Software-as-a-service Application, or SaaS, is making tremendous changes in the market. SaaS applications provide their services over the internet instead of building offline software product solutions. Many innovators and startup CEOs have started relying on SaaS Application Development as their fastest-growing business model. This blog will guide you in understanding the cost of SaaS Application Development.
Build customized, visionary, and user-driven SaaS Applications by partnering with a SaaS Application Development Company. Let us dive into learning more about SaaS Application Development and the cost of building it.
What is SaaS Application Development?
SaaS applications are a service-based alternative to providing offline user-owned software. After noticing the growth in digital transformation, remotely accessible software services are trending. As a result, SaaS application development services are a profound solution. Often, SaaS applications are an on-demand subscription-based service where users do not need to install it locally. Some mainstream examples of outputs of SaaS Application Development Services are Zoom, Salesforce, Netflix, Spotify, and many more.
The user can access the SaaS applications from several devices using their internet browser. Moreover, the SaaS product owner doesn’t have to account for cloud infrastructure maintenance and challenges. These cloud infrastructures and data warehouses are managed by third-party cloud computing service providers like AWS & Azure. SaaS Application Development can result into a robust and scalable product if done right.
The SaaS Application Development Company offers end-to-end solutions by catering to and developing your idea into a SaaS application. Various SaaS Development Services have mentioned below:
- SaaS Application Development & Design
- Multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure
- Third-party APIs integration
- Tech migration & Engineering
- SaaS App Consulting
- Support & Maintenance
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What is the SaaS Application Development Process?
Now, let's look at the basic process to build a SaaS Application Development. The process consists of six steps that are described below and these steps reflect on your development costs:
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Analysis & Planning
The initial steps to follow the process undergoes by analyzing your ideas and generating the workflow for your business planning. One of the critical phases is annotation, which needs in-depth study, planning, and app idea approval.
The list followed by business & execution mapping as follows:
- Research & Assessment
- Business requirement definition
- Software requirement definition
- Prototyping for the SaaS application
- Review the prototype's legal adherence
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UI/UX Designing
The web/mobile app critically focuses on user interface design (UI) and user experience design (UX). While developing the SaaS application for your business, one must choose the target audience. Based on that, a user interface to fulfill those requirements can be designed.
In addition, to keep the user's workflow accessible and lucrative, the UI/UX expert must design the interface with a view to a user’s ease and understanding.
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Development
The root of building the SaaS Application depends on an integral part of development. By following the assessment and frontend part, backend development plays a vital role to showcase the desired result. Here, the backend software engineers will focus on implementing the design, will add features and functionalities, and API Integrations as needed, and make it ready for deployment.
In this phase, the development and cloud infrastructure is a parallel step of the SaaS Application Development process piloted by Solution architecture and software developers. This part directly affects the cost estimation as it is more challenging and time-consuming.
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Deployment
Once the software is ready it will deploy to the cloud platform i.e. AWS, Azure, IBM Watson, Google Cloud, or other such platforms.
At this step, you need an expert DevOps engineering team for a smooth launch on cloud storage. On the top, they can help maintain and scale the cloud infrastructure. Choosing the infrastructure specifications and resources reflects the ongoing costs for the SaaS products.
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Testing and Maintenance
Developing a SaaS Application is not as easy as eating a pie. Testing the SaaS application for every functionality and stretch is an essential step before the delivery.
SaaS Application testing is about delivering the client impeccable, secure, and reliable software. The DevOps engineer supervises and maintains the features to update the cloud server.
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Optimization
To set up a SaaS Application is just half of the SaaS Application Development process. Toward the end, it's tied in with expanding the SaaS business, where enhancement becomes the most important factor.
Optimizing each factor of the SaaS with updates and additions of various features can help improve the scalability, accessibility, and user experience.
Types of SaaS Applications
In the SaaS market, SaaS Applications are categorized significantly. The SaaS Applications have two different solution models, Horizontal SaaS and Vertical SaaS.
The horizontal SaaS model is a well-structured application that uses cloud services. The platforms cater to the big business and run flawlessly and efficiently. Some examples are Salesforce, Microsoft, Slack, etc. Otherside, the vertical SaaS model, is a formation of a SaaS Application for a specific industry.
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Some Examples of categorizing SaaS Applications
Let’s talk about some successful SaaS Applications that give you a clear view of the types of SaaS development.
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Enterprise Solutions
To build an application that covers the whole enterprise solutions in one system, like customer relations, human resources, project management, admin & accounts.
Examples: Sage X3, SAP S/4 Hana, Odoo ERP, Oracle Netsuite, and many more.
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Productive SaaS Applications
The software applications which help the individual or a community to reduce their manual work and enhance their productivity. As a result, the development of project management tools, email marketing tools, to-do lists or task holder platforms, CMS platforms, CRM platforms, Tele calling software user guiding tools, and others.
Examples: Slacks, Freshdesk, MailChimp, Hubspot CRM, etc.
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Accounting & Investments Applications
The applications that provide a platform for users to organize and track their investments, portfolios, and finance.
