How to Choose the Best Tech Stack for Your SaaS

One of the most crucial decisions you'll make when launching a SaaS is your tech stack.

The technology you use will determine your costs, development speed, scalability and long-term maintainability. It can quite literally make or break your effort.

This post will walk you through key factors to consider and introduce Archie, our AI-driven product architect that can help you select the right tech stack for your needs.

Building for Multi-Tenancy

A defining feature of SaaS (Software as a Service) is its ability to serve multiple customers (tenants) with a single instance of the software.

Multi-tenant architecture ensures that each tenant's data is isolated and secure while optimizing resource usage. This architecture enhances cost efficiency, scalability and ease of maintenance, providing a robust foundation for your SaaS application.

Let's cover some language and architectural patterns best suited for multi-tenancy.

SaaS Language Stack

When it comes to building SaaS applications, the most popular choice is JavaScript.

SaaS (Software as a Service) is meant to be delivered over the Internet, specifically in the browser. And because JavaScript is the only language that runs in the browser, many choose to work in JS.

If you choose JS on the frontend, it's best to not duplicate the knowledge base required to build and run your app. In that case, it would be smart to use JS (Node) on the backend as well.

However, JavaScript is not the only option. Python, Java, and C# are also widely used for SaaS development, each offering unique strengths:

• JavaScript - Great for full-stack development with a vast ecosystem of libraries and frameworks.
• Python - Known for its simplicity and readability, Python is ideal for rapid development and handling data-intensive applications. Its extensive libraries and frameworks (e.g., Django) support robust multi-tenant architectures.
• Java - Offers robustness and scalability, commonly used in enterprise-level applications.
• C# - Well-integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem, suitable for building applications with complex requirements. ASP.NET Core supports multi-tenant architectures effectively.

SaaS Architecture Stack

Choosing the right architecture is equally important. Common architectures include:

• Monolithic - Simple and straightforward, but can become unwieldy as the application grows. Suitable for smaller applications with less complexity.
• Microservices - Provides modularity and scalability, allowing different services to be developed and deployed independently. Each service can be scaled individually, making it ideal for large-scale, multi-tenant applications.
• Serverless: Reduces infrastructure management and scales automatically. Ideal for applications with variable workloads, serverless architectures handle resource allocation dynamically.

Low-Code Platforms

Low-code platforms like 8base's backend-as-a-service have emerged as a powerful alternative to traditional software development, offering several advantages.

• Programming languages require you to have a bunch of boilerplate code, and you constantly have to reinvent the wheel (whether you like it or not)
• Frameworks help a lot, but you still have to build the same UI components over and over again using HTML and CSS
• And architectures (servers, microservices, etc.) have to be orchestrated and managed by your DevOps team to adapt to a growing user base and increased computing demands

In contrast, low-code technology handles all of these automatically. So whenever you're competing in the market with a SaaS product/service that uses low code, they're immediately ahead of you.

And it's simply because they don't have to do all this manual, repetitive work that traditional programming requires in every project over and over again.

Advantages of Low Code

For example, let's say you're building a SaaS API. Without low code, you would have to manually code all the data models, all the DB queries, and all the API endpoints.

Not to mention additional basic features like filtering and pagination. On top of that, there is a user role system that is not trivial to implement, to say the least.

Compare that to low code where you:

• Just create a couple of DB tables through a graphical user interface in your browser (and you're done)
• Data models are created automatically
• API endpoints are auto-generated, and they pull the info from the database
• Filtering and pagination work out of the box
• And you can define roles with just a couple of clicks in your browser

It might not come as a surprise, then, that low-code technology has been shown to make your development up to 3X more effective. Especially when you don't have to deal with a bunch of time-consuming tasks that are not unique to the value proposition of your SaaS product or service.

Get Help Architecting Your SaaS Tech Stack

We've discussed some of the general concepts behind SaaS application development (multi-tenant architecture) and the technologies that support it, so let's get to the question of the day:

How do you choose the right tech stack for your SaaS application?

The answer is that it varies. Depending on the application you're building, its complexity, estimated size, data handling, UX and regulatory requirements, the ideal tech stack is going to look a little different, and it's not something we can easily explain in a blog post.

Instead, we created Archie.

Archie, our AI-driven product architect, can help you plan the tech stack for your SaaS idea by providing tailored recommendations based on your specific needs.

Just give it a few details about your idea. Archie will get to work, using the power of multiple large language models (LLMs) to analyze your project requirements, suggest the most suitable technologies, and design a scalable and efficient architecture.

With Archie's guidance, you can ensure that your tech stack aligns with your business goals and technical constraints, setting your SaaS project up for success.

To Sum It Up

The best SaaS tech stack is the one that makes the entire development process more effective and your product/service highly competitive.

There's a lot to keep in mind: Application complexity, scaling, UX, data and more. Archie can help you choose the right tech stack by analyzing your requirements and suggesting technologies best suited for your application.

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To Learn More About 8base Low-Code Technology

• Try 8base out for Free
• Give Archie a try (it's also free!)
• Read about the 8base Backend‍
• Visit the Community or Documentation‍
• Contact sales and partnerships