Caisson vs ShipFast
ShipFast is the speed-to-launch default. Caisson is the compliance and tenant-isolation substrate a kit leaves to you. Here is the honest line between them.
Which should you use?
Pick ShipFast to launch a Next.js SaaS in days: it wires Stripe, auth, emails, and a landing page fast, for the lowest price in this list. Pick Caisson when that app has to pass a SOC 2 or HIPAA audit: it ships fail-closed Postgres RLS with isolation tests, a WORM + hash-chained audit trail, and evidence packs ShipFast doesn't carry. They solve different halves; many teams launch on a kit, then adopt Caisson for the regulated backend.
What ShipFast is
Next.js SaaS boilerplate. Facts below were read from shipfa.st on 2026-07-07.
- Next.js boilerplate (JavaScript or TypeScript, App or Pages router).
- Auth via Google OAuth + magic links; Stripe or Lemon Squeezy payments; Mailgun or Resend emails; MongoDB or Supabase.
- SEO + blog, UI components and animations, and a Discord community with a revenue leaderboard.
- One-time price, pay once for unlimited projects, lifetime updates.
An honest comparison
Where ShipFast has a capability, it is marked. Caisson is the compliance and tenant-isolation substrate; ShipFast wins the rows it wins.
| Detail | Caisson | ShipFast |
|---|---|---|
| Stack | Next.js + Postgres | Next.js + MongoDB / Supabase |
| Auth (OAuth, magic link) | ||
| Payments / billing | ||
| Marketing landing-page templates | — | |
| Fail-closed Postgres RLS + automated cross-tenant isolation tests | — | |
| WORM evidence store + append-only hash-chained audit trail | — | |
| SOC 2 / HIPAA / EU AI Act evidence packs + OSCAL export | — | |
| Per-tenant field encryption (envelope, per-tenant key) | — | |
| One-time perpetual license, own the source |
What ShipFast is genuinely better at
A comparison that only flatters one side isn't worth reading. Here is what this kit does well.
ShipFast's whole design is time-to-first-dollar: payments, auth, and emails are wired so a solo founder can ship in a day. If launch speed is the constraint, that is exactly what it is built for.
At a one-time $199 it is the cheapest kit here, backed by a big maker community and a Stripe-verified revenue leaderboard. For validating an idea cheaply, that is hard to beat.
Where Caisson draws the line
The compliance and tenant-isolation substrate a launch kit leaves to you.
ShipFast gets you selling; it does not ship fail-closed RLS with isolation tests, a tamper-evident audit trail, or evidence packs. When a customer's security review asks for those, you build them yourself, or start from a substrate that already has them.
Caisson is also a one-time perpetual license on an Apache-2.0 base. The difference is what the source contains: the compliance and multi-tenant-isolation packages, not just the launch plumbing.
Which should you pick?
You want the fastest, cheapest path to a launched Next.js SaaS and are not (yet) facing a compliance audit.
Your SaaS handles regulated data and has to show fail-closed tenant isolation, an immutable audit trail, and SOC 2 / HIPAA evidence.
Launch and validate on ShipFast, then adopt Caisson's compliance packages onto your Postgres app when the first enterprise security review lands.
One-time, own the source.
Caisson is a one-time perpetual license — the price never recurs, and it includes 12 months of updates from your purchase date, renewable per entitlement afterward at 40% of list per year. The Base substrate is Apache-2.0; the compliance modules are commercial.
Compliance bundle
$1,649, one-time. Fail-closed RLS, WORM, the audit chain, evidence packs, and the framework and signing carves — the whole substrate this comparison is about.
À la carte
Take a single module from $49 — audit-worm, field-crypto, or compliance-core on their own, onto your existing Postgres app.
Everything bundle
$2,259 covers every bundle and every à-la-carte module, plus the open base, in one purchase.
Common questions.
Is Caisson a ShipFast alternative?
Does ShipFast include SOC 2 or HIPAA controls?
How much does each cost?
Ship the compliant backend.
Explore the Compliance bundle, browse every module in the marketplace, or read another comparison.