Dough vs the field · for vibe-coders who ship more than one thing
Bake anything. Get locked into nothing. Update it forever.
Other kits marry you to one payment provider, one frontend, and a fork you maintain alone forever. Dough is built the other way around: one base you shape into every product, swap providers without rewriting code, sell anything — and pull every future update into all of them with a single command, instead of merging a fork by hand.
the real numbers
Optionality, counted.
Every figure below is what the underlying open-source layer actually ships — not a rounded-up marketing total.
Payment processors
Through a payment orchestration (Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, Worldpay, Checkout.com, Cybersource & more). 200+ connectors total once you count payouts, fraud and vault, across 150+ payment methods.
Social login providers
Google, GitHub, Apple, Microsoft and dozens more — plus any OpenID Connect provider and SAML 2.0 for B2B SSO. Magic-link / login-by-code is built in.
Email senders
Transactional email wired for 15+ ESP or SMTP options, so a bad sending reputation or a price hike is a config change, not a migration.
the honest side-by-side
Dough next to the names people shortlist.
SaaS Pegasus is the Django competitor; ShipFast and Makerkit are the JavaScript leaders. We kept the weak rows in on purpose — a comparison you can trust on the hard rows is worth more than one that wins every cell.
| Dough Django · sell-anything | SaaS Pegasus Django | ShipFast Next.js | Makerkit Next.js / Remix | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payment providers | 100+ | Stripe | Stripe + Lemon Squeezy | Stripe / LS / Paddle |
| Switch provider without rewriting checkout code | ✓ Built in | — re-integrate | — re-integrate | — re-integrate |
| Sell anything subs, lifetime, one-off, options, complex pricing | ✓ All of it | Subs + one-off | Mostly subs | Subs + one-off |
| Social login providers | 50+ + OIDC + SAML | 50+ | ~10 (NextAuth) | ~10+ (Supabase) |
| Magic / passwordless login | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (magic link) | ✓ |
| Transactional email | 15+ ESP / SMTP | Configurable | Resend / Mailgun | Resend / others |
| Frontend choice | Svelte / Vue / React / HTML | HTMX / React | Next.js only | Next.js / Remix |
| Teams & permissions | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ (B2B focus) |
| SEO + AI / GEO blog | ✓ built for AI indexing | Blog | Blog | Blog / CMS |
| GDPR cookie consent | ✓ | DIY | DIY | DIY |
| Upgrade model how you get new versions | ✓ dough update |
Re-generate, re-merge | Fork — merge by hand | git pull upstream + resolve |
| Maturity | New — small & growing | Mature (since 2020) | Large community | Established |
| Price public, approximate | $299 | ~$249+ | ~$199+ | ~$299+ |
the part nobody warns you about
The fork tax — and how Dough skips it.
Buy a forked boilerplate and the day you clone it is the day it starts drifting from upstream. Six months in, every security patch and feature is a merge conflict you own — times every product you've shipped. Dough is built to be updated, not forked: one command patches all of them at once, so shipping the next thing never means re-inheriting the maintenance of the last one.
With Dough — one command
With a fork — by hand
straight talk
Pick Dough when it fits — and when it doesn't.
We'd rather you choose well than choose us. Here's the honest split.
Dough is the right call if…
- You ship more than one thing and never want to rebuild auth, payments and email from scratch again.
- You vibe-code with Claude Code, Cursor or whatever AI tool you like, and want one base you can reshape per product.
- You want to stop maintaining a fork and just run an upgrade — across all your products at once.
- You genuinely fear deplatforming and want payment provider independence baked in.
- You sell more than a monthly plan — lifetime licences, objects, options, tiered or complex pricing.
Look elsewhere if…
- You want the single fastest solo B2C launch and a huge template community — ShipFast is hard to beat.
- You need a battle-tested, years-mature codebase today — SaaS Pegasus has the head start.
- You're all-in on the JavaScript / Vercel world and don't want a Python backend.
- You only ever sell one simple monthly subscription and don't value the optionality.
Start with Dough
Ship it your way. Switch when you need to. Upgrade in one command.
Anti-lock and evergreen by design — for vibe-coders who ship more than one thing, and for the dev shops and agencies who ship them for clients. Never bet a business on one provider's goodwill; never rebuild the same base twice.