How I Made My SaaS "Students Only" Without School IDs Using WHOIS and GPT

In building my resume review SaaS tailored for students and 転職活動 (career change) seekers in Japan, I faced a simple question: "How do I restrict access to just students without relying on official university logins or SheerID?" A lot of companies solve this using school issued IDs, OAuth through G Suite for Education, or even SheerID verification. But all of those come with integration complexity, potential friction, and worst of all kill the speed and ease of my UX. So I built something better. ✅ The Goal: Students Only Access With Just an Email My signup form asks for a university email. That’s it. If your domain is a real school, you’re in. If it’s not, you’re blocked. No ID upload. No OAuth. No API dependency. ⚙️ The Stack Backend: Node.js (NestJS) Database: Firestore (for whitelist and blacklist) External Tools: WHOIS lookup OpenAI GPT API No SheerID. No OAuth. No .edu requirement

Apr 24, 2025 - 02:16

How I Made My SaaS "Students Only" Without School IDs Using WHOIS and GPT

In building my resume review SaaS tailored for students and 転職活動 (career change) seekers in Japan, I faced a simple question:

"How do I restrict access to just students without relying on official university logins or SheerID?"

A lot of companies solve this using school issued IDs, OAuth through G Suite for Education, or even SheerID verification. But all of those come with integration complexity, potential friction, and worst of all kill the speed and ease of my UX.

So I built something better.

✅ The Goal: Students Only Access With Just an Email

My signup form asks for a university email. That’s it. If your domain is a real school, you’re in. If it’s not, you’re blocked. No ID upload. No OAuth. No API dependency.

⚙️ The Stack

Backend: Node.js (NestJS)
Database: Firestore (for whitelist and blacklist)
External Tools:
- WHOIS lookup
- OpenAI GPT API
No SheerID. No OAuth. No .edu requirement