PHP + SQLite SaaS Starter vs a Laravel Boilerplate
Both ship auth, Stripe and an admin area. They differ most on hosting cost, dependencies and how fast you can deploy. Here is the honest breakdown.
If you want SaaS scaffolding in PHP, a Laravel starter (Spark, Wave, Filament) is the default mental anchor — and the biggest objection is usually "why not Laravel?". Laravel is excellent, but a full starter brings Composer dependencies, migrations, a queue worker, often Redis, and a frontend build step, and it wants a VPS with more than 1 GB of RAM to run comfortably. Simple Stack takes the opposite bet: plain PHP, SQLite, jQuery, no build step, and a codebase small enough to read in an afternoon.
Simple Stack vs a Laravel starter
| Simple Stack | Laravel starter | |
|---|---|---|
| Build step (npm / Vite) | × | |
| Runtime dependencies | PHP + SQLite | Composer + DB server |
| Comfortable on a $5 / 1GB VPS | ~ | |
| Database server to run | × | |
| Stripe billing built in | ||
| Apple / Google / email login | ~ | |
| Whole app fits in an AI agent context | × | |
| Pricing | £49 once | Framework + paid license |
When each one wins
You have a PHP team that already knows Eloquent, you need its mature ecosystem (queues, Horizon, Nova), or you are building something large with many engineers.
You are solo or indie, want to run on a cheap VPS, value readable code with no toolchain, and want your AI coding agent to edit the whole app from the included docs.
Common questions
For a single-box app with WAL mode, yes — it handles real paying traffic without a separate database server. See Ship a SaaS on a $5 VPS for the detail.
Click through every screen before you buy.
Seven live demos, no signup, nothing saved. Then it is yours for £49.