Best tech stack for a SaaS application

A SaaS stack is a collection of software solutions that is run and managed by remote service providers

These providers deliver the selections of software based on their consumers’ needs.

The tech stack that you choose will greatly have an impact on development costs. Using a structured framework promotes productivity while reducing the chances of errors.

Ultimately, the technology stack you use will depend on factors such as the size of your project or the security level that's required.

Here are some of the most important factors to consider before picking the best tech stack for SaaS applications in 2022.

Project Size

The size of a project will play a major role in determining which tech stack you choose. Project sizes can be divided into three groups:

Small projects — these include blogs and presentations. All you need is a single framework and the project will be launched.

Middle-sized projects — such projects are usually interactive web applications. Examples include online stores and banking applications. Middle-sized projects require a multilayered framework and interact with various APIs.

Large projects — these are highly interactive and therefore require different frameworks, coding languages, and software tools. Large projects are highly dependent on security. Examples include marketplaces and social media.

Scalability

It is impossible to have business growth without a scalable application. So it is important to use a technology stack that will allow you to add changes as your business grows.

It should also be able to provide integration with other software. There are two aspects of scalability, vertical and horizontal.

Vertical scalability is for adding new tasks, often more complicated ones.

Horizontal scalability processes the possibility of growth. JavaScript React, Node.js, and AWS offer great scalability.

Time to Market

A great way to minimize costs is to use ready-made products. This also reduces the time it will take before you can launch a fully functional application.

The best way is to find products that are close to the ones you are trying to develop. That way you won't have to write code from scratch. Instead, you can simply make changes that would suit your app.

Security

Large and interactive applications require a high level of security. Users need to feel; safe while using financial or shopping applications. The tech stack you use should use approaches that promote security.

Some common approaches include authorization algorithms, using trustworthy servers, frequent backups, and limited periods of access to data.

Team's Skills?

The skills that your developers have will also affect the tech stack that you use.

The level of knowledge that developers have will determine how they can circumvent different coding problems.

So you should choose a tech stack that works in favour of the skills of developers on your team.

This reduces the time it takes to complete projects and prevents you from making unnecessary expenses.

Cost of Maintenance

Factors that affect the cost of maintaining an application include the coding language and architecture.

You can greatly reduce maintenance costs by using open-source software. Open-source software also gives room for reusing products and improves consistency.

Maintenance can be simplified when you use scalable architecture.

Front-end Tech Stack for Devs

The front-end is that part of the application that a client sees and interacts with. Web applications usually require three main technologies: HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. These programming tools are important for the app to run smoothly.

Backend

Everything that runs the web application but cannot be seen by clients is the backend. The backend is responsible for running the app. It can be divided into three components:

Server

App server

Database

MEAN technology stack

MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, and Node.js come together in this tech stack to provide a single-language programming (Javascript) experience.

Using just JS all around, it lets you reuse code around the parts of the product, decreasing repeated coding. MEAN can deploy cloud-based web applications with ease.

It scales quite well, and being open-source, it has a lot of community support and resources.

An alternative to this is the MERN technology stack, with React replacing AngularJS to provide high-end interactive UIs and seamless changes.

LAMP technology stack

Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP come together in this tech stack to provide content management and dynamic web pages.

It is a classic, used by several veterans of the Internet, including WordPress and Drupal. LAMP can deploy web applications quite well, and swapping PHP with Python can result in more dynamism, if required.

It is open-source and has tons of modules and libraries to choose and code from.

Python-Django technology stack

Here, Python acts as the foundation for the Apache web server and MySQL database.

As a framework, Django has a significantly faster development process as it comes with prebuilt modules such as Object-relational mapping layer and SQL injection protection.

This tech stack is generally used for deploying web applications within a short timeline.

Key to Django’s programming principles is ‘Don’t Repeat Yourself’ (DRY) wherein it allows you to reuse code that has been already written in other places within the program.

.NET technology stack

Developed by Microsoft, it has been a longstanding tool used for building dynamic web applications. It is based on C# and is highly compatible with other open-source technologies such as ASP.NET and HTML5 for rapid web development.

As a framework, it is cross-platform and supports all mobile devices, including iOS and Android through its Xamarin implementation.

For those who want to use open source for their solutions, you should know that .NET Core is open-source on GitHub.

The right tech stack benefits your entire vision for your organization and makes your goals much more achievable.

This is because:

The right tech stack makes your product robust on the whole.

Developers don’t waste time to figure out solutions or work on patches due to a mismatched tech stack.

Your product becomes easily maintainable, as badly setup tech stacks lead to later rectifications and a drain in resources.