SaaS development company in Franklin, Tennessee
A SaaS development company building products with real customers, real billing and real uptime requirements. Accounts, permissions, billing and monitoring decide whether a product works, and they are built first.
Fixed price after discovery. You own the code, the cloud accounts and the billing account.
- Fixed price after discovery
- Discovery is credited against the build.
- First release in 12–16 weeks
- Something customers can actually pay for.
- Accounts in your name
- Repository, cloud and Stripe, from day one.
Products fail on scope more often than on code
Almost every failed product we have been asked to rescue has the same shape: eighteen months of building, a long feature list, and no paying customer until the end. By the time anyone learned what people wanted, the budget was spent.
The alternative is to pick the one job your product does better than a spreadsheet, build only that, and charge for it. A month of real usage produces more information than six months of assumptions.
Expect a SaaS development company to challenge the launch list. It is cheaper than building nine months of the wrong thing.
If what you are building is an internal tool rather than a product with outside customers, enterprise systems work is the closer fit. If it needs a companion app, that is mobile development. Either way the engagement shape is on the pricing page.
What discovery produces
A couple of weeks mapping the product: who the customer is, what the first release does and deliberately does not do, how money changes hands, and what has to be true for someone to renew in month two.
The output is a written scope and a fixed price, quoted separately and credited against the build. It is written so you could take it to another firm, which means it has value even if you do not hire us.
What a SaaS development company has to get right
Four areas that sit underneath whatever makes the product distinctive.
The smallest version that proves the idea
First release · twelve to sixteen weeksThe first release should do one job well for one kind of customer. Everything you believe about what people want is unverified until someone pays, and that is cheaper to test at twelve weeks than at forty.
We will push back on the feature list. Most failed products we have seen failed on scope rather than on code.
Accounts and permissions
Sign-up · teams · roles · resetsSign-up, log in, password reset, inviting a colleague, removing someone who left, and controlling what each person can see. All of it has to work correctly, because it is the first thing every customer touches.
Permissions are also the most common source of serious security problems in small products, typically one customer able to see another's data. We build this properly at the start rather than retrofitting it.
Billing that matches how you sell
Subscriptions, trials and edge casesPlans, trials, upgrades, downgrades, failed cards, refunds, and the customer who wants an annual invoice. We use Stripe rather than handling payments ourselves, which is the right choice at this size.
Edge cases are where billing bugs live and where they quietly cost money. What happens mid-month on an upgrade is a decision you need to make, not a default to inherit.
Uptime and monitoring
Monitoring, backups, on-callMonitoring that alerts a person, error reporting that catches a broken screen before a customer emails about it, and backups that have been restored from at least once to prove they work.
You also need an answer to who is called at 2am. That is either your team or an arrangement with us, decided before launch rather than during the first outage.
The scope, written down before you pay
Scope goes in the agreement before any money changes hands. It is written out in full below.
In the first release
- Discovery, scope and a fixed price before we start
- Accounts, teams, roles and permissions
- Subscription billing through Stripe
- Monitoring, error reporting and tested backups
- Handover of the repository and every account
After launch
- Monthly changes and support, or a full handover
- An agreed answer to who gets called at 2am
- Usage data on the few actions that matter
- Your infrastructure bills, in your own account
- You can hire your own team at any point
Not included
- Equity in place of payment
- Building the full feature list before anyone has paid
- Writing our own payment handling instead of using Stripe
- Hosting billed through us at a markup
Tell us what the product is meant to do and we will tell you what the first release should be.
Three things you can check yourself
- Ask what we would cut
- Send us your feature list. What a firm proposes cutting says more than a portfolio does.
- Ask about the 2am plan
- Who is called during an outage, and how they find out. Ask any firm you are considering.
- Ask how permissions are enforced
- The answer should not be about the front end. Ask any firm you are considering.
Questions we get on the first call
What does a SaaS development company charge to build a product?
Fixed price after a paid discovery that is credited against the build. Products vary more than any other work we do, which is why we do not quote one off a phone call. Starting figures are on the pricing page.
How long until we can sell it?
Twelve to sixteen weeks for a first release in most cases. Scope is what moves that number, and cutting the launch list down to what proves the idea is the most valuable part of discovery.
Should we build an MVP or the real thing?
A first release that does one job properly for one kind of customer and can take payment. Not a demo, and not the full vision. A prototype nobody can buy produces no information, and eighteen months of building before launch is the most common way products fail.
Do you take equity instead of payment?
No. An agency holding equity in your product has different incentives from one you pay directly, and we need predictable revenue. Cash is cleaner for both sides.
Who owns the code and the infrastructure?
You do. The repository, the cloud accounts and the Stripe account are in your name from the start, so there is nothing to transfer if you hire your own team later.
What happens after launch?
Products are not finished at launch; that is when you start learning what they should be. Most clients keep a monthly arrangement for changes and support, and some hire their own developer after a year and we hand over. We support either route.
Can you take over a product somebody else built?
Often. We read the code and give you an assessment, including when continuing costs more than restarting. That is cheaper to hear at the start than at month six.
Related: Software overview · Mobile apps · Enterprise · CRM integration
Send us the feature list and we will tell you what to build first
A written reply within one business day, from the person who would scope it.