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Full editorial research report
SaaS / Coding · Intermediate — the FAQ requires prior Node.js, React.js and MySQL experience · English
Kyle Gawley is a fully identifiable operator running a registered UK company with a live Stripe checkout, a public syllabus and a free first lesson you can watch before paying. The 3.2/5 reflects three things the marketing does not tell you: the licence you agree to at checkout refuses refunds under any circumstances, the 17 modules line up one-for-one with the lesson tree archived in July 2022 with no published update since, and almost no independent student evidence about the course exists.
Last checked · Evidence is labeled by source type and freshness.
The evidence supports a real, currently purchasable course from a named UK company, delivered through a working checkout with a publicly playable free lesson. It does not show that the videos have been re-recorded since 2022, that the stack taught is current, or that buyers can get their money back if the course is not what they expected.
Quick verdict
How to Build a SaaS is Kyle Gawley's 25-hour, 17-module video course on building a Node.js/React SaaS product from scratch, now sold from usegravity.app at $99–$599 USD after an ~85% price cut from its 2024–2025 levels. The course URL in older listings is dead; the live one works. Refunds are refused under all circumstances and the curriculum appears unchanged since 2022.
Rating methodology
Price, tiers, checkout, refund terms, syllabus and creator identity are all verified at primary sources. The course was not purchased, so lesson quality, actual runtime, lesson count and Discord activity are unverified, and independent student evidence is close to non-existent.
Weighted total: 3.225, rounded to one decimal as 3.2/5. Read the rating methodology.
Course record
A self-paced video course in which you build an Instagram-style photo-sharing SaaS app from scratch in Node.js and React — authentication, a REST API, Stripe billing, organisations and roles, S3 uploads, email, testing, security and deployment. It originally sold on a hosted learning platform at learn.usegravity.app for $995–$1,895; that platform has been shut down and the course now streams from Gravity's own site, where the Pro and Elite tiers additionally bundle the Gravity boilerplate.
Instructor and Gravity founder
Source: htbs-course, htbs-creator, htbs-xCurrent official syllabus
Module titles and topics are taken verbatim from the current official course page on 2026-08-10. The paid lessons were not purchased. Every one of these 17 module titles maps onto the lesson tree archived in July 2022, so treat the material as 2022-era unless the seller tells you otherwise in writing.
Fit
Developers who already work with Node.js, React and MySQL and want the full SaaS plumbing — billing, roles, API keys, deployment — assembled end to end in one project.
Buyers who value a published syllabus, a free preview lesson and a flat one-time price over a subscription.
Not a fit for beginners despite the marketing headline: the official FAQ states outright that this is “NOT a beginners programming course”.
Not a fit for anyone who needs current-stack teaching in TypeScript, Next.js or modern deployment targets, or who wants the option of a refund.
All four prices are published openly and match the live Stripe checkout to the cent.
The complete 17-module syllabus is visible before you pay, with concrete topics rather than vague outcomes.
The first lesson streams publicly with no signup, so you can sample the teaching style for free.
$99 buys 25 hours of video with lifetime access and a Discord — roughly one sixth of the 2024 list price.
The seller is a registered UK company with a named founder, a public support address and a five-year commercial track record.
Elite at $599 bundles boilerplates that Gravity sells separately at up to $499.
The License Agreement you accept at checkout refuses refunds “under any circumstances”, and a chargeback permanently disables your account.
The 17 module titles match the lesson tree archived in July 2022; no recording or update date is published anywhere.
The curriculum still teaches JavaScript rather than TypeScript and deploys to Heroku, while Gravity's own current products have moved on.
The $99 Lite tier excludes the project source code, contradicting the FAQ promise of “full access to the source code for each module”.
The page markets to “aspiring entrepreneurs” while its own FAQ says prior Node.js, React and MySQL experience is required.
The course page carries stale numbers (“26,000+ followers” against 44K today; “1,100+” boilerplate users against 1,200+ on the homepage).
The footer “Free Lesson” link points at learn.usegravity.app, a host that no longer resolves.
Almost no independent student evidence exists: one Trustpilot review mentions the course, and nothing substantive was found on Reddit, Hacker News or YouTube.
Risk review
Live Stripe Checkout sessions for all four tiers, billed by the named company “Gravity Zero Ltd.”
