Today, I'll compare SaaS Pegasus with Parthenon. Nothing is perfect and there will always be something better at some things. This will help you be able to make the decision which system to build your future SaaS on.
What is SaaS Pegasus?
SaaS Pegasus is a SaaS Boilerplate written in Python using the Django Framework. It was created by Cory Zue who is a former CTO. It was created as part of his goal to become financially free life as a solopreneur.
What is Parthenon?
Parthenon is a SaaS Boilerplate written in PHP using the Symfony Framework. It was created by Iain Cambridge who is a software engineer with over 10-years of experience at nearly every level of IT. It was created to solve the technical problems he has seen during his years of helping startups scale.
Comparing the Programming Language and Frameworks
First thing to compare is the programming langages. When building a tech business choosing the correct tech to build upon is very important.
Python is a general purpose scripting language. Django is a web framework that is built
PHP is a scripting language that built to build web applications. Symfony is a framework that has been built based
When is Python and Django better?
Python being a general purpose scripting language means that it has really good support for things outside of being a web application. So if you're building something that needs do things that aren't specifically web related then Python could be a good choice.
Python is also extremely good for data science and AI. If you're building an application that using Machine Learning, AI, or any other data science then you should be using Python.
When is PHP and Symfony better?
PHP being a programming language designed from the ground up for building web applications it is extremely good at this. It's performance and benchmarks are built mainly for increasing performance at web requests.
Symfony is built for building large, performant, and scalable applications using the practices that are documented in some of books considered as must reads in the software development world.
If you're building a web application that you want to build out to scale and have many software developers work on in the future building on top of Symfony would be advantageous.
If you're working on something you want to scale out to having lots of developers work on over a long period of time building on Symfony would be a good idea.
Price of developers
When you're starting out money means a lot, building on a system that has a higher cost of development because the developers are more expensive is something that many people want to avoid.
According to Salary.com:
- Python developers per hour is on average $46
- PHP developers salary is on average $30
On a price point, using PHP has it's advantages
Features
One of the important things is what features are you going to get?
SaaS Pegasus Features
Looking at the website saaspegasus.com the main features are:
- A user system
- A teams system
- Payments
- Subscriptions
Parthenon Features
Looking at the features on getparthenon.com the main features are:
- A user systems
- a teams systems
- Payments
- A/B Testing
- Multi-Country VAT Support
- Rule Engine
- Multi-Step Form
- Seperate Databases for Multi-Tenancy
SaaS Pegasus Database Support
SaaS Pegasus only provides support for Postgres.
Parthenon Database Support
Parthenon provides support for SQL database such as MySQL, MariaDB, Postgres.
And it provides support for MongoDB.
Support
When you're building a SaaS being able to rely on support is curical. Both package provide excellent customer service.
SaaS Pegasus Support
SaaS Pegasus provides excellent customer service via Email.
Parthenon Support
Parthenon provides excellent customer support via Email and Slack
Conclusion
SaaS Pegasus is an extremely capable SaaS boilerplate. Which provides the basic functionalities for a SaaS platform. It is designed to help indie hackers build SaaS platforms quickly. Therefore it provides a much more limited feature set than Parthenon.
Parthenon is designed to help businesses scale. While indie hackers may get a lot of use out of Parthenon the majority of the value in the flexibility given will be realised when they scale.
If you're looking to scale out a SaaS and generate lots of revenue, then Parthenon is what you want. If you're an indie hacker and you want to build a SaaS to become financially free, then both options are good valid options, and you should look to see what language/framework you like best.