What You Need To Know About Developing a Successful SaaS Application

We’re going to take a trip down memory lane. It’s 2013 and Microsoft just released its coveted Office software as a subscription-based service. People could finally ditch their discs and license keys for an online (and cancellable) subscription-based Microsoft Office. 

Although this is not the first use case of SaaS applications, it is certainly one you would definitely be familiar with. Let’s dive into the details of what SaaS applications are, what they do, and how SaaS can prove to be a great business model.

WHAT IS A SAAS APPLICATION?

SaaS  (pronounced “SaS”), or software-as-a-service, is an application hosted on the cloud and used over an internet connection via a web browser or mobile app.

SaaS applications are hosted in the cloud and are accessed online via a subscription and replace traditional old-school software that is bought and installed on individual computers.

To access and use these applications, customers create an account, pay a fee, and then get to work.

A simple example of this is Adobe Photoshop. In the past, you had to pay for the version of Adobe Photoshop that you wanted to use. This was a once-off, lifetime purchase. Nowadays you can subscribe to Adobe's product suite for a nominal monthly fee. This is just one example but there are countless others where traditional models have changed to become SaaS models, making them the go-to solution for many companies.

WHAT ARE THE BASIC FEATURES OF SAAS PLATFORMS? 

Although each SaaS application offers a unique set of features and functionality, many SaaS applications share a common set of basic features and functionalities. These part and parcel basic features are as follows: 

• The ability to easily sign up, create an account and pay for the subscription.
• The ability to login and logout of your profile
• Change, pause, or cancel the subscription
• Update billing and credit card information
• Application and data security
• Responsive user-friendly interface
• Automatic updates
• Automated email notifications

WHY IS SAAS BECOMING SO POPULAR? 

The SaaS business model has become increasingly popular over the last few years, both for large and small companies wanting to offer SaaS applications, and also for consumers who are looking for affordable and flexible yet quality solutions. 

Simply put, SaaS became popular for multiple reasons, some of which include its affordability, accessibility, security, and widespread connectivity. Users do not have to buy a physical copy with an installation disc to install updates for the software. These updates can occur online and automatically. 

FOR THE SAAS PROVIDER

Recurring subscription revenue  

Because SaaS pricing models are subscription-based, one of the major benefits for SaaS providers is that payments are made on a recurring basis, mostly monthly and in some instances yearly. This allows SaaS providers to have ongoing cash flow as well. Based on the data that you collect as your SaaS grows, you can also predict future revenue forecasts. 

Instant software update

With any web-based application, new features, fixes, and enhanced functionality will be released on a fairly frequent basis. 

This is no different for SaaS platforms, as they are also based online, so compared to traditional software that would require users to download and install new updates, any new updates and changes once deployed, are instantly accessible to the consumers. 

Scalability

Scalability is power: once the major development of the SaaS application has been completed and consumers come on board, revenue can increase dramatically while the costs increase at a much slower rate. This is highly attractive to SaaS providers because once they have validation that their SaaS application is a hit and they grow their user base, then their revenue and profits increase exponentially.

SaaS applications are attractive business models for business owners who are looking for a more automated income. SaaS applications are relatively cost-efficient to maintain and update. If the initial SaaS application is built with the most important features and functionality, it is easier to update and scale your application.

Attract a large customer base

As you will read below, there are many benefits to the SaaS model from a customer’s perspective. These benefits make it attractive for customers to engage with your service offering and allow you to grow your customer base substantially.

FOR THE CONSUMER:

Familiarity with SaaS subscriptions
Luckily for SaaS providers, consumers are very familiar with SaaS models. They are renting more than buying. The increase of popular services using the SaaS model suggest that consumers are generally much less resistant to make a purchase or commitment. 

Attractive payments
Because SaaS is subscription-based, consumers are not charged with a big upfront payment but rather smaller monthly or possibly discounted yearly payments. Both of these options make it affordable and attractive to prospective customers. 

