4 ways to cut your SaaS development costs in the early stage

As we've already discussed in one of the previous articles, most founders have to invest 70,000 – 150,000$ to build SaaS or platform MVP . It is a benchmark for 2022 based on quotations from IT development companies in the US, Europe, and India. Yes, it might differ from this benchmark based on how complex the SaaS solution you are building is.

Now, let's dive into the 4 ways how we can cut our SaaS development costs:

1. Prepare tech specifications and wireframe.
2. Consider low-code or no-code for your minimum viable offer.
3. Leverage already available solutions to build your marketing funnel.
4. Choose the most popular frameworks and coding languages.

Cut your development costs with tech specification

Tech specification of your SaaS platform is not a thing that is needed only for IT geeks. If you are a SAS founder, you should be willing to prepare tech specifications before hiring your first developer. If you are a developer, you should at least draft tech specifications before writing the first line of code.

Why? Because if you prepare tech specifications correctly, it will cut your size development cost tremendously. In my personal experience working with startups, I've seen even more than 45% savings in SaaS development if you prepare tech specifications correctly and in the early stage. Here is why:

1. You'll foresee many aspects upfront and will need fewer things to redo. It's always cheaper and faster to make changes in tech specifications, mockups, or wireframes rather than in the written code of your software or platform.
2. It will be easy to compare developers' offers. And the more offers you get the greater your chances of getting a better price and reducing your development costs.
3. If you share your tech specifications with different developer teams to get their quotation, you'll also get insights from different developers on what and how it can be improved.

Consider low-code or no-code for your minimum viable offer

If you are in the very early stage, trying to identify whether it makes sense to build your software/ platform or not, consider no-code or low-code tools to create your MVP. You don't need to build a full version of your software or platform with these tools. But it provides you with a chance to create a minimally viable solution that delivers almost the same (or quite similar) value that your software should deliver.

When you are using no-code low-code tools, you can still add extra value by doing some tasks manually. Don’t worry - you even don't have to do that on your own. You can hire a virtual assistant (VA) in some other countries where an hourly rate is lower. And when you get commitment from customers, you can ask them to pay in advance to at least partly fund the development of your software/platform.

I did research on 1,447 startups but I haven’t met a founder who implemented the initial idea fully. It means if you have even the most amazing idea for SaaS or platform business, don't rush to build it – most likely, you’ll have to change multiple aspects of your initial idea. Test it with no-code and low-code tools instead of building as a stand-alone solution.?

Leverage already available solutions to save your time and costs

Save your development costs by leveraging already available solutions in the market.?You don't use these solutions to create the core of your software but for other elements that are still necessary. There are multiple page and funnel builders that you could use to build your:

??homepage,

??landing page,

??sales page,

??blog about your niche or the problem you are solving.

You can simply create a subdomain and host the core of your software there. While you will host your homepage and marketing funnel pages on the main domain. ?This means you won’t waste your developer hours on building web pages and marketing funnels that can be easily and cheaply built with already existing tools like Simvoly.com , ClickFunnels.com , and even Wix.com , or other page builders.?

Choose the most popular frameworks and coding languages

When it comes to choosing the framework and the language that you will use for building your SaaS, check for which frameworks and coding languages are the most popular.

The more popular the framework and coding language are, the easier to find developers to help you with these tasks. And in most cases, the hourly rate for developer services will be lower.

Talk with somebody who is good at one or another specific framework that you are considering choosing. If there is a significant library of different components and elements for this coding language or framework, you have great chances for saving development costs - you won’t need to code everything from scratch. You can pay a few bucks, maybe 50$, maybe 100$ to buy particular components instead of spending tens or even hundreds of hours coding them on your own.

So check which frameworks and coding languages are the most popular and which of them have a significant library of components.?

Want to create a pre-sale offer for your SaaS or platform?

Join me next Monday for a live webinar?on How to create an irresistible offer to pre-sell your SaaS . In this live webinar you will discover how to:

?? structure your SaaS pre-sell offer so that it is almost irresistible,

?? identify and handle main objections so there are no reasons to skip your offer,

?? present your offer at the right time and in the right way.

Register here