Choosing a SaaS Product Development Company: Our Tips

As you know, any successful product starts with team assembling, and the SaaS industry is no exception. To help you surmount the challenge, we've prepared a step-by-step guide on how to select a trusted SaaS product development company and enriched it with our expert tips. And it doesn't matter whether you have already created a short list of candidates or just started a search process, as in this guide, you will find valuable advice for both scenarios.

How to Find a SaaS Partner in 7 Steps

The SaaS market is gaining momentum today, and the trend is likely to continue, as its size is predicted to reach $883.34 billion by 2029. No wonder forward-looking undertakers strive to jump on the bandwagon and start their own SaaS business. If you want to follow their lead, just stick to our guide.

Step#1. Decide on the Required Services

First, you need to define the scope of cloud services required for your SaaS solution. Below, you will find the most demanding SaaS development services.

SaaS Product Design

If you want to boost your digital presence and reach a wide audience, an intuitive and eye-catching user interface is a must. Design concept elaboration and implementation are a part of SaaS application development services that many software companies will eagerly offer you.

SaaS Testing & QA

According to the survey by Logic Monitor, 58 out of 66 IT organizations face certain security challenges with SaaS. That is why, when building a product in a SaaS environment, always conduct thorough testing and apply additional measures to protect your software from hacking attacks and data leakages.

Maintenance & Support

Such a cloud computing model as SaaS proves to be truly cost-effective, as it shifts the burden of infrastructure maintenance to a service provider. Still, while the vendor handles the cloud, your task is to keep the software compatible with all the updates. Also, after the SaaS app release, it's essential to collect customer feedback and constantly enhance the product. In both cases, upscale maintenance services really come in handy.

SaaS App Development

Since the SaaS development process requires a lot of time and significant investments, get ready to find a software development company aimed at a long-lasting partnership. As a rule, to build a fully-fledged SaaS solution from scratch, you need to extend the already mentioned services with consulting, project planning, software development, and product management.

SaaS Product Management

A SaaS product manager is a tech-savvy specialist who keeps a close eye on an app from ideation to the go-to-the-market stage. Besides, ensuring a smooth development process for each new iteration is also the responsibility of the product manager.

SaaS Platform Customization

Those who want to unleash the potential of the already-built SaaS application or adjust the functionality of an off-the-shelf solution to the current business goals may take advantage of customization services. Such an option allows most SaaS businesses to create high-end digital products aligned with the latest market trends.

Consulting Services

Even the most innovative idea may go dash against reality and drain your resources. That is why, before investing in a full-scale development process, test the feasibility of your idea. If you can't do it by yourself, feel free to resort to a software development company and let its business analysts scrutinize the market, analyze the competitors, and assess the potential of your project.

Cloud Migration

By migrating the already existing application to the cloud, you may extend the boundaries of your high-quality product and exceed customer expectations. Moreover, switching to a SaaS-based architecture allows you to reduce maintenance costs, boost scaling potential, drive business growth, and gain a competitive advantage over rivals.

Step#2. Analyze Cooperation Models

Once you've selected the desired services, it's time to define the partnership model that answers your requirements and budget. As a rule, software service companies offer either outsourcing or staff augmentation. Since many people tend to mix these models up, let's take a closer look at them.

Outsourcing

SaaS development outsourcing is an umbrella term for the processes connected with delegating certain tasks to third-party providers. This cost-effective business model allows you to hire rock-star SaaS developers or even fully-fledged teams for the desired period of time. Still, keep in mind that outsourced specialists may be also involved in other tasks while working on your project.

Depending on the location of a service provider, outsourcing is divided into:

• Onshoring (a software company is situated in your country/region in a very similar time zone, it shares your language and culture, but the prices are average or even above average);
• Nearshoring (a provider is located close to your region, sometimes, even shares your culture and language, and offers budget-friendly services);
• Offshoring (a product development team works far abroad in a remote time zone, it may not share your language and culture, but the prices are the most tempting).

SaaS outsourcing is an excellent engagement model that allows business owners to tap into a rich talent pool in a cost-effective way. It's no surprise, 65% of successful companies (from 45 countries) employ outsourcing to cope with their daily tasks.

Dedicated Development

Extended software development (a.k.a. dedicated development, staff augmentation) is another cost-friendly way to let tech-savvy specialists join your team.

Unlike outsourced professionals, dedicated developers are completely involved in your project. They work under your logo on the premises of the development company with separate server facilities and dedicated infrastructure. Moreover, since your employees work in close collaboration with highly-skilled dedicated specialists, they get an opportunity to enhance their skills and gain valuable experience for free.