UK company registration published in the footer: Gravity Zero Ltd, #NI667095, 19 Arthur Street, Belfast.
Refund policy stated bluntly rather than hidden behind a soft guarantee.
A publicly playable free lesson and a full pre-purchase syllabus.
Trustpilot profile claimed since June 2021 with a 4.5 score across 29 reviews, including seller replies to critical ones.
The strongest displayed testimonial is independently traceable to an unprompted Trustpilot review by the same person.
No refund under any circumstances, on a product you cannot inspect beyond one free lesson.
No published evidence of any content update in roughly four years.
The governing licence never mentions the word “course”, so its application to a video-only purchase is untested.
“Join 100s of students who launched their SaaS product” is an unverifiable outcome claim with no supporting data.
The “Already purchased the boilerplate? Get your coupon” link simply reloads the pricing page — no coupon terms are published.
Two seller testimonials are attributed only as “Andrew M” and “William”, limiting independent verification.
Terms
Each tier was confirmed by opening its live Stripe Checkout session. Lite is video, lifetime access and Discord only; Max adds the project source code; Pro adds the web boilerplate; Elite adds the native boilerplate. No payment plan is offered.
Homepage testimonials
These are seller-selected user posts and screenshots, not a representative sample. We preserve the visible wording and label what was and was not independently verified.
“Kyle is extremely knowledgeable and I've learned a ton from his How to Build a SaaS course, especially important architectural decisions, like what an API endpoint should look like versus a controller or model—and how they tie together. The beginning of the course is a bit slow, but it picks up from the 3rd module. Overall, the value that I gained learning strongly outweighed the cost of the course, and in general I enjoy Kyle's business practices and feedback style. Recommended to anyone looking to become a well-balanced JS developer.”
Verbatim from the seller's own pricing and course pages, attributed to a named person described as “Developer & Marketer”. It is the most substantive of the three because it names a specific weakness (a slow start). No date is displayed and the outcome was not independently audited; the same quote already appeared on the pricing page archived in November 2024.
View source ↗“I would like to build a SaaS by myself but need a structured course which can teach me all the steps to build it given that I have basic programming knowledge (JS and Python). I have been searching around in the Internet for a week and fortunately found this course. It is definitely the best course as the whole learning experience is driven by a practical project. Though sometimes I find it is hard to understand the programming concepts, Kyle is very helpful and patient to answer our questions in the Discord channel. I highly recommend this course!”
Verbatim from the seller's pricing page, attributed only to “William, SaaS Founder”. This is the one testimonial with independent corroboration: a Trustpilot reviewer named William (Hong Kong, 2 reviews, updated 16 August 2024, flagged “Unprompted review”) posted a near-identical text titled “The Best Guidebook for SaaS”. The seller's version is lightly edited — the Trustpilot original reads “found the Learn How To Build a SaaS Product From Scratch course offered by Gravity” where the seller's copy reads “found this course”.
View source ↗“I stumbled across the course after looking for a React/Node.js SaaS boilerplate as we were looking to move tech stacks for an existing project. I quickly picked the course up as well as the boilerplate, and wow was that a great choice. Kyle dives deep into so many concepts - and has given us new views on our existing approach to things such as user management and API security. The amount of insight in this course is so deep, specific to SaaS and valuable. None of the paid courses or free tutorials come remotely close. 5 stars!”
Verbatim from the seller's pricing page, attributed only to “Andrew M, Founder”. The surname is withheld, no date is shown, and no matching review was found on Trustpilot or elsewhere, so this one cannot be independently verified.
View source ↗Evidence
Facts, claims, reports, analysis, and unknowns are deliberately kept separate.
On 2026-08-10 the official pricing page listed four tiers — Lite $99, Max $199, Pro $399 and Elite $599 — with a tick/cross matrix showing Lite excludes the project source code and both boilerplates, Max adds source code, Pro adds the web boilerplate and Elite adds the native boilerplate. Clicking each ENROLL NOW opened a live Stripe Checkout session billed by “Gravity Zero Ltd.” for “How To Build a SaaS Course” at $99.00, $199.00, $399.00 and $599.00 USD one-time, with a promo-code field and a required GitHub username field. The course page published 25 hours of video across 17 named modules and a free, publicly playable first lesson.
