Here is how a real example of saas development costs can be split into five major areas:
- development costs
- bug costs
- scalability costs
- infrastructure costs
- opportunity costs
However, all of these costs can be significantly reduced with the use of better tools. Specifically, low-code platforms can speed up development, increase system stability, and overall reduce project costs.
This means low-code tools can reduce your time to market and accelerate your product innovation.
Development Costs
When creating a SaaS product, most of your costs will be related to the development. And there is very little you can do about it using traditional development.
You can hire a faster development team, but they will likely be more expensive. You can try outsourcing to other countries, but that introduces additional risks and challenges. For example, coordinating work in different time zones, etc. And if you hire developers with less experience, they might produce software with more errors and buggy behavior.
In short, there is very little you can do to significantly reduce the costs of your project without some major breakthrough. And the good news is this new breakthrough is already here in the form of superior development tools.
Specifically in the form of low-code tools:
- App Builder allows you to build web apps using simple drag-and-drop functionality in your browser. On top of available components, you can easily create your own, so you are not limited by the platform in any way.
- 8base Backend helps you build your database quickly by defining and connecting your tables in the browser. The best part is all the default endpoints are created for you out of the box. And your backend is ready to go.
With low-code platforms, you can speed up your development by 3-5X. At the same time, the user interface is intuitive, which results in a very fast learning curve.
Bug Costs
This is related to development costs. We could talk about the causes of technical debt, but if you want higher development speed, you'll likely introduce more bugs into your code.
So you end up paying for the bugs sooner or later. Slower development, better planning, and writing more and better code tests are ways you pay in advance. Letting your unsatisfied users report the software issues is how you pay later. And the price you pay later is always higher.
Low-code platforms have pre-built components already used in many projects and for various use cases. And any potential bug can be spotted sooner because of the components' diverse use.
So you only have to focus on testing your business logic. And you end up with a better-tested product while spending less time testing it, which reduces bug-related costs.
Scalability Costs
Building scalable web applications is not an easy task. But it's a lot easier if the low-code platform you're building on has scalability out of the box.
And this is the case with 8base. Whatever you're building, it is automatically scalable from one to a million users (and beyond).
This has 2 significant benefits:
- You don't have to invest in developing your software architecture to support a large number of users before you actually need it.
- You will not get caught by surprise in case of sudden userbase growth. Your app will not become slow or crash. And your users will not have a bad experience with your SaaS product.
Both benefits are included in your product if you choose to build it on a low-code platform.
Besides, manually implementing scaling capability is taking away precious time from your developers, who could be developing new features. Because the end users will not notice any difference before and after your team implements "scalability".
In fact, that is the whole purpose of scalability. Regardless of the number of users, your SaaS app works the same. But to your end users, it seems like you're not doing anything useful.
Plus, scalability is not something that your users will sign up for. They expect your SaaS product to work. Your customers will only buy based on the features and benefits your product brings to the table.
Infrastructure Costs
Infrastructure is tightly related to scalability. If you acquire infrastructure before it's really needed, you will have to pay for it ahead of time.
If you wait for your user base to grow, you will pay the price for a bad customer experience if it grows too fast. And in today's day and age, bad customer reviews are enough to destroy the SaaS project you were working on so hard.
To reduce infrastructure costs, and prevent unnecessary infrastructure technical debt, consider using low-code platforms.
They will allow you to only pay for what you really need and use. And you will not have to spend valuable resources on developing and maintaining the infrastructure ahead of time.
Opportunity Costs
By far, this is the highest cost of them all. The resources you allocate to any SaaS development project are limited. And whatever you invest in one part of the project cannot be used in other parts.
For example, every dollar you use on software development is a dollar that is not being used on marketing, advertising, or content production.
Let's say you know that using a low-code platform can increase software development effectiveness by 3-5X. Then you also know this will lower the software development costs proportionally.
And all these extra resources can be used in other places where they are crucial for the survival of the entire SaaS project. A place like an online promotion that is used for customer acquisition.
Because no matter how good your software product really is, if no one hears about it, it will never succeed.
The development cost was just one example, though.
What if you combined all the cost reductions enabled with low-code platforms…
- reduced development costs
- reduced bug costs
- reduced scalability costs
- reduced infrastructure costs
…and put them all towards product promotion?
How much more likely is your SaaS company to succeed? How many people can hear about it? And how much faster could it grow if you chose the best development tools available today?
And finally, will you give low-code tools a chance to amaze you?
