Building a Production SaaS with Next.js, Drizzle ORM, and PostgreSQL

Building a Production SaaS with Next.js, Drizzle ORM, and PostgreSQL

After building several SaaS products, we've settled on a stack that balances developer experience with production reliability. Here's our battle-tested architecture.

The Stack

• Next.js 16 — App Router with Server Components
• Drizzle ORM — Type-safe SQL with zero overhead
• PostgreSQL 16 — The workhorse relational database
• Tailwind CSS v4 — Rapid UI development
• next-intl — Internationalization

Why Drizzle Over Prisma?

We switched from Prisma to Drizzle for several reasons:

1. No runtime engine — Drizzle generates plain SQL, no binary dependency
2. SQL-like API — If you know SQL, you know Drizzle
3. Bundle size — Drizzle adds ~50KB vs Prisma's ~2MB runtime
4. Type inference — Schema-first approach with excellent TypeScript inference

const posts = await db.query.blogPosts.findMany({
  where: eq(blogPosts.published, true),
  with: { category: true },
  orderBy: [desc(blogPosts.publishedAt)],
  limit: 10,
});

Architecture Patterns

Data Access Layer

We organize database queries into a clean data access layer:

src/
  lib/
    db/
      schema.ts      # Drizzle schema definitions
      index.ts        # DB connection
    queries/
      posts.ts        # Post-related queries
      users.ts        # User-related queries

Server Actions

For mutations, we use Server Actions instead of API routes:

'use server';

export async function createPost(formData: FormData) {
  const title = formData.get('title') as string;
  await db.insert(blogPosts).values({ title });
  revalidatePath('/blog');
}

Deployment

Our production deployment:

• PM2 for process management
• PostgreSQL 16 on the same server
• Apache2 reverse proxy
• Let's Encrypt for SSL

This stack serves thousands of requests per second on a single €30/month VPS.

Originally published on IceCat Studio Blog. Based on production experience across multiple SaaS projects.