Ship the Pieter Levels stack without starting from scratch
PHP without a framework, jQuery, SQLite, nginx, one VPS and Stripe — the famously boring stack behind some very unboring indie businesses, with the first month of plumbing already done.
@levelsio has spent a decade showing that a solo founder on plain PHP, jQuery, SQLite and a single VPS can outship teams on modern stacks — no framework, no build step, deploys in seconds. Simple Stack is inspired by that way of working (it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Pieter Levels): the same pieces, but with the parts everyone rebuilds by hand — auth, Stripe billing, a member app, an admin app, even native iOS and Android apps — already written and documented.
The stack, piece by piece
Plain functions, PDO and templates. What you read is what runs — nothing generated, nothing hidden by convention.
One JS file, no bundler, no components. Genuinely enough for the interactivity a typical SaaS needs.
WAL mode in production, nginx + PHP-FPM in front, about £4 a month. The database is a file you back up with cron.
- Auth, doneApple, Google and magic-link sign-in, with provider tokens verified server-side — the part that takes a week alone.
- Stripe, doneCheckout, subscriptions, upgrades, webhooks and a billing portal, wired and idempotent.
- Admin, doneA separate admin app to see users, revenue and data — the back office you would otherwise defer forever.
- Native apps, doneSwiftUI and Compose apps wired to the same backend — further than the stack’s originator usually takes it.
The point of this stack was never nostalgia — it is speed and cost. No pipeline between you and production, and a fixed hosting bill that ignores your traffic. The no-build-step stack page makes the argument in full, and Ship a SaaS on a $5 VPS covers the single-box economics.
The boring stack, minus the boring month.
Seven live demos, no signup, nothing saved — then it is yours for £49.