Hiring a SaaS Development Company: All You Need to Know

Hiring a SaaS development company might be the most important decision in the entirety of your business career. The reason is that making a mistake with this team could ruin any chances of success you have. Your idea might be exceptional and your budget might be unlimited. But if you go wrong with developers,  none of it will matter.

So, it’s vitally important to know how to choose the best SaaS software development company. In fact, first, you need to understand exactly what makes this company ‘the best’. Read on and find out.

Why Hire a SaaS Development Company?

Custom software development for small business is always a good idea because it helps boost business productivity and cut costs. SaaS software development services can benefit your company greatly for similar reasons. But the usefulness of software as a service goes beyond that. First and foremost, this type of software product development is beneficial to the end-user. It means that if your business is planning to sell this product instead of using it internally, you can get a competitive advantage in the market.

The main reasons why investing in the services of a SaaS development company is suitable for your business include:

SaaS products are cheaper

It’s a simple truth. SaaS software p[eroduct development is cheaper for everyone. For those who order the product, the development itself is more affordable, and so is the software license. As the solution is hosted on third-party hardware, the overall cost is going further down.

Of course, there is also a matter of the product’s complexity. When hiring a SaaS development company, you can start small. It means that at the initial launch, your product can have only a few features. Then, as it starts making money, you can employ SaaS development consulting services to improve it. Adding more features as you can afford it will make the product more cost-efficient in the long run.

You also need to remember that SaaS software products are more affordable for users. It means that it’ll be easier for you to sell them. In addition, people don’t need to have expensive hardware to run these solutions. Therefore, your target audience can expand significantly.

SaaS products are highly accessible and easy to distribute

Speaking of accessibility. With SaaS products, you can take advantage of globalization right away. Simply put, there will be able to distribute your solution worldwide with minimal effort. So, you’ll be able to target multiple markets, thus increasing your chance of success.

Sometimes, you’ll need to invest in localization or at least content translation. However, your SaaS development company might be able to help you with this and create a multilingual product. Furthermore, it means that you’ll have a headstart on the market due to your international outreach.

Another advantage of the SaaS online distribution model is that you can make good use of tiered subscriptions. This pricing model can be highly beneficial for small businesses. Especially if you plan to add more features to the product later on. Those extra features can be rolled out to your Premium subscribers first. Also, you can launch various polls and questionnaires among these subscribers to find out what features people are most interested in. This will greatly supplement the data from your SaaS development consulting company.

Your business is 100% scalable

Scalability is the name of the game today. The best thing about SaaS software development is that it enables you to build a business that’s easy to scale. In essence, the SaaS business model is scalable by default.

It’s vitally important for any startup that wants to take over the world by storm. So, this type of software development is the best way to realize an innovative app idea. Moreover, it’s a great business model to choose if you want to launch several products simultaneously. SaaS software development flexibility allows you a lot of freedom to create products users really need. And you can update and change them based on the audience’s response through comments and reviews.

What Can Go Wrong When Hiring a SaaS Development Company?

The worst thing that can happen when hiring a software development company is choosing developers not qualified to do the job. Please note that they can be superb quality professionals in some specific type of development. However, if they aren’t experts in creating SaaS products in particular, there’s a high risk of your entire project failing.

It’s because, for all their benefits, SaaS software products do have some weaknesses. And it’s essential to understand them so that you can work around them and create a reliable and secure product. The best way to achieve this is to start by talking to a SaaS development consulting company. These are people who specialize in SaaS and business analysis. Therefore, they are able to explain both strengths and weaknesses your future app might have.

The main things to look out for with SaaS software development services are:

Security

A trustworthy SaaS development company must guarantee that your product will comply with all SaaS security standards. In fact, these professionals should go a step beyond and make sure your app is safe from all current cybersecurity threats. Moreover, they need to stay aware of these threats and improve your app with regular updates to increase its security level.

Note that SaaS software products are more vulnerable to attacks due to the fact that they are hosted separately. Also, their design sometimes compromises top security features to make the product accessible.

Therefore, it’s vitally important to find a SaaS development company with expertise in securing SaaS products. Check the certifications of their cybersecurity professionals. Top certificates in this area today are:

• CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate)
• CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker)
• NCSF (NIST Cybersecurity Framework)
• CHFI (Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator)
• CISSP (Certified Information System Security Professional)
• CCSP (Certified Cloud Security Professional)
• CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor)

Third-party payment systems

Integrating third-party products into a SaaS platform triples security risks by default. The matter becomes even more severe when this third-party software is a payment system. Talk to your SaaS development consulting professionals about these systems and how you will monetize your product.

If you need to add a payment system, discuss whether it’s safer to use an existing payment solution or develop your own. In some businesses and in some countries, the selection of payment processing operators might be limited. In this case, you’ll have no choice but to use one of the existing options. Therefore, a SaaS development company must have experience with this particular system. Moreover, the product must be developed with this particular integration in mind.

In addition, if your goal is to scale fast and go international, you might need to integrate additional payment providers. Discuss this with your SaaS development company to create the most efficient strategy.

System availability

Your SaaS development company must be able to ensure that the system doesn’t go offline with every update. Zero downtime deployment is vitally essential for SaaS software products that require frequent releases of new improved versions. There are some techniques that developers can use in order to minimize inconveniences to the platform’s users. You need to think through this strategy at the product development stage. It’s because such a system is a long-term project. Therefore, you must release it with optimal parameters for future updates.

However, bear in mind that zero-downtime deployment technologies will be more expensive. So you need to plan your budget very carefully.

SaaS Development Company: Best Practices

In order to provide top-quality SaaS development services, the company you hire must employ a set of specific practices. They will ensure that the software engineers and solution architects can overcome any challenges associated with the creation and launch of SaaS platforms. Moreover, adherence to the following principles will guarantee that the solution you get performs at maximum efficiency.