Flexible options
With SaaS, flexibility is a key benefit to consumers both from an access and subscription perspective. Should a consumer feel that the service offered through the SaaS platform is not working for them, they can quickly and easily terminate their subscription. This flexibility makes it much less risky for a consumer to try out a SaaS service and see if it’s right for them.

Some SaaS applications also offer different packages at different price points. The SaaS would commonly offer basic features as a part of their standard, free package, while it can also offer premium packages with advanced features and more nice-to-have options.

Instant access to updates
As mentioned previously, when new features and functionality are released, these are instantly accessible as there is no need to download and install updates. All updates are instantly available via the web browser. Updates that used to take days and weeks to get distributed to the consumers now take a matter of minutes. Being web-based makes updates available on more mobile devices, too!

WHAT ARE THE TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS WHEN DEVELOPING SAAS APPLICATIONS?

Robust SaaS application should perform flawlessly in the following areas:

SCALABILITY

Scalability is a key consideration for your SaaS application and needs to be a part of the development process from the onset. The ongoing and future success of the platform is highly dependent on the ability of a SaaS application to scale. Scalability is required to allow the platform to:

1. Expand in the future with more features and functionality with no limitations. This need for growth and feature enhancement is typical of every SaaS solution, meaning that as time progresses the platform will get bigger, and more complex with increased automation. 

2. Handle vast increases in users and usage. As these SaaS applications are used more frequently by an increase of users, more transactions are generated, and more files are saved, the platform needs to be robust enough to seamlessly handle future growth with no impediments to the users, data quality, security, and speed. 

DATABASES

While it’s crucial to have a reasonably flexible, big and secure database, it also needs to be designed to cater for your current and future needs. Not only is the design of the database important, the database needs to be optimised for hyper performance and database queries need to be custom written to allow for rapid data queries and insertions.

THIRD-PARTY INTEGRATIONS

Third-party software allows SaaS applications to increase functionality and offer additional features. When it comes to software and web development, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel from scratch, so where a third-party integration makes sense, it’s best to take advantage of what’s on offer and incorporate this into the SaaS application. This is typically done via some sort of API integration.

Common examples of API integrations are with payment gateways (to process credit card payments), and email platforms (for example MailChimp or campaign monitor) among several other business-enhancing integrations. 

FREQUENT UPDATES

SaaS applications are ever evolving and growing with improvements to the UI (User Interface), addition of new features, and enhancements of existing functionality. 

These changes are driven by the need to constantly improve and better the SaaS product, combined with customer feedback on requests for new features and changes that will make their experience better. 

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO DEVELOP A SAAS APPLICATION?

The length of time that it takes to develop a SaaS application depends on a variety of factors. However, as a general rule of thumb, you would be looking at a minimum of two to three months as a starting point for smaller and simpler SaaS solutions. This rough time frame also applies to the MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The SaaS application launches where the product is launched with the bare minimum features to test the viability of a concept and to determine if it gains traction.

As a rough guideline for more complex SaaS applications, you could be looking at 6 to 12 months as the length of time it would take to develop a SaaS application.  These SaaS applications may contain a lot of custom functionality, API integrations, and automated features. 

There are many factors at play that influence the amount of time these custom SaaS development projects take, such as the complexity of the application, the extent of the features required for launch, the need to integrate with third-party APIs, and also the size of the development team. 

CUSTOM SAAS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Here at Elemental, we custom develop and launch all kinds of SaaS applications based on our client’s unique requirements, spanning many different industries and for different territories. We’ve been doing this since 2005, and we’ve gained invaluable experience along the way, from the initial planning phase to the development of the entire platform. Integrations with third-party services are common with these applications and we’ve done a ton of bespoke integrations to bring additional functionality and value to our client’s SaaS applications. 

We love the possibilities that exist with SaaS platforms both for vendors and for customers, and we’re always up for a challenge of taking a complex business offering and developing it into a simple yet powerful online SaaS application that can be highly impactful. 
 