Sources: How To Build a SaaS Course Pricing — official pricing page · Live Stripe Checkout for the How To Build a SaaS Course (Gravity Zero Ltd.) · 1 further source recorded in the research fileThe course previously sold at learn.usegravity.app for $995/$1,295/$1,895 (July 2022, when it listed 110 lessons and 12.5 hours with modules 10–17 unreleased), and at $595/$995/$1,295/$1,895 on the current site in November 2024, discounted 20% in February 2025. That host now returns no DNS record, and the 17 current module titles map one-for-one onto the 2022 lesson tree.
Sources: learn.usegravity.app course page archived 14 July 2022 · 2 further sources recorded in the research file“25+ hours of expert video content”, “Join 100s of students who launched their SaaS product”, “1,100+ people using my SaaS boilerplate”, “Built a tech startup to $5,000,000 sales”, “Taught software development at Ulster University”, “Lifetime access” and all three displayed testimonials are seller representations. Two of the counters are contradicted by Gravity's own homepage and by the founder's live X profile, which show 1,200+ users and 44K followers.
Sources: How To Build a SaaS Course Pricing — official pricing page · Kyle Gawley — personal site and track record · 2 further sources recorded in the research fileTrustpilot shows 4.5 across 29 reviews for the Gravity boilerplate, of which exactly one is about the course: an unprompted five-star review by “William” (updated 16 August 2024) matching the testimonial the seller displays. The same profile carries an unprompted one-star review (8 September 2021) stating “Gravity is non-refundable… you better be sure you won't regret the purchase as I did”, and an unprompted three-star review (11 December 2024) criticising missing unit tests, inconsistent code style and the absence of TypeScript, with a seller reply.
Sources: Gravity SaaS Boilerplate — Trustpilot profile (29 reviews, 4.5)The product is real and cheap, and the seller is unusually transparent about price, syllabus and its own no-refund stance. The 3.2/5 is driven down by four documented facts: refunds are refused under all circumstances, the curriculum shows no evidence of change since 2022, the page contradicts itself on audience and on source-code access, and independent student evidence is close to non-existent for a course sold since 2021.
Sources: How To Build a SaaS Course Pricing — official pricing page · learn.usegravity.app course page archived 14 July 2022 · Gravity SaaS Boilerplate — Trustpilot profile (29 reviews, 4.5) · 2 further sources recorded in the research fileRecording and update dates, total lesson count, real runtime, current Discord responsiveness, whether the bundled boilerplate's one-year update window applies to course buyers, the affiliate commission rate and any completion or outcome data remain unknown. The course was not purchased, no official page publishes these, the sitemap exposes only two course URLs, and searches of Reddit, Hacker News, YouTube and independent blogs returned nothing substantive.
Sources: How To Build a SaaS Course Pricing — official pricing page · Gravity SaaS Boilerplate — Trustpilot profile (29 reviews, 4.5) · 1 further source recorded in the research fileUnresolved
When the videos were recorded and whether any lesson has been re-recorded since 2022 — no date is published on any official page and no snapshot supplies one.
The current total lesson count and true runtime: the seller states “25 hours” but publishes no lesson list beyond the five free Welcome lessons, and the sitemap exposes only the course and pricing URLs.
How active the Discord community is and how quickly the instructor answers course questions today.
Whether Pro/Elite boilerplate access carries the licence's one-year update window and $195/yr renewal, since the course tiers advertise “Lifetime access” without qualifying it.
The affiliate commission rate, which is not published on the affiliates page.
The exact date the price fell from the $595–$1,895 range to $99–$599; no archived snapshot exists between February 2025 and today.
Completion rates, and whether any of the “100s of students” outcome claim can be substantiated.
Next options
These alternatives are descriptive only. We have not researched or rated them here.
Watch the publicly playable Welcome lesson and try Gravity's free boilerplate before paying anything, since no refund is available afterwards.
View current company site ↗A separately reviewed self-paced course aimed at shipping a web product quickly; different scope and stack, and this report does not rate it as a substitute.
If you mainly want the code rather than the teaching, the boilerplate is sold on its own at $199/$299/$499 with its own documentation.
