Setup

Create a new database

supastarter uses Prisma as an ORM (database access layer). This means you can use any database supported by Prisma, including PostgreSQL, MySQL and MongoDB. You can find all supported databases here.

Before creating a new supastarter project, make sure to have created a new database and have the connection string ready. For example when using PostgreSQL, the connection string will look something like this:

postgresql://user:password@host:port/database

Recommended database providers are Supabase, PlanetScale and Neon.

You can also find setup guides for certain providers in the supastarter blog:

• Supabase

Initialize a new supastarter project

During the setup process you will be asked to provide the following information:

• Project name - The name of your project
• Database provider - The database provider you are using
• Database connection string - The connection string of your database

To create a new supastarter project all you need to do is run the following command (replace my-awesome-project with the name of your project):

npx supastarter new my-awesome-project

This will clone and configure the supastarter repository, install all the dependencies and set up the database for you.

Manual setup

The following steps are only necessary if you encounter any errors during the setup process, otherwise you can skip to step 3.

Clone the supastarter repository

git clone https://github.com/supastarter/supastarter-nextjs.git

Install the dependencies

Make sure you have installed pnpm before running the following command:

pnpm install

Set up the environment variables

To do this, copy the .env.local.example file in the root of your project and rename it to .env.local.

Then open the .env.local file and set at least the DATABASE_URL:

# Database
DATABASE_URL="YOUR_DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING"

If you are using Supabase, you want to follow our Supabase setup guide as you will need a second connection string for the database migration.

Select your mail provider

Select your mail provider which is used for sending transactional emails like the magic link for login.

In the /packages/mail/src/providers/index.ts file, set the export to the provider you want to use:

export * from "./plunk";
// or export * from './resend';
// or export * from './postmark';
// or export * from './nodemailer';

Then make sure to set the mandatory environment variables for your provider in the .env.local file:

• Plunk -> PLUNK_API_KEY
• Resend -> RESEND_API_KEY
• Postmark -> POSTMARK_SERVER_TOKEN
• Nodemailer -> MAIL_HOST, MAIL_PORT, MAIL_USER, MAIL_PASS

If you want to use a custom mail provider, use the /packages/mail/src/providers/custom.ts file and export from custom.ts.

Set up the payment provider

Next, we need set the payment provider which is used for handling payments in the packages/api/modules/billing/provider/index.ts file:

export * from "./stripe";
// or export * from './lemonsqueezy';
// or export * from './chargebee';

Push and generate the database schema

Make sure to check your schema in packages/database/prisma/schema.prisma before continuing.

To push the database schema to your database, run the following command:

pnpm --filter database push

Then, to generate the Prisma client, run the following command:

pnpm --filter database generate

Set up the supastarter repository as the upstream origin

The last step is to set the supastarter repository as the upstream origin for your project, so you can pull in updates in the future.

Run the following commands:

rm -rf .git
git init
git remote add upstream https://github.com/supastarter/supastarter-nextjs.git
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"

Set up your storage provider

Storage is necessary to upload and serve files like images for example for the avatars of users and teams. Setting up a storage provider is optional, but recommended and necessary if you want to enable avatar and logo uploads.

supastarter supports all S3-compatible storage providers like AWS S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, MinIO, etc. and Supabase Storage.

Storage setup guide

Start your development server

Now your app should be ready to go. To start the local development server, navigate into your project root folder and run the following command.

pnpm dev

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser to see the your app.

Create admin user

To use your application, you want to create an admin user. You can use a simple CLI script to create a new admin user in the database:

pnpm --filter scripts create:user

Enter the email, the name and select the role Admin to create a new admin user:

You will see an automatically generated password in the terminal, which you can use to login to your application.