Examples: Stripe, Braintree, Recurly, and many more.
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Content Creation Applications
The applications that are made to create and publish content on their platforms are categorized as content creation applications. SaaS has given many platforms for the same.
Examples: Canva, Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Crello, etc.
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Content display Applications
The applications are developed on the subscription-based model, and present the content to watch, learn, practice, communicate, and buy & sell products to users. Some of the best examples are mentioned below.
Examples: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, etc.
To build a skill-proven SaaS Application with end-to-end delivery by a SaaS Application Development Company.
What are the perks of SaaS Application Development?
In the market, SaaS Application Development is gaining popularity and presenting the benefits that can help you to grow your business.
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Flexibility
SaaS Applications are web-based software that can access easily from anywhere on the browser. No need to download and install it, as it is stored on the cloud.
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Highly-Scalable
The dataset can be altered or changed at any time as the software is placed on the cloud server.
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Budget-friendly
Developing the SaaS application is more over budget-friendly as it doesn’t require investment in hardware or infrastructure maintenance.
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Reliable & Safe
On the contrary, a SaaS solution is safer and more secure for a company's business to keep their information safe than usual software.
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Effortless Upgradation
SaaS Applications do not need manual updates, it is placed on a cloud server, and all updates are provided and managed by cloud services.
How much does it cost to build a SaaS Application?
The data states that in 2021, the SaaS market had estimated to be worth approximately $152 billion, and it will rise to $208 billion in 2023. By analyzing the margin growth, it claims the trending place in the market.
The founder and co-founders of startups to big ventures started trusting the SaaS platforms for their services. So if you are looking to build a SaaS application then, this section will help you figure out the cost estimation.
The factors that affect the cost estimation of the SaaS application are complexity, type of SaaS applications, development team, the scope of work, and development location. The projected cost of MVP development for the SaaS Applications depends on the type of application and scales between $15,000- $150,000.
Let us dive to learn more about how the various factors are affecting the cost:
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Complexity
The complexity term varies in each feature and functionality. SaaS applications are built with the dynamics of high scalability, advanced data security, personalization, access controls, and payment integrations. Such factors derive the timeline of the cost estimation.
The complexity defines in various ways, some applications involved multiple integrations and functionalities, and some have high complexity of having AI algorithms and big data analysis.
The approximate budget is defined by the complexity of the development that differentiates into phases for smooth development
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Types of SaaS Applications
The most influential factor in the cost estimation for SaaS applications development is choosing its type. We have discussed and learned about some of the different SaaS applications' cases in the above section of Types of SaaS Applications.
One must be clear about what type of SaaS Application they want to build. Types such as Project management software, Enterprise solutions, Content Management Systems (CMS), Accounting Software, CRM software, and more. Each type justifies its cost differently while building a SaaS Application.
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Development Team
Let’s assume you have an idea for developing your SaaS Application that requires X amount of effort to build. Now it’s time to choose the relevant partner. Here are some options that reflect the different investment costs based on your choices as per your budget consideration. This is a critical factor in choosing the type of team for your SaaS Application Development Services. The below list will showcase the team's options and their approx cost.
Here are some reasons that define the difference of the approx cost based on the types of the development team.
How does the geographical location results in the different costs?
The country where the SaaS application development services take place influences your overall expense heavily. As such it is important to consider the right talent from the right places.
Read Here: How to choose a reliable SaaS Application Development Company?
The hidden factors cost of SaaS Development Services
While discussing the cost estimation of SaaS Development services some of the essential but hidden factors that affect the cost are mentioned below:
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Maintenance
Once your SaaS product is live you need to focus on maintaining the software as per user experience. All features and updates are done under cloud storage which may cost you as per your storage requirements.
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Marketing
One should not forget the marketing cost factor that will help to sell the product in the market and increase the traffic towards it.
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Legal Compliances
There are some of the SaaS compliance and certification you need for your SaaS application, some of the certifications are mandatory if you are working with a global user base. As an example, you can't work with European clients except if you conform to GDPR guidelines.
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Customer Support
SaaS Applications always need to look for their targeted audience by providing them with support and guidance. The way to offer remarkable help leaves your clients feeling esteemed and regarded.
Conclusion
In conclusion, investing in SaaS Development Services can result in a high-scale ROI if done correctly. Building a SaaS Application needs a lot of planning, consideration, and choosing the right partner for your services. It is important to frame your idea and target market before diving into developing a SaaS application.
FAQ
To develop the cloud-computing web app with SaaS development services. The SaaS platform is a service provider across the internet.
The development of a SaaS Application majorly relies on the complexity and the type of SaaS Application which scales between the range of $15,000 - $150,000. No one size fits all and as such, every SaaS application project is unique.
Some platforms showcasing the success rate of SaaS Applications Development are Netflix, Spotify, Uber, Talabat, Mailchimp, Zoom, and many more.
The major factors to build SaaS Applications are
- The type of SaaS application
- Check the complexity
- Choose a partner company or team
- The geographical location of developers
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