STEPS TO BUILD A SAAS APPLICATION

1. Discovery Phase

In this initial phase, time is spent scoping out the requirements of the SaaS application. This covers various items, such as defining the different types of users of the platform, what each user journey looks like, what are the features and functionality that are required to be custom developed, and finally what integrations and automations need to be included in the platform. 

Outputs from the discovery phase typically include a specification document and wireframes. These two important pieces of information form the scope of the project. 

2. Design Phase

This crucial part covers the design of the SaaS application’s User Interface (UI). A key component that works hand in hand with beautifully designed interfaces is to be able to ensure that the UX (User eXperience) is logical and user-friendly.

If wireframes have been produced in the Discovery Phase, then the UX should have already been catered for. The UI designs make use of these created wireframes as a base from which to add the colours, branding, visual elements and styling components to bring the interface to life. 

3. SaaS Application Development

This is where the rubber meets the road. The development is the biggest phase of the project. There are various parts to the development of the application, which include the following: 

• User Interface development:

Also known as “slicing”, this phase entails converting the User Interface designs into functional and responsive layouts that work in all sorts of web browsers from smartphones to tablets and desktop computers. 

• Front-end integration:

This entails adding functionality to the front end of the application. In other words, it ties the User Interfaces that were developed in the above section with features and functionality to make the application work as intended.

• Back-end development:

This entails the design and development of the database, which is used to house all information that is used by the SaaS application. 

Back-end development also entails the development of functionality that allows users to perform a bunch of activities like managing subscriptions and content on the platform.

• API integrations:

If the SaaS platform needs to speak to any third-party systems, this is accomplished by developing the application to integrate with provided APIs. 

• Automation:

Should there be any automated procedures that are part of the platform, these are developed in this phase.

4. Quality Assurance and deployment:

During this step, extensive efforts are made to test the entire SaaS application. This includes testing of the rendering of the visual screens, to ensure that they display correctly and that all visual components show correctly. 

Functional testing is a huge part of this process and is responsible for ensuring that all the functionality works as specified, that all information is saved and retrieved correctly in the database, and that all features perform as expected. 

Deployment is the process of moving the codebase and database to different environments. Without getting too technical, there will be a staging environment where testing can be performed. The live or production environment is where the actual SaaS application will be hosted and accessible by the public. 

Deployments are done many times throughout the project to both staging and production environments. 

5. Support and future development

Once the SaaS application has been launched, there will be a need to ensure that there is support and maintenance done on the platform, on an ongoing§ basis. 

Over and above the maintenance tasks, there will be ongoing future development of new features and functionality. This is typical of most SaaS applications as they continue to evolve and grow to meet the demands of the customers and vendors. 

FUN FACT

Did you know that services such as Netflix and Spotify are classified as SaaS offerings?

These are all subscription-based services that run in a web browser or a mobile app and are hosted in the cloud. They offer flexibility in terms of subscribing and cancelling the subscription, and are relatively inexpensive. 

You’ve probably been using a whole load of services without realising that they are SaaS applications. 

SIGNING OFF WITH...

The rundown on a SaaS application is as simple as the solution itself. It is out with the old and in with the new for many software providers, and not just providers, consumers love SaaS applications to due their benefits. 
SaaS applications offer much more cost-effective, easily updated, and flexible options for users. Oftentimes, consumers can subscribe to different deals that cater to their needs, and if they don’t like it, they can cancel their subscription. 

For providers, if they have an excellent development team like ours at Elemental working with them, coupled with a great idea for a solution-providing SaaS, they can have a revenue-generating product on their hands within a year or less. If the SaaS is well-developed from the onset, maintenance would cost a fraction of the price compared to traditional methods of distributing software. 

When developing a SaaS, providers must keep in mind that their project might be a massive hit. For this reason, they should keep in mind that the SaaS must be developed with scalability in mind. If it becomes popular, providers can predict future revenue based on their monthly or yearly subscriptions. The benefits of a successful SaaS application are endless. 

If you are sitting on an idea for a revolutionary SaaS application, get in touch with us and let us design and develop it to your specifications with years of expertise!