Step#3. Assess Team Competency

After the engagement model is defined, you need to assess the skills of SaaS developers. Although it may be pretty challenging to do it solely by analyzing the information from the websites, you may at least give it a try and scrutinize the company's tech stack, level of expertise, recent cases, and retention rates.

Below, you may find the key technologies to keep in mind (1–2 from each row will be more than enough), while analyzing development teams.

SaaS Technology Stack

In case the tech stack is not represented on the website, don't hesitate to contact the company and ask for developers' CVs. Such a request will not oblige you to anything but help you make a better-informed decision.

Step#4. Check How the Development Process Is Organized

While assessing the specialists' skills, pay attention to the development process. As a rule, website pages contain such information, but if you can’t find it, feel free to contact the company.

The most typical SaaS development process is the following:

1. Ideation (specialists test the viability of your SaaS idea, estimate the project, and offer possible monetization strategies);
2. Roadmapping (dedicated experts turn your product idea into a detailed, easy-to-comprehend plan and help you select a cloud provider & subscription model, development methodology, tech stack, and the number of features & functions);
3. SaaS design & architecture planning (design concepts and wireframes, as well as the architectural pattern, are defined);
4. Development (SaaS developers pool their efforts to unite all the required components in a final product);
5. Testing (the product is tested and analyzed, and developers fix the errors and enhance the security);
6. Launching & updates (the product is launched, and experts collect and analyze the feedback to meet user expectations in the next releases);
7. Maintenance & support (tech experts keep a close eye on the software components and adjust them to the latest requirements).

When analyzing the development process, check what methodologies a company employs. If you find Agile or DevOps, it is a good sign, as they presuppose flexibility and automation.

An MVP approach will also be a competitive edge, as a minimum viable product is the simplest version of a digital solution that allows you to quickly test the feasibility of your idea and save money on testing and bug fixes.

Step#5. Scrutinize Portfolios and Reviews

Another crucial detail you should pay attention to is customer feedback. Scrutinize the clients' testimonials and the company's recent projects. In case you don't trust such reviews, go further and analyze the unbiased opinion of time-tested rating platforms like Clutch.co, CrowdReviews, IAOP, or GoodFirms.

Step#6. Pay Attention to Benefits

Many SaaS platform development companies offer additional services for free as a bonus. While comparing the final-round candidates, find out what perks and bonuses they offer. It may be discounts for choosing a package of services, free post-release support, profound market analysis, or something else.

For instance, Qulix SaaS developers offer their customers omnichannel support, accelerated release, and free security audit.

Step#7. Estimate the Cost

SaaS products are rather flexible in terms of features and functions you can embed into them. Therefore, the exact figure will depend on the development stage (whether it is from-scratch development or enhancement of the existing SaaS platform), the number of third-party integrations, data security mechanisms, feature complexity, and other factors. On average, a top-class SaaS app requires $20–300k of investments.

Valuable Insights

Now that you are armed with a perfect search strategy, all that is left to do is to sum up the above-mentioned insights and make the first step toward digital transformation.

#1. What Is a SaaS Product?

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a delivery model that enables users to take advantage of cloud-based solutions on a subscription basis. To reap the benefits of on-demand, web-hosted SaaS products, all you need is a stable internet connection.

#2. What Is an Example of a SaaS Product?

We bet you make use of SaaS platforms every day as Google Workspace, Zoom, Netflix, and even your favorite language app Duolingo belong to this cloud service model.

#3. What Are SaaS Product-Based Companies?

A SaaS development company is responsible for maintaining databases, servers, middleware, tools, and software that is delivered to users over the internet. Google, Oracle, Atlassian, Dropbox, and Zendesk are examples of such companies.

#4. What Is SaaS Product Development?

SaaS platform development is a multistep process of designing and building a highly-functioning cloud-based solution that may be accessed by subscription from any location.

#5. What Are the Stages of SaaS Product Development?

A SaaS product development process encompasses such stages as ideation, business analysis, design & architecture elaboration, app creation, testing, and launching. Besides, when building SaaS applications, you should pick a cloud provider and a software delivery & pricing model that will match your possibilities and requirements.

#6. What Does a SaaS Developer Do?

SaaS developers are highly-competent specialists who can boast experience with Python, Django, Flask, React, AWS, IBM Cloud, GCP, Azure, or similar technologies (just several from the list will be enough). The key role of these tech geniuses is to create, test, and deploy SaaS apps.

#7. Can Product Development Be Outsourced?

When building a SaaS product, you may take advantage of both in-house and outsourced specialists. Still, if you need to accelerate the hiring process and extend your team with competent developers at the most tempting price, take a look at SaaS outsourcing.

Have a unique, game-changing SaaS app idea that allows for no delay? Share with us your product vision, and we will do our best to bring it to life.