/mo for faster velocity or more complex enterprise features. First-version timeline: 4 weeks from kickoff to shell ready for first paying customer. After that, the subscription continues as you build product on top — typical clients stay 6–12 months through initial product-market-fit iteration. 14-day money-back, cancel anytime after. Work Made for Hire — all code, infrastructure, and docs yours at any cancellation point. No GPL-style viral licensing, no usage-based lock-in.
What's NOT in the boilerplate
I'll explicitly say what I don't build into the shell. Marketing pages (that's a separate Websites engagement). Deep product features (that's your domain). Analytics beyond basic product events (bring your own Mixpanel, Amplitude, or PostHog). Email sending beyond transactional (connect SendGrid, Postmark, or Resend). Complex workflow engines (Temporal, Inngest — add when needed, not day one). Native mobile (React Native or Swift is a separate build). The shell does the tedious, right-first-time infrastructure work: auth, tenancy, billing, RBAC. Your team does the product. Keeping this line clear is how the shell actually ships in 4 weeks.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Built and shipped an investor-ready MVP from scratch
Built the entire technological base and delivered MVP in just 3 weeks, enabling a successful rapid launch and investor demo.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can I own the code and leave anytime?
- Yes — Work Made for Hire from day one. All code, infrastructure-as-code, credentials, and docs transfer at any cancellation. No GPL-style licenses, no vendor lock-in patterns. Another engineer can pick up the project without me.
- How do I decide row-level vs schema-per-tenant?
- We decide together in week 1 based on data sensitivity, compliance targets (HIPAA, SOC 2), and tenant count expectations. 90% of B2B SaaS lands on row-level tenancy with strong application isolation. Schema-per-tenant is for narrow compliance-heavy verticals, and the decision is reversible if we start wrong.
- What about GDPR and data deletion?
- Built-in. Every personal data field is tagged in the schema, and a per-user / per-tenant data export plus deletion pipeline is part of the standard shell. GDPR DSAR and right-to-be-forgotten requests execute in minutes, not days. Audit log retention honors policy settings.
- Can we self-host instead of using Vercel or AWS?
- Yes — the stack is standard Docker/Kubernetes compatible, deploys on Vercel, AWS, GCP, or your own Kubernetes cluster. I recommend Vercel or AWS for velocity but I've shipped to enterprise on-prem Kubernetes for compliance-mandated clients.
- Do you build the marketing site too?
- Marketing sites are a separate Websites engagement (fixed-price). Keeping them decoupled means faster iteration on both. The marketing site ships on Vercel; the SaaS app ships wherever your architecture needs. Both share design tokens so visual consistency stays.
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