Pagoda

A free, MIT-licensed Go full-stack starter kit with an admin panel, HTMX, and Alpine.js

Best for: Go developers who want a server-rendered, HTMX/Alpine-based full-stack starter with an admin panel and auth, avoiding a heavy client-side JS framework.
Skip if: You want a React/Vue single-page app frontend, or need Postgres/MySQL instead of the default SQLite setup.

Pagoda is an open-source, MIT-licensed Go starter kit by Mike Stefanello for building server-rendered web apps without a heavy JavaScript framework. It combines the Echo web framework and Ent ORM on the backend with Gomponents, HTMX, and Alpine.js on the frontend, styled with Tailwind CSS and daisyUI. It includes a dynamic admin panel, built-in authentication (login, registration, password reset, email verification), background task queuing, session management, CSRF protection, and file uploads - positioned as a template repo rather than a locked-in framework.

Pros

Free, open source, MIT licensed, with a large and active GitHub following (~2,950 stars, updated August 2026)
HTMX + Alpine + server-rendered approach keeps the frontend simple and JS-light
Built-in admin panel, auth flows, background jobs, and file uploads cover a lot of common app needs out of the box

Cons

SQLite as the default database may need swapping out for production-scale relational workloads
Go + HTMX/Gomponents is a different mental model than typical React/Next.js SaaS starters
No built-in payments/billing - it's a general app starter, not SaaS-specific