SaaS Developer: Build a SaaS Website or Product

What does a SaaS build with me include?

It includes the application, an admin panel for your team, billing, deployment and a handover, delivered as one project. I take a product from a written scope to a live, paid-for service that your own staff can run. This site runs on the same stack: Laravel with Filament.

A hosting company often wants a customer portal or reseller dashboard next to WHMCS. In that case I connect the portal to WHMCS through its API, so client and billing records are not duplicated. See WHMCS API integration.

How do you scope an MVP?

I cut the product down to one type of user, one job they need done and one way they pay. Everything else goes on a deferred list. The written scope covers user roles, the core workflow, stored data, the billing model and what is deliberately left out.

Which stack do you build SaaS products with?

My main stack is Laravel with Filament admin panels, Livewire where it fits, and MySQL for data. One framework covers authentication, validation, queues, scheduling, mail and testing, so the budget goes to your product's own logic.

• Laravel and Filament: the application, plus the internal panel for users, subscriptions, refunds and settings.
• Livewire: interactive screens such as dashboards and forms, without a separate JavaScript application.
• Next.js, React or Astro: added when the project calls for them, such as a public marketing site.
• Node.js or NestJS: an API service for real-time connections, an existing TypeScript team, or a component that does not belong in PHP.

I do not add a second language where one is enough. Every extra service is another thing to deploy, monitor and pay for.

How is subscription billing built?

The payment provider is the source of truth for money, and your database follows it through webhooks. A browser redirect alone never proves a payment succeeded.

Providers send events such as invoice.paid and customer.subscription.deleted (Stripe) or subscription.charged and subscription.halted (Razorpay). The webhook endpoint has to handle them safely:

• Verify the signature on every request, using the Stripe-Signature or X-Razorpay-Signature header, before trusting the body.
• Store each event ID and skip repeats, because providers retry and can deliver events twice or out of order.
• Hand the real work to a queued job and answer the provider quickly.
• Model the states you need: trialing, active, past due and cancelled, with a grace period for failed cards.

Plan limits stay in your own code, so a second provider can be added without a rewrite. With the provider's hosted checkout or card fields, card numbers never touch your server.

How do roles, queues and the API fit together?

They are three separate layers, designed up front instead of bolted on later.

Roles and permissions. I separate platform staff, account owners and team members. Access rules live in Laravel policies, so users reach only their own account's records, and sensitive actions such as refunds go into an audit log.

Queues and scheduled jobs. Emails, webhook processing, report exports and calls to outside APIs run as queued jobs with retries and a failed-jobs table you can inspect. Recurring work such as renewal reminders runs from Laravel's scheduler, which needs one cron entry:

* * * * * cd /path/to/app && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

API. If customers need an API, I version it from the first route (/api/v1), use token authentication, set per-key rate limits, return one consistent error format and sign outgoing webhooks.

Which multi-tenancy option fits my product?

None is correct for every product. The choice depends on how much isolation customers need and how many of them you expect. Many early products need less than their founders think.

Packages such as stancl/tenancy and spatie/laravel-multitenancy cover parts of the database-per-tenant route. I settle the choice in the scope document, because changing it later means rewriting the data layer.

Where can the product be deployed?

It can run on a VPS or on a cPanel host, and I choose by workload. A small first version often fits cPanel. A product with constant background work fits a VPS better.

On a VPS I set up Nginx or Apache, PHP-FPM, MySQL, a Supervisor-managed queue worker, TLS and backups, as described under server setup. On cPanel I point the domain's document root at Laravel's public directory, add the scheduler cron above and run the queue from cron with php artisan queue:work --stop-when-empty. Each release runs php artisan migrate --force, rebuilds the config and route caches and restarts workers with php artisan queue:restart.

What should a first version leave out?

A first version should leave out anything no paying customer has asked for yet. Each extra feature adds code to test and support, and delays the day you learn whether anyone will pay.

• Native mobile apps. A responsive web app tests the idea faster.
• Single sign-on (SAML) and custom role builders, until an enterprise buyer requires them.
• Usage-based metering and complex proration, unless usage is what you sell.
• Many languages and currencies beyond your first two or three markets.
• Reporting dashboards with many charts. Start with the three numbers you check daily.
• A public API, plugin system, white-labelling, referral schemes and in-app chat.

These stay on the deferred list, planned for but not built.

What do I get at handover, and who owns the code?

At handover you receive the repository, environment variables, deployment and rollback steps, backup restore instructions and a walkthrough call. Who holds the rights to the custom code is written into the quote before work starts. Open-source and premium packages keep their own licenses. See how I work for how a project runs.

Which SaaS projects do I decline?

I do not copy another company's product or use nulled or pirated scripts. I am not a brand design studio, so I expect a logo and colors from you or your designer. I do not certify products against standards such as PCI DSS or SOC 2. I keep card data with the payment provider and follow sound security practice, but certification is a separate process.

How long does a SaaS build take, and what does it cost?

It depends on scope. I quote a fixed price after the scoping call, or work hourly at $55 to $65 per hour. If you already run WHMCS and want the product to bill through it, a custom WHMCS module may be the shorter route. For an assistant inside the product, see AI agent development.