Developing an appropriate SaaS architecture

Designing the right architecture is crucially important to ensure a SaaS product runs smoothly and efficiently. Expert opinions differ on whether SaaS software development should be based on monolithic or microservices architecture. There are pretty solid arguments for and against both options. Therefore, it’s vital to find a SaaS development company that will be able to create the best plan for you.

Monolithic architecture is stable, which is vital for SaaS platforms. However, it’s all a vast codebase, meaning that any changes to the solution will require changing the entire thing. It’s time-consuming, complicated, and risky. However, in a big way, this disadvantage of monolithic architecture for SaaS can be offset by developing a layered architecture. In this case, ‘layers’ of code add flexibility for further improvements.

Microservices architecture is much more flexible by default because it consists of multiple components. Therefore, it’s an excellent option for highly complex SaaS solutions. But it also has drawbacks, in particular, it’s tough to manage. So, a SaaS development company that works with microservices architecture must prove that it’s capable of doing it well. Check out case studies and developers’ portfolios as proof of experience.

Also, note that the solution architect on your SaaS development project must be highly qualified and experienced. Moreover, it must have experience with this specific type of software. This expertise is necessary to make the best decisions for your product after assessing all the factors.

Setting up a CI/CD pipeline

The DevOps team of your SaaS development company must be just as experienced with this type of project. These people must ensure that your future platform is built with an integrated CI/CD pipeline.

It’s necessary to ensure that your SaaS product can be easily updated later on. The DevOps team working on your project will focus on continuous improvements and upgrades of every process. And in order to do that, the system must be designed to accommodate any of these future changes.

The entire development lifecycle of a SaaS product needs close monitoring. Therefore, CI/CD is essential to bring together the development and operation activities.

Fighting latency with CDN

Using CDN (content delivery network) during SaaS software product development helps fight latency, a problem of many SaaS platforms. It’s a highly important issue for anyone who wants to go global with the SaaS business.

CDNs, like CloudFront from Amazon, can be used to ensure that users from different countries can access all the materials within your app without suffering from latency. It means that the CDN makes the physical location of the servers irrelevant.

In order to make the most of this technology, you need a SaaS development company experienced in using CDN. So, be sure to ask what the developers plan to do in order to fight latency.

Conducting a security compliance audit

No matter how much effort you put into ensuring the security of your SaaS product, it could have more. Considering the fast-growing cybersecurity threats, you need to do everything possible to make your SaaS application safe. And your SaaS development company must understand this.

One crucial consideration during the development process is security standards compliance. If you don’t want your product to be banned, it must comply with all relevant regulations. Note that although there are international SaaS security standards, some countries have extras of their own. Therefore, it’s best to have a security audit of the application that takes all of these in mind.

You either need to hire a SaaS development and consulting provider with experts that can do this audit or hire an independent compliance expert. This might seem like too big an expense. However, it’s a must-have requirement for any SaaS business that wants to operate internationally.

What to Look for in a Provider of SaaS Software Development Services

Finding a trustworthy and experienced SaaS development company can be a challenge. As a client, you need to know exactly what to look for:

Expertise with all necessary tools and technologies

First and foremost is for the SaaS development team to have experience working with all technologies needed to create a superb SaaS platform. Go over the points listed above to see what the best practices of SaaS creation are. These are the things that your development team must know well.

Also, be sure to not only take their words for it. A trustworthy SaaS development & consulting provider must be able to back up their words with case studies. Take a look at what the company had already done and what certifications its developers and solution architects have. This way, you’ll make sure that they are adept in technologies needed to make your SaaS solutions outstanding.

Just to give you some idea, here is a list of technologies that are often used during SaaS software development:

• CDN
• NodeJS
• .NET
• Java
• PHP
• Angular
• React
• UI/UX design
• AWS
• Azure

This is not a complete list. However, it should give you a better perception of just how versatile the SaaS development company’s team has to be. In addition, do not forget that this team must include experienced DevOps and a top-grade solution architect.

Ability to provide streamlined agile processes

Your SaaS development company must be adept in agile software development. It’s because agile processes are far superior in cost-efficiency and productivity. Therefore, check if the company has certified PMs involved in your project.

In fact, a reliable company should tell you that they work on agile streamlined processes right away. It’s an essential advantage for software developers. Therefore, those who are accredited experts in it always make sure to include this information in their profile.

In order to provide the most efficient processes, your SaaS development team should include:

• Solution architect (or several, depending on the complexity of your product)
• DevOps experts
• Front and back-end software developers
• Project manager
• QA testers

Do not forget about the importance of QA testing services for any software development project. Testers often don’t get enough credit for their work. However, without them, no solution will have a chance to succeed.

Bottom Line: Hire a SaaS Development Company You Can Trust

If you want to build a SaaS product, you need to hire a development company that is skilled and experienced in this type of projects. It’s essential to take your time exploring the options because this company will have a huge impact on your business’ success.

To find the best team, you should start with engaging SaaS development consulting services. At this stage, you’ll be able to understand what kind of services your SaaS creation team must provide.

Never forget that every SaaS product is unique. So, the development team can take several approaches to bring your ideas to life. It’s also important to understand that different companies might have different plans. They might all have strong and weak points. Therefore, you’ll need to do your own research to evaluate and compare various offers.

When searching for a SaaS development team, you should look for honesty and expertise. A team that can be trusted will openly share their credentials as well as case studies. Skilled developers are proud of their work and ready to back up their words with concrete evidence.

If this is the kind of SaaS development company you are looking for, contact us! Our expert solution architects, DevOps, and software engineers are ready to take on any challenge.