My current product stack.

What is a PLG stack?
My current product stack

🤔 What is a PLG Stack?

Before diving into my current product stack, let's briefly explore what a PLG (Product-Led Growth) stack is and why it's crucial in today's business landscape.

Understanding Product-Led Growth (PLG): Product-Led Growth is a growth strategy that focuses on using your product as the primary vehicle to acquire, activate, and retain customers.

It's a customer-centric approach that aims to drive growth by delivering exceptional value through your product, thereby turning users into loyal advocates.

In a PLG strategy, your product becomes the centerpiece of your marketing and growth efforts. Instead of relying heavily on traditional sales and marketing techniques, you leverage your product's usability, accessibility, and appeal to attract, engage, and retain users.

The Role of a PLG Stack: A PLG stack comprises a collection of tools, software, and resources that empower product teams to implement and optimize a Product-Led Growth strategy.

It's essentially the toolbox that helps teams build, scale, and refine their product-led initiatives. This stack typically includes a variety of categories, such as product analytics, user onboarding, communication tools, design software, and more.

🚀 My Current Product Stack

Building and marketing a product doesn't have to break the bank. Here's my super cost-effective product stack that I use with my small team of friends to build our product.

📊 Analytics (free)

Google Analytics offers a powerful, free web analytics service for tracking and reporting website traffic. It enables you to generate comprehensive reports on user acquisition, behavior, and various metrics.
Vercel Analytics provides real-time insights into Vercel deployments. Beyond general information like unique visitors, it offers in-depth metrics, including web vitals and device data.
Microsoft Clarity is a free analytics tool that visualizes user interactions with your product through session replays, heatmaps, and more, helping you understand user behavior in detail.
Mixpanel is a free analytics tool designed for tracking user behavior and product usage. It offers features like funnel analysis, user segmentation, and more for deep insights.
BigQuery is a serverless, scalable, and cost-effective cloud data warehouse that facilitates data analysis and visualization. It seamlessly integrates with Google Analytics and Firebase.
Axiom is a versatile, free software logging platform that simplifies data collection, analysis, and visualization. It includes real-time dashboards, alerts, and other valuable features.
Growthbook is a free platform for feature flagging and experimentation. It empowers you to create A/B tests and iterate on new product features effectively.
Google Search Console is a free web service by Google that aids in monitoring and optimizing your site's presence in Google Search results. Features include search analytics and crawl error diagnostics.
Sentry is a free error monitoring platform that assists in tracking and resolving bugs in your product. It provides real-time alerts, issue tracking, and other essential tools for maintaining product quality.
Canny is a feedback and feature request management platform that enables companies to collect and prioritize customer feedback and ideas. It offers a streamlined way to engage with users, allowing them to submit and upvote suggestions.

💻 Building (free)

Next.js 13 is a popular open-source React framework for building web applications. It offers server-side rendering, automatic code splitting, and other advanced features to simplify the development of fast, efficient, and SEO-friendly websites and web applications.
GitHub is a web-based platform focused on code collaboration and code management. It serves as a centralized hub for developers and teams to collaboratively work on code projects, offering essential tools for version control, code sharing, tracking changes, and streamlining the entire software development process.
Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that streamlines web development by providing a set of pre-designed, highly configurable CSS classes. With Tailwind CSS, developers can efficiently create stylish and responsive user interfaces without writing custom CSS from scratch.
Shadcn/ui is a collection of re-useable React components built using Tailwind CSS and Radix UI. Shadcn/ui is designed to simplify the process of building user interfaces with Tailwind CSS by providing a set of pre-designed components that can be easily customized and integrated into your project. It includes essential components like buttons, forms, modals, and more, as well as advanced features like theming and dark mode support.
Firebase / Firestore / Storage - For our project startup, Firebase, including Firestore, serves as the primary user storage and management system.

💡
Currently, we are prioritizing development experience and iteration over scaling. Thus, the Firebase ecosystem is an ideal solution for our specific needs!

Firebase offers a comprehensive suite of cloud-based tools and services that simplify app development, including authentication, real-time database capabilities, cloud functions, and hosting.

Firestore, seamlessly integrated with Firebase, is an ideal database solution for our project startup. It allows us to rapidly prototype and develop without the complexities of managing infrastructure.

Firestore's NoSQL database offers real-time data synchronization, which aligns perfectly with our project's requirements for instant updates and seamless collaboration.
CockroachDB serves as the secondary storage and management system for our project startup. It's specifically designed to handle heavier user assets and features that experience high usage requests, making it a crucial component of our infrastructure.

What sets CockroachDB apart is its accommodating free tier, which includes 10 GiB of storage and up to 50 million requests per month. This is a highly attractive offering compared to other commercial providers like AWS.

