It’s never bean easier to start a website!

When I started my first company, I knew some coding from having learnt C in college.

I had very little understanding of JavaScript or PHP, but I knew the basics of coding. It was easy for me to understand the logic.

But the specific tweaks of the language? That was harsh.

I had never started a local server, deployed it online or trying to connect to an external database.

And so when I needed something done, I would research Google in 100s of different ways, hoping to find an answer to my specific question somewhere in StackOverflow

Sometimes I spent several hours trying to fix 3-4 lines of code – simple because I had no idea how the language worked on its core!

And so when the time came to develop our own app in 2020, we defaulted to use OutSystems, a low-code platform that allows you do deploy everywhere

It was great because you could extend it in several ways

• Reuse components the community built
• Connect to an external database
• Add JavaScript to the front end
• Create your own mobile plugins
• Consume and expose API endpoints

Fast forward 5 years later, and everything is now 100x easier!

I launched a full fledge marketplace website in 2 months. And it’s working!

Here are the tools I used

– Next JS

– Cursor for AI development ($20 / month)

– SupaBase for DB and backend (Generous Free Tier)

– Stripe to process payments (~3% of processed payments)

– Google Cloud Storage for images and files (<$1 / month for small storages)

– Vercel to deploy (Free for personal projects, $20 / developer)

– Twilio for sending SMS (<$0.01 per SMS)

– SendGrid for emails ($20 / months gets you started)

It’s now easier than ever to create your own website. All it takes is relentless execution!

What tools are you using to make your job easier?