Gravity vs ShipFast
Both are boilerplates tools. Here is what separates them.
What Gravity is
Gravity is a prebuilt SaaS starter codebase for Node.js and React, sold as a downloadable source code package rather than a hosted service. It ships in two architectures: a Node.js build with a separate backend and frontend, and a Next.js build that runs as one unified application. Every published plan bundles the Node.js server, a React web client, a React Native mobile client, an Astro website template and Mission Control, the admin dashboard covering user management, feedback, events and logs. The licence terms matter as much as the feature list. Plans are one-time payments: Starter at 199 US dollars, Pro at 299 and Elite at 499. Each permits use in between one and three commercial applications depending on which plan was bought, so the number of products you may ship is fixed at purchase. Updates are included for one year from purchase and delivered through a private GitHub repository that buyers merge into their own project. Renewing that window costs 195 US dollars per year if you renew before it expires and 250 US dollars per year afterwards. Refunds are not issued under any circumstances, and filing a chargeback terminates the licence and permanently disables the account. Only the developers covered by the licence may use the code for development work, and reselling, renting, leasing, sublicensing or redistributing the source is forbidden. You may deploy Gravity inside applications owned and operated by your own clients, which makes it usable for agency work, but you may not build a product with the same or substantially the same primary function as Gravity itself. Billing is implemented on Stripe and covers subscriptions, free accounts, seat billing and usage billing, with 3D Secure handled for European cards. Free trials are set through a trial period value on the Stripe plan and apply only at first signup, not on plan upgrades. Authorisation ships with five permission levels (master, owner, admin, user and developer), and only the owner role can edit billing details, close the account or create and delete API keys. The REST API accepts both JWT bearer tokens and API keys sent as Basic authentication, and keys only work on endpoints that declare a scope such as account read or user read. One decision worth weighing: API keys are stored in the database in plain text so that a user can retrieve a lost key. Database access goes through Knex, with MySQL, Postgres and MongoDB named in the stack. The web client uses React, Vite, Tailwind, Shadcn and Radix UI, and social sign on uses Passport.js in the Node.js build and Arctic in the Next.js build. Transactional email goes through Nodemailer with Mailgun as the default transport, and the deployment guide names Heroku and Digital Ocean. A Custom plan adds between one and five bespoke features, deployment assistance and transfer of IP ownership, but carries no published price.
What ShipFast is
ShipFast is a Next.js boilerplate: a paid starter codebase, supplied as a GitHub repository, with the parts most web products need already written and connected to each other. What comes in the box is authentication, payments and the wiring between them. Google OAuth is supported for sign-in, Stripe is integrated for taking payments, and MongoDB is the database it is built against. A static page feature covers the marketing and legal pages that sit outside the application itself. Project settings live in one file, config.js, so the values specific to your product are changed in a single place rather than tracked down across the codebase. It requires Node 18.17 or greater. ShipFast's own claim is that setup takes under five minutes and that you can ship in five. Read that as the time to get the template running with your own keys and configuration, not the time to have a finished product. The value on offer is narrow and easy to judge. Sign-in, a working payment flow and the code joining them together are what most projects rebuild at the start, usually under time pressure and often badly. Buying them pre-assembled trades a one-off fee against the days that assembly takes. The cost is accepting decisions someone else has made: Next.js as the framework, MongoDB as the database, config.js as the place configuration goes. Some consequences follow from the way it is sold. Access is paid, and directory listings record it as neither open source nor self-hostable in the usual sense, which is consistent with a private repository you buy into rather than a service someone runs for you. Because it arrives as code, hosting, domains and the running costs of whatever you build on top are yours to arrange. Directories also describe it as aimed at startups and at people who intend to charge for what they build, which fits Stripe being included from the start.
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