How to Choose the Right Technology Stack for SaaS Development

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Key Takeaways

• A SaaS software stack combines programming languages, frameworks, libraries, and tools to build and run an application.
• When choosing a technology stack, consider the project’s size, code maintainability, and scalability requirements. Also, pay attention to time to market, security, reliability, and cost.
• The SaaS tech influences app performance. In particular, it impacts execution speed, scalability, and resource utilization efficiency.

Launching a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) project involves selecting the SaaS technology stack. It guarantees the project’s timely completion, operational stability, code maintainability, and scalability of the resulting product.

In this article, we will explain how to choose the best SaaS tech stack based on your unique requirements and discover its key components. We will also explore how to save development time and costs using the BaaS (Backend-as-a-Service) solution.

Why Picking the Right SaaS Tech Stack Is so Important

The SaaS market is expected to reach $1,016.44 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 13.92% from 2022’s $276.11 billion. And this swift growth is not surprising. In 2022, global organizations utilized an average of 130 communication, sales, fintech, and other applications. One of the ways to overcome this competition is to choose the best tech stack for SaaS solutions.

A technology stack comprises programming languages, libraries and frameworks, cloud computing services, and databases. Its primary role is to create and maintain a web or mobile app.

According to Oleksii Glib, Founder of Acropolium, “The technology stack you select dictates the abilities and limitations your SaaS project will have, as well as its versatility and customizability. Some companies and clients like to pick unique stacks for their projects, but this will only make maintenance and product support harder and more expensive down the road.”

Things to Consider when Choosing a SaaS Technology Stack

Here are the most critical factors to consider when choosing a software as a service tech stack:

• Choose the stack your dedicated team is familiar with. This way, you will deliver the product and introduce new features or rapidly change existing ones.
• Introduce new features to production seamlessly, with minimal human interaction, and in a predictable, error-free way. For example, use Continuous Delivery DevOps tools.
• Automate scaling and managing production and staging environments, requiring minimal human effort.
• Onboard new team members quickly and ensure their productivity in as little time as possible.
• Verify whether the technology you select has a predictable future. Otherwise, you will have to replace the language or framework in a couple of years when its support stops.

Also, consider hiring IT outsourcing consultants to analyze project requirements and select the most appropriate solution.

Here’s an example of choosing the most appropriate tech stack for SaaS projects from Acropolium’s experience.

Microsoft introduced Silverlight as an alternative to insecure Flash. It didn’t work for us, so we shifted to HTML5. Its versatile functions quickly made it mainstream, leaving companies using Silverlight with an outdated technology that’s challenging to support.

The same happened to Ruby on Rails. When it came out, clients worldwide asked software vendors to use RoR for their projects and even migrate existing apps. However, this solution turned out to be complicated. Therefore, engineers preferred Node.js.

How Tech Stack Influences App Performance

Now, let’s overview the pivotal impact of a tech stack on app performance in greater detail.

• SaaS programming language and web frameworks in your tech stack directly affect the response times and user responsiveness.
• The database management system (DBMS) choice influences how efficiently your SaaS application stores and retrieves data.
• Well-optimized frontend code ensures a smooth and responsive user interface, enhancing the overall experience.
• Implementing effective caching mechanisms improves performance, reducing the need to fetch data from slower storage systems.
• Server configuration and load-balancing mechanisms influence how your application handles concurrent users.
• Cloud platforms provide tools to scale resources based on demand, ensuring consistent performance during traffic spikes.

Key Components of a SaaS Tech Stack

Each tech stack consists of frontend and backend solutions. Let’s look at these components in more detail.

The Frontend of a SaaS

HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript are the essential frontend development technologies. Besides, multiple additional frameworks reduce the manual work.

Bootstrap 5 dramatically decreases the amount of work needed in HTML. At the same time, the JavaScript ecosystem includes various frameworks like React.js, Angular.js, Vue.js, and many more.

The Backend of a SaaS

The backend stack of your SaaS includes databases, languages and frameworks, security, business logic, and more.

• Software as a service programming language and frameworks. The most popular backend programming languages and their frameworks are Java, C#, Python (Django, Flask), PHP (Laravel, Symphony), and JavaScript.
• Server. You will likely choose Apache, IIS, and Nginx, which can run on-premises or in AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean, etc.
• Database. Examples of database technologies include MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL. In addition, NoSQL and SQL databases are available.
• DevOps tools. To build Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery pipelines (CI/CD), you will need Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Jenkins, ELK stack, Prometheus + Grafana, and more.
• AI/ML. Your SaaS can benefit from in-detail data analytics powered by purpose-built AI algorithms. Such services are available on AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure. Alternatively, you can build them using a variety of SaaS Python, R, or Go libraries. But it requires advanced tech skills and knowledge.
• Event brokers. Kafka or RabbitMQ streamlines backend events in CQRS architectures, distributed data sources, and other complex backend structures.

BaaS as a Way to Speed up Time to Market

Instead of designing and implementing complex backend systems for your SaaS, you can use BaaS from a specialized managed services provider. This way, you save time and costs without designing, building, and maintaining complex software. You also don’t need to hire and retain the talents necessary to do the job — the BaaS provider will cover that for you.

Software Architecture for SaaS Development

SaaS applications employ diverse architectures, each with its specific pros and cons.

