Relieving the industry from the only option of setting the infrastructure, the SaaS services have spread all over the world. Software as a service or SaaS application development has become the mainstream trend in various organizations and enterprises.
However creating such a platform is not trivial and requires a stable and deep understanding of the technology and its various aspects including configuration, multi-tenancy, security and so on.
In order to create a strong SaaS application platform that can easily fulfill multiple requirements of the clients, you must definitely consider including all such features in the application.
The agency which was chosen for the purpose must be capable of providing you the navigation across multiple challenges for building the desired application.
Here are a few facts that show the steep improvement in SaaS popularity:
- According to the data, SaaS workloads were installed over the 78 million devices where the numbers have increased to 206 million in 2018. Treading along the numbers, by 2021 the stats are reaching up to 380 million.
- The data from Crunchbase suggests SaaS has covered over 1000 countries.
- Employee engagement is far higher while entirely on SaaS apps. Around 86 percent of end-users, credited SaaS for the success.
Data Credits: List of SaaS Statistics & Trends
Table of Contents
Why is SaaS platform development popular these days?
The software as a service development process is considered highly reasonable and regularly applied technology for building new software or products.
It has gained fame over the years by offering a number of advantages to the users for which it is being chosen. SaaS is also a delivery model based upon subscription and most importantly centralized hosting.
Business platforms also prioritize this approach because it easily provides them an option to choose among multiple plans and functioning. Users can also gain access to the software with the browser from multiple devices.
If you are still curious to know why it has become so popular then have a look at its offerings. As it offers, its assistance with software development especially SaaS development process and maintenance the users can also acknowledge its functions that can differentiate these services from the contemporary applications.
This platform also checks for accessibility because it is easy for the customer to switch the application across multiple platforms very easily using the internet as a browser.
Also, the entire data of the platform is stored in the cloud nowadays hence the users are not bound to work on the same devices or applications all the time.
Therefore creating a SaaS platform is a reliable and flexible solution for the enterprises or business platforms that are willing to keep themselves on the top in rapidly changing technologies.
They can also enter the market quicker and provide the latest features to their customers within a short period of time and at affordable costs with the help of its distribution models. This also permits the customers to consider the product as a budget-friendly option because of its pricing models.
What is the life cycle of SaaS development?
All the platforms interested in creating or marketing the SaaS application development strategies in a successful manner have to be essentially familiar with its development life cycle. It helps the users to assure the uninterrupted delivery of the product or services and its successful implementation.
For this, you can consider the following development phases;
- Envisioning
- Evaluation of platform
- Planning of the project
- Subscription models
- Developing the project and operations
Envisioning
For any SaaS application development project, business strategy is an incredible factor to be considered hence you can try to begin the project only after searching the accurate business opportunities.
You can also make efforts to develop new ways of luring potential customers. Taking account of all the distinctive features offered by the cloud services the users can identify the values which are going to be delivered by the application. In addition to it, the development strategy must essentially involve marketing strategies.
Evaluation of platform
Making any choice with the SaaS development platform is a tough decision to make where you must keep in mind to acquire all the capabilities associated with it. Also, the final architecture must include unbeatable performance, compliance, reliability, scalability and all the essential tools.
Planning of the project
Once you have set the goals and defined all the essential requirements now is the time to implement all of them step by step and to entirely focus on the SaaS development process and solutions.
The project plan must consist of all the details regarding its functioning, costs, timeline, development team and so on. For further convenience, you can also divide this step into various segments envisioning long time solutions.
Subscription models
This is the most crucial step in the SaaS application development life cycle where the user has to acquire the quality subscriptions. Also to make the right choice on cloud services or platform you have to be certain with the central hosting model and must trail the preferred services.
Prior to the process you can prepare all the essential documentation reaching the level of agreements and make sure that the subscription has all backup strategies covered efficiently.
Developing the project and operations
As you have carefully analyzed now is the time to develop the project. You have to include the core features of the application to create the scalable software and its architecture.
The custom development process mostly goes through the testing and one of its most significant approaches is the A/B test. This test is done to evaluate the overall performance of the application and iteration.
Testing of the project is undeniably important for its successful implementation because it checks for the overall functioning in the application hence it cannot be excluded.
Once the project development and testing have been on the surface the most important phase comes is deploying the necessary operations. Whenever any user asks for ‘How to develop a saas application’ this phase has everything covered in it and it corresponds to the equity of agreements, compliance, security, shared resources and infrastructure of cloud and so on. It also covers the specifications of earlier stages highlighting the services in project development.
How to develop saas applications and products?
While discussing the development of SaaS applications and products it is incredibly important to deliver quality and values with it. The product must be capable of introducing suitable concepts which are required to target a certain audience.
All the applications include management of account, functional tools, analytics and so on. These features must be collected efficiently and can be presented as an attractive forum for potential customers so that their dashboard is free from overloaded features.
Where it is considered essential to include maximum features in the application to make it convenient for the user it is most obvious that the users might not like the confusing or pointless attire of it.
It is advisable to include advanced features in the applications so that users can gradually move towards it and get in touch with its actions.
The SaaS application development model is highly applied in the business platforms where the developers are willing to learn its implementation.
In general, the companies are leveraging the strategies to highlight their market presence. Some of the best practices that you can follow during the development process are;
Scalability of the Application
This is the most significant advantage of creating SaaS applications as it adds to its overall capacity. Managing the horizontal and vertical scaling of the application, it helps to build the units behind hardware and software.
- In-app support
- Omnichannel motive
- Protection of data
- Regular updates
- Integration strategies
- Service charge
In-app support
Because of the data embedded with the applications the overall functioning gets complicated. Hence the user’s report can be delivered with the help of detailed tutorials or life chats.
