The Ultimate Full-Stack Web Development Guide for 2025 |

Web development in 2025 is a dynamic landscape. There are so many tools, frameworks, and libraries to choose from that it's hard to know what you should be building your app with. This article introduces the tech stack of 2025, designed to help you launch your next great software idea.

The Core Tech Stack

This tech stack is going to include several key components and technologies: a web development framework, a CSS framework, a database, an authentication provider, and a method of accepting payments. A significant advantage is that you can host this entire stack with no upfront costs and potentially no monthly costs, depending on the scale of your project.

Web Development Framework: Next.js

Next.js is a go-to web development framework because it enables the construction of both frontend and backend functionalities within the same codebase. It's a powerful React framework that enables both server-side rendering and static site generation. It provides features like automatic routing, API routes, and built-in optimizations for images and fonts.

In simpler terms, it's much easier to optimize your websites by loading the content on the server instead of in the browser. It also makes it easier to add backend functionalities to your projects without having to build a separate backend application, and it facilitates the creation of prettier user interfaces that load faster.

Styling with Tailwind CSS

Pair Next.js with a CSS framework like Tailwind, and you've got a pretty useful way of building a web app. Tailwind is a go-to CSS framework that provides a utility-first approach, giving you small, composable classes that you can combine to make any design. Instead of writing traditional CSS, you use pre-built classes directly inside of your HTML. This makes styling much faster and more maintainable but does result in longer class names that can go out of hand really quickly.

Next.js projects can include Tailwind right out of the box, making it really easy to get started. Using this command, you can create your Next.js TypeScript app, select "yes" to use Tailwind CSS, and then click through the remaining options based on your preferences.

npx create-next-app@latest --typescript

A Clean Project Structure

Whenever starting a new project, it's wise to set up your folders to keep everything organized. For a Next.js project, this is a typical folder structure that proves effective:

source/app: This folder contains all of the routes. Both screens and API routes can be included in here, and this is handled automatically by Next.js.
source/components: This is for storing reusable components such as buttons, headers, forms, and more. Essentially, any visual element that will be used multiple times or is perhaps a little too large to store in the main component goes in here. This helps keep the root files as clean and as clutter-free as possible.
source/database: Because this is a full-stack project, it involves working with database models for the API routes. All database models are stored here.
source/interfaces: This folder is for storing all custom TypeScript types that might be used throughout the project.
source/lib: The lib folder is used to store any utility functions and helper code that might be needed, such as API client configurations or reusable functions.
source/middleware: This folder contains any middleware functions that are created.

With the project structure set up, you can start building out the screens. A simple landing page and a post screen are a good start. While it may not be the next billion-dollar unicorn, it's the start of a template that you'll find really useful.

Adding Backend Functionality

To build functional software, you need to add in some backend functionalities, which can be done using Next.js routes. To keep things simple, it's a good practice to store all Next.js API endpoints inside of an api folder. Inside this api folder, you can define your routes and start writing the functionality for your endpoints. These API endpoints can be used to do just about anything, such as read and write to a database, interact with third-party services, or create any awesome functionalities you can think of for your project.

Handling Data with MongoDB

Pretty much every project is going to need a database. For this template, MongoDB is a solid choice. MongoDB is a NoSQL database that stores data in flexible, JSON-like documents. Unlike traditional SQL databases, MongoDB doesn't require a fixed schema, which can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it's nice to have a flexible database, but on the other, it's beneficial to have something that forces you to input data that is of the correct shape.

That's why it's effective to pair it with the Mongoose ORM, which enables schema enforcement within JavaScript or TypeScript projects. This is more than fine, considering that all of the functionality is built within the same codebase anyway, so you wouldn't need to worry about other applications putting incorrectly formatted data into the database. If there were multiple applications within this project, that's where you'd want the database schema to be enforced by the database itself instead of by the application code.

For this project, a database model for posts is needed so that users can retrieve and create posts from the front end using the created API endpoints. Creating a Mongoose schema is pretty simple. If you're working with TypeScript, you first need to create an interface for the object and then you can create the Mongoose schema object like so:

import { Schema, model, models } from 'mongoose';

// 1. Create an interface representing a document in MongoDB.
interface IPost {
  title: string;
  content: string;
  author: string;
}

// 2. Create a Schema corresponding to the document interface.
const postSchema = new Schema<IPost>({
  title: { type: String, required: true },
  content: { type: String, required: true },
  author: { type: String, required: true },
});

// 3. Create a Model.
const Post = models.Post || model<IPost>('Post', postSchema);

export default Post;

You can then export this model so that it can be imported into other parts of your project. Now, inside the create post endpoint, you can save the data that has been submitted. Also, inside of the get post endpoint, you can retrieve the posts from the database and then filter or sort them however you like.

Securing Your Application with Authentication

So far, we've got a basic web app that allows us to view and submit posts. There's just one problem: anyone can access this data. The next step is to add authentication to the project to enable users to sign up and log into their own accounts.

Instead of building your own authentication, which can take a very long time and could put users at risk if done incorrectly, it is preferable to go with the option of a third-party authentication provider. This is where Auth0 comes into the tech stack. Auth0 handles all aspects of user authentication for your projects and has a pretty sizable free tier that enables you to have over 24,000+ monthly active users per project. That is a lot of users, meaning you won't need to pay a cent until your app is already booming with popularity and you're making some cash. It also supports third-party logins, so you can let users log in with Google, GitHub, and more at the click of a button. Plus, you can add custom domains, giving your login page a fully branded look with your website's URL.

Implementing Auth0 into your project is pretty simple. Once you've signed up for a free account, you can create a new tenant for your project and then create a new application inside of your tenant. Following their setup guide is the best way to get a working authentication flow that looks great, is secure, and is free.

Monetization: Accepting Payments with Stripe

Finally, to complete the ultimate tech stack for 2025, you'll want to make some money. To do that, you need to implement a method of accepting payments into your project. Stripe is a typical choice for accepting payments because it's really easy to set up, it's pretty low-cost, and it probably has the best developer documentation ever seen from a third-party integration. You only get charged by Stripe when you make a sale, so even though it's not technically free, it doesn't cost anything to set up, and you only pay a percentage of the revenue that you earn.

Using a set of simple APIs and the various packages for different programming languages, it really doesn't take that long to add payment functionalities into your project. You can build highly customizable payment flows that don't even look like they're made with Stripe. However, in the interest of time, it's often preferable to use their pre-built checkout pages, which enable you to redirect your users to a secure page so that they can make their payments or subscribe to plans and then be redirected back to your application.

Setting up this exact integration is as easy as creating three API endpoints within your Next.js app:

Create Checkout Session: A POST request that is used to generate a Stripe checkout page where your users can subscribe to your SaaS project or pay for your product. It returns a URL that you can then redirect the user to so that they can complete the payment.
Get Subscription Status: A GET request that is going to get the user's subscription status, which allows you to determine whether they can access paid features or not. If they already have a subscription, you don't want to show them a big "subscribe" button; instead, you can show them a button that allows them to manage their subscription.
Create Portal Link: This button is created via a third API endpoint, which generates a Stripe portal link that you can use to redirect the user if they want to manage their subscription.

In three simple API endpoints, you've added production-ready payments and billing management to your project so that the money can start rolling in.

Conclusion

And that is how you build a modern web app in 2025. You can then host this stack on a variety of cloud providers with some pretty decent free tiers, or you could even self-host it if you wanted to. This combination of technologies provides a powerful, scalable, and cost-effective foundation for any web application.