View current company site ↗13 · Buyer checklist
Questions
It appears to be a real, currently purchasable course. Live Stripe Checkout sessions bill a registered UK company (Gravity Zero Ltd, #NI667095), the syllabus is public, and the first lesson streams free. That supports legitimacy, not quality, currency of the material, or outcomes.
$99 (Lite), $199 (Max), $399 (Pro) or $599 (Elite) USD, one-time, checked at the live Stripe checkout on 2026-08-10. Lite is video only; Max adds the project source code; Pro adds the web boilerplate; Elite adds the native boilerplate. No instalment plan is offered.
Neither. It is priced separately from the boilerplate ($199/$299/$499). Only the Pro and Elite course tiers bundle a boilerplate. The course page offers an “Already purchased the boilerplate? Get your coupon” link, but that link just reloads the pricing page and publishes no coupon terms.
No. The License Agreement linked from the course checkout says refunds “will not be provided under any circumstances”, and initiating a chargeback automatically terminates your licence and permanently disables your account.
Yes. That host no longer resolves in DNS at all. The course moved to usegravity.app/how-to-build-a-saas, where the checkout works. The course page's own footer still links to the dead host for its free lesson.
There is no published evidence that it has. All 17 current module titles map onto the lesson tree archived in July 2022, no recording or update date appears on any official page, and the deployment module still teaches Heroku.
Source registry
htbs-checkoutSupports: Each ENROLL NOW button opens a live cs_live Stripe Checkout session billed by “Gravity Zero Ltd.” for the line item “How To Build a SaaS Course” at $99.00, $199.00, $399.00 and $599.00 USD respectively, one-time, with a promotion-code field, a required “GitHub Username (required for repo access)” field and optional local-currency conversion (for example SGD 131.76 for $99.00, including a stated 4% conversion fee).
Limitations: Checkout sessions are single-use and expire, so the URL above is the checkout host rather than a re-openable session. No purchase was completed; a working checkout proves the offer is buyable, not that it is taught well or supported.
htbs-pricingSupports: Four current course tiers with prices and a tick/cross feature matrix: Lite $99, Max $199, Pro $399 (marked Popular) and Elite $599; the “Join 100s of students who launched their SaaS product” claim; the link to the License Agreement as the governing terms; the “Already purchased the boilerplate? Get your coupon” link; and the three seller-selected testimonials.
Limitations: Seller-controlled page. It publishes no currency symbol other than “$”, no lesson count, no recording or update date, and no refund wording; the coupon link resolves back to the same pricing page.
htbs-archive-2022Supports: The original hosted course: “$995.00 — 110 lessons — 12.5 hours of video content”, tiers of $995 (course only), $1,295 (plus web boilerplate) and $1,895 (plus web & mobile boilerplates), the full lesson tree, modules 10–17 labelled “Coming July 22” through “Coming September 9” (2022), and instructor contact build@usegravity.app.
Limitations: A snapshot of a retired platform. It describes 2022 terms and a partially released course and must not be read as current pricing or current content.
htbs-trustpilotSupports: A 4.5 TrustScore across 29 reviews (93% five-star, 3% three-star, 4% one-star); an unprompted course-specific five-star review from “William” (HK, updated 16 Aug 2024); an unprompted one-star review (AT, 8 Sep 2021) stating “Gravity is non-refundable… you better be sure you won’t regret the purchase as I did”; and an unprompted three-star review (11 Dec 2024) criticising test coverage, code style and the absence of TypeScript, with a seller reply.
Limitations: The profile is for the Gravity boilerplate, not the course: only one of the 29 reviews is about the course. Trustpilot itself displays “No recent history of asking for reviews… reviews may not be representative”, and Trustpilot does not fact-check reviews.
htbs-creatorSupports: Named, datable track record: Vizuali (2011, failed), Get Invited (2012, VC-backed, “$5m in ticket sales”, 21,000 users), Gravity bootstrapped to “$550k in revenue as a solo founder” with 1,200+ users, Alertly (350+ users), an audience of “50k followers across X, LinkedIn, and YouTube”, and links to press and podcast appearances.
Limitations: Self-published. The revenue and user figures are the founder’s own claims; only the Get Invited story and the Gravity revenue figure are separately echoed in third-party podcast and Indie Hackers write-ups, and none were audited here.