8 ms·

Ask HN: Go to sources on SaaS development

15 points by ElFitz 8y ago

Hi everyone! We're building a SaaS with a friend, and we pretty much finished the product's core's "mvp", but now we have to build... everything else Users managements, "groups" of users, billing, access control,... Pretty much everything that makes a SaaS... a SaaS. And I feel like I'm continuously discovering new things that seem essential, which is both awesome and disheartening. So, what books, blogs, videos, online courses, whatever, would you consider are a must-read ( / watch / listen...) for someone who has never built a SaaS, or even a real product's backend for that matter ^^' Also, anything related to event-driven architectures would be awesome :-) (I read Martin Fowler's posts and watched his video. They're quite fascinating) (I'm originally a mobile dev who's been playing around with serverless for the last 2 1/2 years ^^')

noir_lord 8y ago
SaaS can be massively broad from core choices like single tenant/multi tenant up. One thing that I always find useful is go read the source code of the SaaS systems that are open soure, things like GitLab and Taiga are good clean codebases to have a look at the general architecture. https://github.com/taigaio/ https://github.com/taigaio/ https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce I found this quite good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fkGyIcePA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fkGyIcePA Also worth a look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8NWDHgWA28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8NWDHgWA28 (by and large GOTO; talks are phenomenal).
- ElFitz 8y ago
  Very good advice; I hadn't thought about it, believing it would be a daunting task, but then again... it's what we're building, sooo... ^^ The videos were really instructive too. Thank you!
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    Shrugs, sometimes not knowing that something is difficult is the best way to start :).
ivanr 8y ago
Depending on what type of SaaS you're building exactly, you may find the Enterprise Ready web site quite useful: https://www.enterpriseready.io https://www.enterpriseready.io From their homepage: 'Created for people who build SaaS products (founders, product managers and engineering team leads) to change the enterprise software narrative from "how to SELL to the enterprise" to "how to BUILD for the enterprise".'
- ElFitz 8y ago
  This is just pure GOLD! It doesn't deal with the implementation itself, but it gives a clear view of what others did and what to look into. Thank you!
philippz 8y ago
Don't deal with event-driven architecture when you're at MVP stage. Also, which language and framework do you use? Because if you'd go with PHP/Laravel for example, there is a neat SaaS solution called Spark: https://spark.laravel.com/ https://spark.laravel.com/
- saluki 8y ago
  y, recommend you check out the Rails and Laravel SaaS in a box offerings. Rails https://bullettrain.co/ https://bullettrain.co/ Laravel https://spark.laravel.com/ https://spark.laravel.com/ They are good to get up and running quickly, I used spark on a SaaS and it worked well. There are lots of great gems/packages that allows you to work without these though, if you want a little more control on how things are setup.
  - CloudNetworking 8y ago
    Wow, that's awesome. Do you know of anything similar written in Python?
    - saluki 8y ago
      Doing a quick search I don't see anything, here's a HN thread from last year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18010871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18010871 Maybe a good opportunity for a Python developer to put one together?
  - ElFitz 8y ago
    Tried looking for similar frameworks and offerings in Node.js, but no luck so far. That's too bad. Maybe I'll just pickup Rails ^^ Thanks!
- ElFitz 8y ago
  That would indeed have been better, but the product itself is pretty much à about handling and processing events, so... It feels like having the architecture not be event-driven when the whole product is about dealing with events would be the same as going the event-driven architecture route for, let's say, a knowledge-sharing SaaS But I will definitely keep spark in mind for the future, thank you :-)

15 points by ElFitz 8y ago

noir_lord 8y ago

SaaS can be massively broad from core choices like single tenant/multi tenant up. One thing that I always find useful is go read the source code of the SaaS systems that are open soure, things like GitLab and Taiga are good clean codebases to have a look at the general architecture. https://github.com/taigaio/ https://github.com/taigaio/ https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce I found this quite good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fkGyIcePA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fkGyIcePA Also worth a look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8NWDHgWA28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8NWDHgWA28 (by and large GOTO; talks are phenomenal).

ElFitz 8y ago
Very good advice; I hadn't thought about it, believing it would be a daunting task, but then again... it's what we're building, sooo... ^^ The videos were really instructive too. Thank you!
- noir_lord 8y ago
  Shrugs, sometimes not knowing that something is difficult is the best way to start :).

ivanr 8y ago

Depending on what type of SaaS you're building exactly, you may find the Enterprise Ready web site quite useful: https://www.enterpriseready.io https://www.enterpriseready.io From their homepage: 'Created for people who build SaaS products (founders, product managers and engineering team leads) to change the enterprise software narrative from "how to SELL to the enterprise" to "how to BUILD for the enterprise".'

ElFitz 8y ago
This is just pure GOLD! It doesn't deal with the implementation itself, but it gives a clear view of what others did and what to look into. Thank you!

philippz 8y ago

Don't deal with event-driven architecture when you're at MVP stage. Also, which language and framework do you use? Because if you'd go with PHP/Laravel for example, there is a neat SaaS solution called Spark: https://spark.laravel.com/ https://spark.laravel.com/

saluki 8y ago
y, recommend you check out the Rails and Laravel SaaS in a box offerings. Rails https://bullettrain.co/ https://bullettrain.co/ Laravel https://spark.laravel.com/ https://spark.laravel.com/ They are good to get up and running quickly, I used spark on a SaaS and it worked well. There are lots of great gems/packages that allows you to work without these though, if you want a little more control on how things are setup.
- CloudNetworking 8y ago
  Wow, that's awesome. Do you know of anything similar written in Python?
  - saluki 8y ago
    Doing a quick search I don't see anything, here's a HN thread from last year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18010871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18010871 Maybe a good opportunity for a Python developer to put one together?
- ElFitz 8y ago
  Tried looking for similar frameworks and offerings in Node.js, but no luck so far. That's too bad. Maybe I'll just pickup Rails ^^ Thanks!
ElFitz 8y ago
That would indeed have been better, but the product itself is pretty much à about handling and processing events, so... It feels like having the architecture not be event-driven when the whole product is about dealing with events would be the same as going the event-driven architecture route for, let's say, a knowledge-sharing SaaS But I will definitely keep spark in mind for the future, thank you :-)