CockroachDB's scalability and cost-effective free tier align perfectly with our project's requirements, ensuring that we can efficiently manage our data and resources while keeping costs in check.
Cloudflare is a prominent cloud services and cybersecurity company that specializes in providing a wide range of solutions for optimizing and securing websites and web applications. Cloudflare's services include content delivery (CDN), DDoS protection, web application firewall (WAF), load balancing, and DNS management. By leveraging their global network of servers, Cloudflare helps improve website performance, enhance security, and ensure high availability.
Imagekit is a versatile image optimization and delivery platform designed to enhance the performance and user experience of websites and applications. It simplifies image management by providing features such as real-time image resizing, automatic format optimization, and content delivery network (CDN) integration.
Other external services & APIs with generous free tiers.

💳 Payment Management (free-ish)

Stripe is a popular payment processing platform that enables businesses to accept online payments. It offers a wide range of payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, and digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. Stripe's developer-friendly API and robust documentation make it easy to integrate with your product and start accepting payments quickly.

Additionally, Stripe seamlessly integrates with Firebase and Firestore through the Stripe Firestore extensions. This integration simplifies the process of managing and tracking payments within your Firebase-powered application, providing a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to handle transactions and financial data securely.

🎨 Design & Ideation (free)

Figma is a cloud-based design and prototyping tool that empowers designers and teams to collaborate in real-time on user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design projects. Figma offers a web-based platform where multiple users can work simultaneously on design files, making it a highly efficient tool for remote collaboration.
Whimsical is a versatile online platform that simplifies visual collaboration and diagramming. It provides a suite of tools and templates for creating diagrams, flowcharts, wireframes, and other visual content, making it easy for teams to communicate and brainstorm ideas visually. Whimsical supports real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work together on the same canvas, making it a valuable tool for remote teams and project planning. Whether you're designing user interfaces, planning workflows, or brainstorming ideas, Whimsical offers a user-friendly interface to bring your visual concepts to life.

🗣️ Team Coms (free)

Github Projects is a built-in project management tool within the GitHub platform, specifically designed for software development teams. It allows developers and project managers to plan, organize, and track the progress of software projects directly within the GitHub ecosystem. With GitHub Projects, you can create project boards, add issues and pull requests, define milestones, and automate workflows, making it easier to collaborate, prioritize tasks, and manage the development lifecycle. This integrated approach helps teams streamline their development process and keep everything related to a project in one central location.
ClickUp is a versatile project management and productivity platform designed to help teams and individuals organize their work effectively. It offers a wide range of features, including task management, document sharing, goal tracking, and communication tools, all within a unified workspace. ClickUp is highly customizable, allowing users to tailor it to their specific workflow and needs, whether they're working on software development, marketing campaigns, or any other type of project.
Slack is a widely-used messaging and collaboration platform that facilitates real-time communication and teamwork within organizations. It offers a user-friendly interface for team members to exchange messages, share files, and integrate with various apps and services. Slack's channels and direct messaging features make it easy to organize discussions, and it supports the seamless flow of information across teams, improving communication and productivity.
Google Meets / Google Calendar - Together, Google Meet and Google Calendar provide a comprehensive solution for scheduling and conducting virtual meetings, helping individuals and teams stay organized and connected.

🆘 Customer Coms (free)

Attlassian Jira Service Desk is a versatile help desk and ticketing system that enables businesses to provide customer support and manage service requests efficiently. It offers a user-friendly interface for customers to submit tickets and track their status, while also providing a robust set of tools for agents to manage and resolve issues effectively.

📣 Awareness / Marketing (Organic)

TikTok is a widely popular social media platform known for short-form video content. It allows users to create, share, and discover videos typically ranging from 15 seconds to one minute in length. TikTok has gained immense popularity for its user-friendly video editing tools, music library, and algorithm-driven content discovery system. Users can easily record and edit videos, add music, effects, and engage in various challenges and trends.
IG Reels is a feature within the Instagram platform that allows users to create, share, and discover short-form video content. It's designed for creative expression and engagement with the Instagram community.
YouTube is the world's largest and most popular video-sharing platform. It allows users to upload, view, and share videos across a wide range of topics and genres. YouTube's vast content library includes everything from educational tutorials and entertainment to music videos, vlogs, and documentaries.
Optimized SEO - We have out of the box SEO optimization with Next.js 13, and we have been leveraging this to the fullest extent.

💲 Paid Resources

$10/mo - GitHub Copilot used for automating boilerplate code and speeding up development.
$20/mo - Vercel Pro is used for hosting and shipping our product. Since Vercel is the creator of Next.js, we benefit from a highly fluid CI/CD process, as well as the best performance and support for our product.
External APIs with very generous paid tiers.