# I Built 10 Micro-SaaS Products in 48 Hours on a Single VPS This weekend, I challenged myself to build and launch as many useful developer tools as possible in 48 hours. The result: **10 live products**, all running on a single $20/month VPS. Here's the full breakdown. ## The Stack - **Server:** Single VPS (4 CPU, 8GB RAM, Ubuntu) - **Runtime:** Node.js + Express - **Browser engine:** Puppeteer + Chromium (for screenshot/PDF/OG image generation) - **Database:** SQLite (via better-sqlite3) — one DB per service - **Reverse proxy:** Nginx with Let's Encrypt SSL - **Domain:** Wildcard DNS on `*.pandan.is` via Cloudflare Total infrastructure cost: **$20/month**. That's it. ## The Products ### 1. Screenshot API (api.pandan.is) Capture any website as PNG, JPEG, or PDF with a single GET request. ```bash curl "https://api.pandan.is/v1/screenshot?url=https://github.com" -o github.png ``` Supports custom viewports, full-page capture, delay for JS rendering, and quality control. Free tier: 100/month. **Time to build:** 3 hours ### 2. QR Code API (qr.pandan.is) Generate QR codes as PNG, SVG, or Base64. ```bash curl "https://qr.pandan.is/v1/qr?text=https://example.com&size=400" -o qr.png ``` Custom colors, error correction levels, multiple output formats. Free tier: 200/month. **Time to build:** 1.5 hours ### 3. Link Shortener (s.pandan.is) URL shortening with click analytics. Custom slugs, referrer tracking. ```bash curl -X POST https://s.pandan.is/v1/shorten \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"url": "https://very-long-url.com/path"}' ``` **Time to build:** 2 hours ### 4. Invoice Generator (reikningur.pandan.is) Generate professional invoices as HTML and PDF via API. Built for the Icelandic market with kennitala and 24% VAT support. **Time to build:** 3 hours ### 5. OG Image Generator (og.pandan.is) Auto-generate Open Graph images for social media sharing. ```bash curl "https://og.pandan.is/v1/og?title=My+Blog+Post&subtitle=Read+more" -o og.png ``` **Time to build:** 2 hours ### 6. SEO Checker (seo.pandan.is) Instant SEO analysis for any URL — meta tags, OG tags, Twitter Cards, structured data, headings, and more. Returns an SEO score. **Time to build:** 2 hours ### 7-10. Calculator Tools Four Icelandic-market calculator tools: salary calculator, mortgage calculator, tax calculator, and currency converter. These are free traffic magnets that cross-sell the paid APIs. **Time to build:** 1.5 hours each ## Architecture Decisions ### Why separate services instead of a monolith? Each product runs as its own Node.js process with its own systemd service. This means: - Independent deployments (restart one without affecting others) - Resource isolation (one service crashing doesn't take down everything) - Simple monitoring (systemd handles restarts) - Each service is ~200-400 lines of code ### Why SQLite instead of PostgreSQL? For this scale, SQLite is perfect: - Zero configuration - One file per database - WAL mode handles concurrent reads fine - No separate process to manage - Easy backups (just copy the file) I'll migrate to PostgreSQL when (if) I need to. ### Why Express in 2026? Because it works and I know it. This weekend was about shipping, not evaluating frameworks. Express + Node.js lets me go from idea to deployed API in under 2 hours. ## The Revenue Model **Freemium API pricing:** - Free tier on everything (100-500 requests/month) - Pro tier: $5-9/month - Business tier: $29-49/month **Traffic magnets** (free calculator tools) drive organic search traffic from Iceland → funnel to paid APIs. **Content marketing:** 20 blog articles targeting both Icelandic keywords and English developer keywords. ## What I Learned ### 1. Wildcard DNS is a superpower With `*.pandan.is` pointing to my VPS, I can spin up a new subdomain in minutes. No DNS propagation wait. Just add an Nginx config and get a Let's Encrypt cert. ### 2. Ship ugly, fix later Most of these landing pages took 30 minutes. They're not perfect. But they're live, functional, and Google is indexing them. I can improve the UI later — what matters now is that the APIs work. ### 3. Free tools are the best marketing The SEO Checker is completely free. But every time someone uses it and discovers their site is missing OG tags, they see a link to our OG Image API. The calculator tools do the same — they attract Icelandic traffic that discovers our invoice tool. ### 4. SQLite is underrated I was worried about concurrent access. In practice, with WAL mode, SQLite handles everything I've thrown at it. For read-heavy workloads (which most APIs are), it's fantastic. ### 5. The VPS is not the bottleneck A $20 VPS runs all 10 services comfortably. The bottleneck is Puppeteer/Chromium for screenshot generation — that's CPU-heavy. But with proper queuing and browser reuse, it handles ~50 concurrent requests fine. ## Current Stats - **Day 2 of launch** - **Revenue:** $0 (payment integration not live yet) - **Products live:** 10 - **Blog articles:** 20 - **API registrations:** Working on it - **Infrastructure cost:** $20/month ## What's Next 1. **Payment integration** — Need to set up Paddle or Stripe 2. **API directory listings** — Submit to public-apis, RapidAPI, etc. 3. **Hacker News / Reddit launch** — Share with developer communities 4. **Product Hunt** — Launch the screenshot API 5. **More SEO content** — Keep writing targeted articles ## Try It Yourself All the APIs are live and free to use: - 📸 [Screenshot API](https://api.pandan.is) — Capture any website - 🔲 [QR Code API](https://qr.pandan.is) — Generate QR codes - 🔗 [Link Shortener](https://s.pandan.is) — Shorten URLs with analytics - 📄 [Invoice Generator](https://reikningur.pandan.is) — Create professional invoices - 🖼️ [OG Image API](https://og.pandan.is) — Generate social preview images - 🔍 [SEO Checker](https://seo.pandan.is) — Analyze any URL's SEO All have OpenAPI specs and interactive docs. No signup required for free tiers. --- *Built by [Pandan](https://dev.pandan.is) 🐼 — Developer tools from Iceland*