Single-Tenant vs Multi-Tenant

Let’s discuss the most popular classification of architecture types:

• Single-tenant. With the single-tenant approach, you dedicate separate computational resources to each customer. Thus, everyone runs a particular instance and doesn’t have to share it with other tenants. This architecture is more secure but usually requires significant resources.
• Multi-tenant. With a multi-tenant approach, your customers share the same web-based app, database, and infrastructure behind it. This architecture is more resource-efficient but requires extra security measures. Besides, it simplifies updates, in-app marketing, A/B testing, and other business processes and activities.

Monolith vs. Microservices

The monolithic approach, with a single integrated codebase, is now considered obsolete, stimulating migration. In turn, microservices break the application into independent services, allowing separate development, testing, and deployment. Frameworks like Spring Boot, Eclipse Vert.x, GoMirco, and Micronaut streamline development, while Amazon ECS, Fargate, and Kubernetes enhance scalability.

Cloud Services

Choosing the right cloud service provider depends on specific business needs and technical requirements:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) stands out as a leader, providing a comprehensive suite of pre-configured hosting technologies. It has a robust infrastructure and a rich set of services.
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is known for its data analytics and machine learning capabilities. It’s perfect for organizations with advanced technological requirements.
• Azure is popular among enterprises globally. It provides a comprehensive set of services, integration with Microsoft products, and a global network of data centers.

Event-Driven Architecture

In an event-driven architecture, an application focuses on user or system events. The program responds to an event by performing the specified function. This design processes events as they occur, making it scalable and efficient. However, it requires careful coordination and integration between different functions.

Factors that Influence the Choice of a Tech Stack for SaaS

When picking the optimal technology and SaaS web development stack, consider the following factors.

Code Maintainability

Going for a popular language and framework combination is a safer bet for a future-proof app. And even if new tools emerge daily, few of them deserve your attention. Ensure the technologies you choose are popular and have strong community support. Otherwise, you will likely need to reengineer your software in a few years.

Scalability Requirements

You may want to extend and improve your SaaS for a long time, but will it scale easily? Angular apps scale much better than those based on React. That’s because Angular was built with scalability in mind from the get-go.

Time to Market

The shorter the time to market is, the bigger the chances to outperform your competitors. So, select the technologies and approaches that boost your software delivery rate by automating and simplifying repetitive operations. It includes automated unit tests for code, CI/CD pipelines for environments, automated analytics, and more.

Security

Security is paramount in SaaS applications, especially when handling sensitive user data. The chosen tech stack should include robust security measures to protect against unauthorized access, data breaches, and other threats. Consider those with encryption, authentication, and authorization features.

Reliability

Adding backups and backup plans to the system ensures the application remains available, even when facing hardware failures or other issues. Reliable tech stacks include tools for monitoring the platform’s performance, identifying issues, and logging relevant events. Thanks to proactive monitoring, developers address potential problems before they impact users.\

Cost

Cloud services like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud offer scalable solutions. However, expenses vary depending on usage patterns and resources utilized. Some technologies may have associated licensing fees, while open-source solutions help mitigate these expenses. Also, some stacks have a steeper learning curve or require specialized expertise, impacting SaaS development costs.

Now, let’s overview how big companies choose their tech stacks:

• HubSpot relies on Amazon EC2 for server hosting. Recently, the company implemented Apache Mesos and Kubernetes to manage large EC2 clusters efficiently, optimizing server density and reducing costs. This approach addresses instance failures, providing insulation for developers from instance-specific details.
• As the user base has grown, Dropbox transitioned critical backends from Python to Go for enhanced concurrency and speed. Also, it brings high developer productivity with quick learning curves and easy maintenance. The team addressed library limitations by building open-source solutions for a wider audience.
• With trillions of data transactions per day, Netflix requires a combination of off-the-shelf solutions and in-house development. The company uses Memcached, Redis, and Hollow for short-lived in-memory storage. Cassandra and MySQL provide durable, searchable data stores. On top of that, developers have created additional Raigad and Priam sidecars for cluster deployment and management.

Acropolium’s Experience

Acropolium has built multiple SaaS solutions of different sizes. Based on our experience, here are the final considerations that influence the selection of the ideal tech stack:

• Product requirements. Select the most straightforward tools that get the job done, covering your unique product requirements.
• Software grade. Small, lightweight, and standalone apps are easy to build with any toolkit. However, enterprise-grade software has to support a wide range of integrations to form an ecosystem of products. Therefore, it requires C#, Java, and other heavy-duty tools.
• The existing skill set. Adding several missing talents to the team and using your in-house skills is much easier than hiring an entirely new team to deliver a product.
• One app — one subdomain. With this approach, you won’t need to adjust your company’s homepage whenever you launch a new product. This way, you streamline frontend-backend interactions.

Here are some examples of how Acropolium implemented these principles in real-life projects:

• Building a SaaS CMMS for remote device management for a healthcare provider
• Operational command SaaS software development
• Accounting software solution as a SaaS platform for financial business

How to Choose the Best Tech Stack for a SaaS Project

Choosing the right software as a service technology stack is a challenging feat. Searching out niche tools without LTS support is not a good idea. Instead, focus on selecting the most popular SaaS technology on the market.

Acropolium is happy to lend our expertise and provide consulting on choosing a tech stack for the SaaS product you plan to build. We can offer BaaS services or help you develop a SaaS from scratch — our team has ample experience in both. So get in touch with us today to know more about our subscription-based service with a monthly fee.

Sources of Information

• Software as a service market overview
• The average number of SaaS applications used by organizations