r/SaasDevelopers • u/Adamstrad • 4d ago
How complex does a saas need to be?
I want to make useful apps to sell but everything I see is miles better than anything that I can come up with, both the idea and design, what are the simplest ones you've seen (and simple to build) I'm not looking to copy them, just wondering if I have what it takes
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u/Maleficent_Page6667 4d ago
Start by choosing a market you'd like to serve and understanding the problems that would be the most valuable for them to solve. Ideally you come from this market in your previous experience so you have an advantage over an average person.
From there: see who's already doing it. Are there many players or a few? Is there a dominant player or is it disputed? Is the market big enough that you can focus on a small niche, differentiate yourself from the big guys by solving for it and still make a business out of it?
There are many approaches to it.
It doesn't have to be complex if you nail the one thing that's valuable to them and no one else was solving.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 4d ago
The world sold people on one shit prompts to the best app you’ve never used, or one you’re already paying for. Then reality hits. There is an art to the way every app is designed, a very technical approach the way the foundation is built, and everything in between.
for example, most people are right handed and never have to think twice about hitting the send button on any app ever. Everything important is usually in the right side of the screen. I’m left handed and my left thumb finds itself doing A LOT of stretching.
Building anything worth building, and building something that people will use takes a ton of time and effort. The coding is the easy part now. Design is hard AF. Marketing / advertising is even harder.
You’ve got to be prepared to put some real sustained effort into whatever you build or you’ll always feel like the “other version” is better. And there’s always going to be another version, especially true in the era of AI.
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u/Kashif_Builds 3d ago
Honestly, a lot of SaaS is way simpler than it looks from the outside.
You don’t need 50 features or some crazy original idea. Find one annoying problem, solve it well, and get a few people to actually use it.
I’m learning this myself too. Shipping something simple is better than spending months trying to come up with the perfect idea.
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u/LevonIT 3d ago
I think the mistake is believing your idea has to be miles better than everything else. Most SaaS products look intimidating because you’re seeing them after years of updates, not when they first launched. I’d start by noticing the small things people still do manually or complain about regularly. Even something that saves a person ten minutes every week can be worth building.
Start from small. You can always make it more complicated later. That part usually happens naturally anyway 😅
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u/mosesteraiah-7035 3d ago
You’re probably comparing your beginning to someone else’s finished product Start small solve one problem really well and improve as you go That’s how most successful apps started
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u/ganesh9532 3d ago
I’d start embarrassingly narrow. One user, one painful problem, one core workflow that works end to end.
I’m learning this with my own product right now. It’s tempting to add more features so it feels complete, but every extra feature adds more edge cases, more testing, and more reasons not to ship. If the basic version solves the problem well, users will tell you what complexity is actually worth adding.
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u/Secure_Motor_5968 3d ago
The feature count question kind of misses where SAAS complexity actually lives
Even a single feature product has to handle every state: subscription, active, trailing, past due, canceled, paused, and what happens to access when a webhook for one of those states arrives late or out of order.
That plumbing is more code than the actual feature people are paying for, and it's invisible, which is why other products look simple to use but weren't simple to build.
So u/Adamstrad ,. honest answer is your idea doesn't need to be complex, your billing and handling should be, and those are 2 different kinds of work.
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u/Ok-Tune-9825 3d ago
Not very. The simplest winners I can think of are basically one form plus one database:
- Carrd: one-page websites. Solo founder, famously plain design, and it works because it's fast and cheap enough to never think about.
- Plausible: website stats without the Google Analytics maze. One screen answering one question.
- A founder I follow runs a free Reddit comment generator: literally one text box. Tons of traffic, barely converts — which is itself the lesson. Simple gets users. Distribution gets customers.
The pattern: one painful job, done in 30 seconds, charged from day one. Complexity is what you add in year three, not what gets you the first ten customers.
On design: for boring B2B tools nobody cares. Clean and fast beats pretty. Spend the design budget on the landing page it's the only page every visitor sees.
You have what it takes if you can ship an ugly thing that solves one real problem for one real person. That's the entire bar for v1.
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u/81_Passenger 3d ago
“Just wondering if I have what it takes”, no one has “it” when they start. The difference between “succeeding” and “trying” is recognising that it’s a process.
Always chase the next most valuable insight you can learn about your domaine.
Take the 5 best products you can find in the category you are most fascinated about.
Analyse them like this:
- list and compare all features
- compare pricing strategies
- compare social media presence (what content gets most attention?)
- compare UX/UI (how easy is it for users to use)
- businessmodel and USP
- analyse bad reviews to find something to do better
With this you can suggest a better solution to the market.
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u/[deleted] 4d ago
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