Omnichannel motive
It is one of the most important strategies to unify the potential customer’s requests and to keep their records made with previous interactions in order to simplify and understand the latest ones.
Protection of data
No development of SaaS applications is possible without data encryption. So you must try to figure out all the possible dimensions that guarantee an optimal level of security for your application.
Regular updates
This is the obvious reason that customers must benefit from using your application and understanding the requirements of the user you must definitely improvise your platform on a regular basis.
In order to deliver the best application experience to the customers, you have to include great values with frequent updates in the application.
Integration strategies
In general, most of the companies migrate from one platform to another or use multiple applications all at the same time. So it is essential to include the interoperation in between such applications and to provide support for the data exchange.
Service charge
The business platforms are making choices with this approach not because it’s quite convenient and features but it is a pocket-friendly option as well. Instead of spending the money for installation or following the frequent updates, it favors the actual subscription process.
Process of SaaS platform development
The actual process of SaaS platform development goes through modeling the software infrastructure so that the users can yield its benefits. The development process goes through the below-mentioned processes to shape the application.
Which products you are looking for?
Imagine if you have the idea to build the application but are you certain how it will work? Behind any application, the core idea is its resonance with the market and potential users who want to pay for it and then use it.
To understand the depth of the market you can deploy an initial solution by consisting of general HTML pages illustrating your idea to solve any significant point.
This is more or less similar to selling your actual idea by embedding any small description with it. On the web landing page, you can include some important features to encourage regular visitors and you can also promote this website on multiple channels of social media pages to provide it maximum exposure.
Determine your cost model
In order to build the application, this is the second most important step which you have to consider as it is an extremely tricky affair. In order to fairly compensate for the value of your application, you have to provide transparency to the customers in accordance with your product requirements solving any challenge.
If you are not charging enough then it will take longer for the initial investment to reach its position. On the contrary, if you will overcharge the users then adoption of your application may be a huge turn-off. Considering the price models there are some arguments including;
- Freemium
- Per feature pricing
- Tiered pricing
- Use based pricing
These options are not at all exhaustive and you can rather pick the one idea that suits you most. Once you are settled on any idea it would be easy for you to figure out its monetization.
Documenting the requirements
As you have carefully monitored the reliable market for your product than building MVP can be another incredibly helpful idea for you. Instead of building the whole application including a list of features it is better to build it as a minimal viable product.
This will provide you all the core features required for your application and other basic level options as well. This will allow you to test the product during its early adoption by the users and you can get instant feedback with it.
To implement this idea all you have to do is the documentation of required MVP. In order to achieve this target, you can deploy multiple ideas like writing the functional features of specifications of developing series and so on.
Also, keep one thing in mind that inadequate quality standards for documentation can hamper the delivery of your product so it is advised to take enough time for requirements and only implement once it is clear to you.
Choose the tech stack
As you have listed the requirements for your MVP or SaaS project now is the time to choose the technology which the developer must be interested in.
web development technologies are diversifying especially when it comes to client-side or server-side implementation. While picking any tech stack, you must ask yourself a few questions;
- What is the size of a developer resource school?
- Maturation of technology, programming language, etc. Is it dying or still in trend?
- Check for the technology, if it is suitable for MVP or not?
- Is technology capable of supporting the essential features that you require?
- Will it be possible for you to integrate it across multiple platforms?
- Do you know the road map of its programming languages?
All these questions will take a while but make sure that the technology which you are using is not outdated because more developed or would be willing to work with such platforms. Hence the overall efficiency of your tech stack is in your hands.
Search for the developing team
Let’s start from the beginning. You have any idea, you have to check for its implementation, you have the road map to its validation and documented the requirements, you have also settled the tech stack along with the programming language.
Now the core of all the above implementations lies in the developing theme that will help you realize the SaaS application or product. These products are usually distributed over the cloud platform which means that they are capable of manipulating data and consuming the available Web Services from third parties.
They are also capable of rendering information in the web browser of other users and because of all his functions building the SaaS application or MVP essentially involves the skill sets in abundance. You can look for the below-mentioned qualities in your developing team.
- If they are proficient in front end development
- Their experience in JavaScript libraries
- Proficiency in server-side programming
- Proficiency in writing the database queries
- Interaction along with data sets
- Development of business rules
You have to consider hire saas app developer team having a track record of creating and implementing applications on a large scale. If possible you can also look for the team domestically but if it is a hard task then offshore is a good option.
Marketing and building the product
Prior to creating the application, it is worth creating a marketing plan and then advertising it to generate maximum excitement for it. You can prefer any social media platform including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on and the key to using all of them is to create the buzz around your application.
You can also develop a mailing list so that you can contact potential users regarding your product. Once it is sorted now you have to execute the plan.
You have to distribute the project evenly in your team and if required you can also bring the collaboration team and tools into the picture. You can also consider the type of database which you want to use in building the application and how the content delivery network of your application works.
The bottom line
For those who are looking for how to develop a saas application, it is important to know that there are many building blocks that are required to develop a healthy SaaS application or product.
It is extremely important to get your expectations right and to pay attention if they are in accordance with your efforts or not. This platform helps businesses or enterprises to reduce or nearly control software piracy because it is difficult to pirate any software based on the cloud.
SaaS applications are also easy to upgrade and can be accessed from the user anywhere in the world having a stable internet connection.
This platform generates revenue with time and the best part is it doesn’t ask to invest any efforts or resources. The centralized solution is much easier and cheaper to maintain as compared to the other