The comparison
| Decision factor | Shipfast | Archiet |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Clone repo, configure env vars, deploy to Vercel. Auth + billing running in hours. | Generate from your PRD. Download ZIP with full domain model already built. |
| What's included | Auth (Magic Link, Google, GitHub), Stripe billing, email (Resend/Mailgun), SEO defaults, dark mode, Crisp chat. | Full backend in your chosen stack + frontend + your entities + your routes + your tests + compliance docs + ADRs. |
| Domain model | Not generated. You write every model, every API route, every database table yourself. | Extracted from your requirements. Every entity is a generated model + migration + routes + service + tests. |
| Stack | Next.js App Router + MongoDB or Prisma. Vercel-optimised. | Flask, FastAPI, Django, NestJS, Laravel, Rails, .NET Core, Go Chi, Java Spring Boot — your choice. |
| Auth security model | Next.js Server Actions + cookies — good defaults. | JWT in httpOnly cookies + multi-tenant workspace scoping on every query. localStorage token storage is a CRITICAL quality flag. |
| Multi-tenancy | Not included. You implement workspace/org isolation. | Built-in: row-level tenant filter, organisation-scoped queries, audit trail. |
| Compliance documents | Not generated. | HIPAA, DORA, GDPR, PCI, SOC 2, SOX — populated from entity model when overlays flagged. |
| Architecture documentation | Not generated. | MADR v4 ADRs, traceability matrix, security posture doc. |
| Quality scoring | Not measured. | 4-dimension quality score — publish-eligible threshold at 80/100. CRITICAL issues block delivery. |
| Best fit | Solo founder validating a B2C or simple B2B SaaS. Needs to ship fast and billing is the hard part. | Enterprise B2B, multi-tenant products, compliance-heavy markets, teams handing off to engineers. |
Where Shipfast wins: time-to-market for the common SaaS primitives. If your first three months are about validating the landing page and onboarding funnel, Shipfast solves the infrastructure layer so you can focus on the unique parts. The quality of the included components and the deployment experience are excellent.
Where the fit breaks: the moment you start writing your actual product. Shipfast does not know what your product does. For a B2B SaaS with a real data model, five+ entities, multi-tenant isolation, and an eventual audit requirement — the domain model work is the same whether you start from Shipfast or a blank file.
A pattern we see: founders use Shipfast for the early MVP (landing page, waitlist, early access flow), then use Archiet to generate the production backend once product-market fit is confirmed and the domain model is known.
What Archiet generates that Shipfast doesn't
Every Archiet generation ships:
- The complete backend in your chosen stack — your actual domain model, not example pages
- Database schema + migrations for every entity in your requirements
- Multi-tenant data isolation baked in from the first query
docs/decisions/— one ADR per material decisiondocs/traceability/— story-to-code mappingdocs/compliance/— HIPAA/DORA/GDPR/SOC 2 docs when applicable- Quality score — publish-eligible threshold is 80/100
- Synthetic Boot Test — the generated codebase must actually start
CTA
Try Archiet — free plan, no credit card. archiet.com.
If you're validating early-stage B2C SaaS and billing is the hardest part, Shipfast is worth the investment. If you're building B2B with a real data model and enterprise requirements, that's what Archiet is for.