Bullet Train - The Ruby on Rails SaaS-in-a-Box

Hey all, it’s a real pleasure to have Bullet Train featured here. If you have any questions, please ask! I’d love to talk about the product and our future vision in more detail. Bullet Train was born when a friend of mine asked me to help him build a SaaS product. I had become so tired of gluing together the same components over and over that I myself had basically accumulated a large pile of product ideas that I never got around to launching, so I told him I didn't want to build his SaaS product, I wanted to build his product, and I wanted to bring the SaaS. He agreed, and Bullet Train became a thing. Personally, my favorite feature in Bullet Train is Super Scaffolding. It's really made it fun to spin up new projects again. I posted a demo video of the feature in action on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewculver... . If you want to keep tabs on the development on Bullet Train, by far the best way to do that is to follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewculver as that’s the first place I post anything, or, alternatively, you can sign up for the mailing list on our site. If you're thinking about buying Bullet Train, the best thing to do is schedule a call with me at https://calendly.com/bullettrain... and I can help you figure out whether it's a good fit for your project. Worst case scenario, I get to meet someone new! Looking forward to chatting with you all when I wake up today!

It's always a bad sign for me when I want to build a company just so I can use a product. 😅 I've wanted something like this to exist for so long! Thanks for building it.

It's funny when building products.

About 80% of your effort is building your billing engine, team management, permissions, UI elements, etc.

Rarely the core application.

As a result, it's easy to get burned out early and just not launch.

Thanks to BT I don't have that problem anymore.

Out of the box it has everything you need to run a successful SAAS app so I can focus on the main, core feature set of my products.

Additionally, after you buy BT you get access to an exclusive Slack group where you can just DM Andrew any question you have. Phenomenal.

Will be using it for all projects going forward.

Kudos, Andrew.

Pros:

Andrew's wisdom, unique take on development and love of Rails equates to a starter kit that enabled me to code at a 10x faster rate.

Cons:

You're constrained to the UI template that comes out of the box, but because it's using Bootstrap 4 it's very easy to work with.

Good concept. This could speed up lot of companies who are planning to launch new products. Quick thoughts on its B2B acquisition strategy:- - You could track companies that are launching new products as it would be the right time to pitch your product. - You could track companies that are hiring for "ruby on rails" and have 1-10 or 10-50 employee size as they are the ones who are more likely to buy your complementary product. - Partner with startup incubators since most of the companies there are in IDEA Stage and you need these companies to use your product to fast track their idea to a SAAS product. Can share more thoughts while we speak further. Cheers.

I ran into Bullet Train on @jessethanley's project and it was a delight to interact with. I'm hoping to use this in my own project, just because it does so much for you. It's great!

Fantastic framework, kudos @andrewculver — you're one of the most qualified people in the world to make it happen! 👏

Andrew let me begin by mentioning that this is certainly one of the best SaaS boilerplates for RoR. Do you mind sharing which admin UI is template you are using?

I'm using BT for an upcoming SAAS project and it's been a huge boost for the project. The same sense of "oh wow, I could do so much with this" that I got from using Rails to build that little blog demo they used to have on their homepage I got from using BT for the first time.

In general, it's a moving "up" in terms of abstraction. So instead of working with a single form field helper in rails, or even the form field with a little surrounding elements (like simple form). You start working with the entirety of the UX for an individual form field: label, error text, tooltip, placeholder, explainer text, etc and it's very easy to extend. For example, I built a 'markdown' instructions button that is inserted below the label on any form element it's designated on.

If you're:

- Already a competent Rails Developer

- Building a SAAS

It's pretty much a no brainer in terms of out of the box value.

Pros:

Rails can be used to make all sorts of web projects. BulletTrain is laser focused on the tooling for a SAAS, making it much more productive.

Cons:

It's still a small community using it and you need to be comfortable as a Rails developer to get going and it's for new projects.

Hi Andrew, Building UIs in React is essential for the type of products I build and for how I do the best frontend work. Is BulletTrain an option for me? Along with that, I need a GraphQL API. I’m assuming I could add these API endpoints to BulletTrain just like if I was starting from scratch?

I've used Bullet Train before it was publicly available and even then, it was amazing. Andrew was super helpful and is moving fast enough to add a lot of value to Bullet Train.

It's the SaaS base you always needed. No need to think about all the fluffs like user accounts, teams and billing. it's all in there. And much more.

This is a no-brainer for any new app, and even to migrate to for many apps.

Pros:

Will speed up your SaaS development, by a LOT. Andrew is super helpful.

Cons:

None? It was early when I used it and was already solid and super helpful.

I only wish i would have found out about this earlier. Currently porting my SAAS to BT after building 1.0 by hand. BT just does so much stuff out of the box that will take you weeks/months to sort out otherwise - Stripe subscriptions, users, teams, password reset, great scaffolding, etc etc etc.

Cannot recommend this highly enough to anyone building a SaaS business.

I've said before and will say again: coding with BulletTrain is like painting.

Pros:

It's a SAAS in a box. You can deploy an MVP SaaS in a day.

Cons:

None?

For anyone looking to get a SaaS product off the ground and validated, this is what you need. At this point you also get a lot of close support from Andrew too, which is pretty great.

Pros:

It's like a rocket up your arse for building a SaaS product.

Cons:

It works best if you stick to the included template. But if you just treat that template like a really nice ActiveAdmin, then you're golden.

Wow! I normally recommend Code Canyon for people to save time. This is much better. Dope🚬

Is it possible to share the Gemfile here/on the marketing site? I have a pathological hatred for some common gems (which I guess might disqualify me as a potential Bullet Train customer! Ha!). Can you easily turn the features on/off to reduce the app bloat? I'm thinking of the Alexa/SMS conversation support you'd mentioned on twitter for example.

Hey Andrew! First of all congrats, the website looks really nice. I took the live demo but haven't really been able to understand what was going on. It asks me to add "Things", but it's not clear what those are. What's your target market for this?

Hello @andrewculver one question - do you get all of the source code $950? Thank you, Alex

Hi @andrewculver, does bullet train has built in support for multi-tenant apps?

Starting my project out using Bullet Train has not only saved time, but helped keep us focused on doing things in a "Rails Way" and keep the structure clean. Very happy with the decision to use it.

Pros:

Solid template with great support and an active developer

Cons:

Nothing yet :)