Last updated on May 23rd, 2023
In 2026, the SaaS industry is expected to be worth a whopping $307.3 billion. The SaaS business is growing and has become one of the most popular software-building methods.
A good SaaS App design is one of the most important ways to get people to use your app. But you’ll need a SaaS product development company to help your business save money on server maintenance and hiring people in-house while focusing on product quality and customer satisfaction.
If you plan to make a SaaS app, you are already on your way to growing your business. In the last few years, SaaS has changed from a decade ago. It has become a popular way to deliver software.
Statista’s most recent study shows that investments in the SaaS marketplace were worth 152.18 billion USD in 2021 and are expected to reach 208.1 billion USD by 2023, which is a CAGR of 6.46 percent.
At the same time, making a SaaS app takes planning, research, and a step-by-step guide. This guide will teach you everything you need to know to build a successful SaaS application. Let’s start from the beginning.
What is a SaaS company?
SaaS means “software as a service,” meaning customers are sold cloud-based software.
Let’s decode this jargon.
Software is called service because it is not sold as a one-time purchase but as a service for which you pay a monthly fee.
The “cloud” is just a name for the internet, where companies build their resources and give some of them to customers when they sign up.
Customers who pay for the services can use this software on the web or through a mobile app. There is no need to download software and install it on the system.
B2B (Business to Business) services, like FreshBooks and Mailchimp, can be used to help other businesses. Their features are more critical to the growth of an organization.
Or, they can serve customers directly, like Netflix or Facebook, which are examples of B2C (Business to Customer) services.
Even if you don’t know much about technology, you use a SaaS-based product somehow. SaaS businesses make money online without much trouble, which helps entrepreneurs succeed.
Why Should You Make A SaaS Product?
The following benefits show why it’s better to build a SaaS product than traditional software:
- A centralized platform like SaaS is easier and cheaper to maintain than most traditional desktop software.
- Because it isn’t easy to steal cloud-based software, SaaS helps companies reduce software theft.
- It’s much easier to give users of your SaaS products upgrades and a more comprehensive range of services. So that you can quickly scale SaaS apps and increase your income.
- SaaS has a more extensive user base because users like its easy access from any device.
- With SaaS products, you don’t have to spend money on hardware infrastructure.
How do you put a good SaaS business model into action?
Your top priority and goal should be to make a SaaS solution that shows a product-market fit. (Knowing the difference between a proof of concept, a minimum viable product, and a prototype will help you understand how a product is made.)
Here is the order of steps you need to take to make sure your SaaS business plan is put into action successfully:
- Come up with the idea that will change things.
- If you need to, make a proof of concept. It will help prove the idea for the product.
- Make a test model. It will help the product get a start-up loan.
- Make an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) based on the freemium model and put it on the market. It will help set up a basic product version that will help record the first reactions and user feedback.
- Take the feedback into account and try to make a full-fledged product.
- Make a plan around the best pricing model for your SaaS product.
- Market, tweak, grow, and do it again.
How to Build Successful Saas Application: the stages of making a SaaS app
Because of this, making a SaaS solution is a challenging task requiring a clear product roadmap with many logical steps.
1. Check out the Market
At this step, you should try to find out as much as possible about your potential customers, competitors, trends, and new technologies. You can make a unique SaaS product when you know your competitors’ apps’ problems and what your customers want.
2. Plan your business.
To make SaaS software, you must carefully plan a complete business plan. It is a clear list of the financial and operational goals you want to reach.
The most common ways to make money are through advertising, subscriptions, and “freemium” models.
If you want to launch a commercial platform, you need to decide how it will make money so that you can add the right features to your SaaS product right away.
3. Choose your app’s way of making money.
Before you start making your SaaS app, the second most important thing is to choose how you will make money from it.
The revenue model makes your app’s features and structure work in the end. So, figuring out how to make money from an app is essential. Knowing your audience’s wants will help you choose the best way to make money.
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Freemium
This is a model in which users can use essential parts of your app for free, but you try to get them to pay for access to more features.
