According to statistics, the SaaS industry has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, with the market size reaching $195 billion in 2023. If you are an industry expert, building SaaS products can be a great way to leverage your knowledge and make money doing what you love. However, developing a SaaS product requires more than a good – the tech needs can be complex. You will need to hire SaaS developers that understand the environment.
What SaaS development tools and tech do I need?
If you want to develop software as a service product, you have to make a few critical decisions about the saas development tools & technologies you’ll use and the skills you need. There are even other vital factors like analyzing the audience usage metrics, hosting plan, database choice, monetization model, licensing etc. Let’s see each of them in brief:
The Tech Stack
One of the first steps to building a SaaS product is choosing the tech stack. Client-side rendering (CSR) is very popular but comes with a lot of disadvantages. Instead, opt for a Hybrid approach that uses both client-side and server-side rendering (SSR). You’ll get great SEO and launch faster. You will likely need developers skilled in NextJs, NuxtJs, and GatsbyJS.
Front-end Developers
Your front-end team will design everything users access on their screens. You’ll need to use a modern JavaScript framework like React or Vue.js, so make sure you find developers that know how to work with these frameworks. Vue.js is lightweight and easy to maintain, while React is the market leader. Skilled developers are few and far between, especially when hiring for a start-up.
Along with front-end developers, you need a SEO analyst to help the developers with the right SEO tags so that you again don’t need to double spend later when you outsource your SEO.
Back-end Developers
When you build software as a service products, you will need skilled back-end developers to work on the server-side of things. It is critical for building the core functionality of your product. Again, Node.js is preferred. But there are even other server side platforms asp.net, AngularJS, React etc. You can consult a good application architect and decide on your platform.
Database
Your database will store the information for your applications. You can opt for PostgreSQL, MySQL or any other database suited to your SaaS product. Your development team may be able to advise you. Based on your audience and the product’s design complexity, you can discuss with your tech architect and decide the right database for your product.
Hosting Provider
You will need a cloud provider to handle your SaaS requirements, such as AWS (Amazon), Google, or Heroku. It is imperative to choose a hosting provider that is stable and secure.
Licensing
You’ll either license your product per-user or per usage. License-based users receive a license for accessing the app, so you’ll need to know the exact number of licenses that are used and be able to remove and re-assign them. This is the important thing that decides your products revenue. You need to take utmost care in deciding the licensing model. It should go along with your competitors’ model and should also benefit the users. Only then your company get users and profit at the same time.
Advantages of SaaS Products
Everyone is getting in on SaaS because it’s a lucrative market, and there are many benefits. Some of the benefits include:
Revenue with Minimal Effort
It takes time to build the right product, but it requires minimal updates and good customer service once it’s off the ground. You’ll probably add a few add-ons over time, but it’s much easier than starting from scratch. It is why most companies start with a large number of developers at first and then scale down over time.
Because once the product is out in the market and started generating revenue, you can gradually reduce the developers’ effort and focus more on marketing and brand building. This way, you can start monetizing your product and start focusing on next level.
Growing the Client Base
SaaS is flexible because clients aren’t locked into lifelong contracts. While this means that you will lose customers to churn, companies are more eager to sign on, and your sales efforts deliver pretty quickly. Make sure that you’ve built a quality product to keep your monthly revenues high. The other important thing is, since you will be providing your SaaS product either in monthly or yearly fee model, you need to keep working on your product to make it more customer friendly. Otherwise, your company can’t withstand the competition.
Reliability and Accessibility
If you want to develop a SaaS product, you can use a flexible, offshored team at a low cost to do the heavy lifting and then scale down on your efforts to focus on customer support and marketing. You don’t need to hire expensive developers for the long run. But it’s very important that you hire good developers who build the initial product and maybe later you can switch to support developers who can handle bug fixes and feature enhancements.
Where Can I Hire SaaS Developers?
Beside Saas development tools and technologies you have to think about a good SaaS developer. You hire SaaS developers in three ways: freelancers, offshored developers, or in-house developers. Most start-ups won’t hire in-house. Firstly, it’s difficult to attract talent, and it can be expensive. Secondly, you probably don’t need developers working on your product for years and years.
Freelancers are great, but managing multiple freelancers that need to work together in a team can be tricky. You can have your own in-house team for hiring developers but the hiring process and the time involved might cost you a lot. Unless you don’t want to hire more in numbers, it’s advised to outsource your hiring part to third party agencies.
Most companies opt for offshored development teams hired via trusted agencies when they are building SaaS products. It’s cheaper and faster, and there’s no long-term commitment. The agency handles all sourcing, vetting, and administration, freeing you to focus on your project. Make sure that you hire the right team and use the right saas development tools for the job, and you’ll build your product in no time!
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