Building eCourses: A Community‑First LMS SaaS (and Why You Should Build in Public)
I’m building a Learning Management System SaaS called eCourses , designed specifically for small communities and independent educators who feel priced out or over‑engineered by existing platforms. This post is the first in a series where I’ll walk through the architecture, decisions, and “lessons learned” from shipping an LMS from scratch — in public, open source, and on a tight budget. Why I Built eCourses Most LMS platforms are either: Too expensive for solo creators and small communities. Too complex for simple “course + modules + lessons + live sessions” workflows. Too rigid to let instructors experiment with their own teaching style. I wanted something that: Feels native to communities (not just single instructors). Scales technically and financially under $10/month at reasonable load
I’m building a Learning Management System SaaS called eCourses, designed specifically for small communities and independent educators who feel priced out or over‑engineered by existing platforms.
This post is the first in a series where I’ll walk through the architecture, decisions, and “lessons learned” from shipping an LMS from scratch — in public, open source, and on a tight budget.
Why I Built eCourses
Most LMS platforms are either:
-
Too expensive for solo creators and small communities.
-
Too complex for simple “course + modules + lessons + live sessions” workflows.
-
Too rigid to let instructors experiment with their own teaching style.
I wanted something that:
-
Feels native to communities (not just single instructors).
-
Scales technically and financially under $10/month at reasonable load.
-
Lets me experiment with API design, caching, and complex state in a real product context.
That’s how eCourses started — as a personal itch, and now as a real product and portfolio project.
What eCourses Is (Right Now)
At its core, eCourses is:
-
A community‑scoped LMS SaaS with communitySlug‑based routing.
-
An admin panel where instructors can:
Create, edit, and soft‑delete courses (with image upload via ImageKit).
Reorder modules and lessons with drag‑and‑drop (optimistic UI, two‑pass index transactions).
Assign non‑student members as instructors.
- A structure that prepares the ground for:
Public course pages.
Video upload and playback.
Live sessions and recordings.
Student progress tracking and analytics.
The live version is currently deployed at https://ecourses-sigma.vercel.app, and the whole stack is open source under the MIT license.
The Big Picture: Tech Stack
Right now the stack is optimized for type‑safe, fast iteration rather than maximal feature‑bloat:
Layer Tech / Pattern
Framework Next.js 15 (App Router + Turbopack)
Language TypeScript
Auth Clerk
Database PostgreSQL
ORM Prisma v7
Cache Upstash Redis
File Storage ImageKit
Frontend UI Tailwind CSS v4 + shadcn/ui + dnd‑kit, nuqs, React Hook Form + Zod
State (HTTP) TanStack Query v5 (React Query v4 in browser)
This gives me strong typing, rapid iteration, and a clear path to a mobile‑ready backend later.
If You Want to Follow Along
Right now eCourses is:
-
Live at: https://ecourses-sigma.vercel.app.
-
Open source under MIT.
-
Actively under development, with plans to ship to real communities within the next few months.
You can:
-
Star / fork the repo and open issues or PRs.
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Comment here with questions or suggestions (especially around LMS‑specific UX, API patterns, or caching).
-
Follow as I keep shipping and documenting — if you’ve ever wondered what a “real‑sized” LMS architecture looks like at SaaS‑scale, this is a good place to watch it evolve.
DEV Community
https://dev.to/mateebhussain/building-ecourses-a-community-first-lms-saas-and-why-you-should-build-in-public-3g56Sign in to highlight and annotate this article
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