Most of the time, people have to pay money to access analytics, ads, and marketing tools, get support services for users, and so on. MailChimp, GeForce NOW, Slack, and other companies use this model.
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Subscription
This choice means you can only access the data if you pay an hourly, daily, monthly, or yearly fee. At the same time, these SaaS don’t always cost money. A free version with limitations can often be removed by paying for a subscription.
4. Putting ads on the platform
Most SaaS products make money by selling space on the screen to show banner ads, videos, and animations. This is the most ordinary way to create money. It is used by almost every mobile app, including YouTube and Facebook.
5. Pay-as-you-go
With this model, the cost of a SaaS solution is directly tied to how much you use it: the more you use it, the more you pay. Mailgun and Amazon Web Services.
6. Hybrid
A model that uses multiple ways to make money, like Freemium and advertising. Most end-user apps, like Spotify, Twitch, and Netflix, have used this scheme (since August 2020).
7. Choose a provider of infrastructure.
To serve many users and keep their data safe, you need to choose well-known and trusted providers that can keep up with the highest encryption and database server security standards. Choose a cloud provider that can offer excellent scalability, stability, and speed while also letting you integrate with third-party services.
8. Choose the technology stack for the app.
Choosing the app’s technology stack is pretty essential. It would help if you chose different technologies for the app’s backend, frontend, backend storage database, and application server.
Most developers of server-side SaaS apps use Ruby, Python, JavaScript, PHP, and their respective frameworks.
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript frameworks like VueJS and Angular are used in frontend SaaS apps.
Developers of SaaS apps often use databases like MySQL, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL to store language data on the back end.
When choosing a tech stack, the most important things to know are the size of your project, how old the technology is, and how it works with other systems.
9. Design an MVP
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a test version of an app that has only the most essential features.
But it will take some thought to decide which features to use in your MVP. Include the features that cost the least. This will be the best worth for your cash. At this point, you want to get your investors to agree with you.
10. Testing and making changes based on what people say
Once the MVP is out, you should ask for feedback. The best way to do this is to ask users what they like and don’t like about your product.
At this point, making changes to the features or architecture of the app won’t be as complicated or time-consuming as the next steps. The first mover of your application can then be the group you choose for the proof of concept.
11. Outsource or set up a development team in-house
For turning your business idea into a best SaaS solution, you have to deal with the technical aspects of your project, which is SaaS development.
At this point, your development team starts writing code using the programming language, toolkits, and frameworks you chose. Agile methods like Scrum, Kanban, or Extreme Programming will make development easier and faster while still following specifications and ensuring quality.
Today’s best practices are to test software for quality at every stage of development. Also, keep in touch with your development team as they implement your profitable SaaS application idea.
Your goal is to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that you follow the product specifications correctly.
12. Promotion of SaaS Applications
Even though the promotion is listed as a separate step, it should be done simultaneously to build a successful SaaS application for you.
By the time your first release hits online stores, you should already have a group of fans waiting for the final one.
13. Maintenance and Getting Started
The SaaS platform is ready to go live when all the QA testing is done. Another side, user acceptability testing should be the last step of quality assurance, which will happen after your app is released.
After the final release, SaaS developers must keep up with application maintenance and updates. In case of problems, it should be easy for your users to get technical support.
14. Future Of SaaS
So, you know that SaaS is the cool thing to do now, but what about in 15 years?
Where does SaaS want to go?
Technology has changed greatly from smartphones to virtual reality over the past ten years.
People have gotten used to new life changes, and businesses have solved many of their problems.
This has been made possible by the cloud system, which is flexible and cheap. And that’s why people want more to make their lives even better.
Do You Want to Build a Successful Saas Application For Your Business?
Since AI, machine knowledge, and data mechanization are becoming more popular, more businesses are looking forward to adding them to their SaaS platform. The goal is to use these new technologies to make the data easier to understand, more accurate, and easier to work with.
With a data-driven approach, it’s safe to say that SaaS will grow in the coming years and is here to stay.
