SaaS development – from first version to grown-up product

Some agencies build SaaS MVPs. Some agencies maintain mature SaaS products. The awkward truth of the market is that they’re rarely the same agency – so founders get a version one from a launch factory, outgrow it, and then have to find a “proper” team to take over. That handover cliff costs money, momentum, and usually a partial rebuild.

We’re both halves. We’ll build your MVP – minimum viable product, the smallest version of your product that real users can actually use – and then we’ll still be here at version four, because staying is rather our thing. Some of our client relationships are as old as the company, and that’s 19 years.

And we don’t just build SaaS, we RUN it. We launched SiteVitals, our own monitoring platform, in late 2025 – designed, built, priced, launched and still growing under the same small team that would build yours.

Why does it matter that you run your own products?

Because building a product and building for a client who’s building a product are usually two different jobs done by two different kinds of people – and the gap shows.

An agency that’s never launched its own product optimises for handover day. Everything’s geared to the moment they invoice and you wave goodbye. But a product’s real life starts AFTER launch: the onboarding that confuses people, the pricing page nobody converts on, the feature you were sure about that nobody touches, the server bill that creeps. We’ve lived all of that with our own products – SiteVitals most recently, AvailabilityCal and others before it, including one in-house project that did well enough to become its own company. So we build your first version knowing what week 12 feels like, not just week zero, and weeks and years beyond that.

It also means our advice gets blunter, in a useful way. We’ve killed our own features. We’ve repriced. We’ve discovered which corners were fine to cut and which ones bite. That’s the judgement you’re actually hiring.

Starting with an MVP – and why we’ll shrink yours

The best thing we do at the start of a new SaaS project is take features OUT. Your version one needs the core loop – the thing users come for – plus login, payments if you’re charging, and honestly not much else. Every “while we’re at it” is time and money spent before you’ve learnt anything. We’ll push back, politely but properly, because we’ve watched over-scoped MVPs launch late into indifference.

Then we build it on proper foundations. We build SaaS on Laravel – the same stack we’ve used for years for systems that grew big. “Minimum viable” describes the feature list, not the code quality. The difference matters when your product works: version two should be an extension, not a rewrite.

And we build fast – genuinely faster than we could two years ago. We’ve always been fast, but now we’re turbo charged. We use AI tooling (Claude Code, daily) throughout our Laravel development which means our 19 years of judgement now ships at a speed that used to need a much bigger team, which is exactly what an early-stage budget wants. The architecture decisions, the security review, the taste – that’s us. The typing is just faster than it’s ever been.

What happens after the MVP?

This is the question to ask any agency before they build your version one – because the honest answer is usually “you’ll need someone else”, even if it’s never said out loud.

With us, launch is the start of the relationship, not the invoice moment. The weeks after launch are where a product actually gets made: watching real behaviour in the analytics (which we wire in from day one, so you’re learning from evidence rather than guessing), fixing the onboarding step everyone stumbles on, building the feature users are asking for instead of the one everyone predicted. We stay for that – quick iterations while the feedback is flowing, then a steadier rhythm of features, maintenance and scaling as the product finds its feet.

And because your first version was built properly, growing it is extension work, not rewrite work. Version one to version four is one continuous codebase and one team that’s known it since it was a scope document.

If you do eventually hire your own developers and fly the nest – a lovely problem to have – we’ll hand over a documented, conventional codebase they’ll actually thank you for, and we can stay on as the senior backstop for as long as that’s useful.

How much does SaaS development cost?

For a first version, it depends almost entirely on how disciplined the scope is, and the scoping conversation is where we earn our keep before a line of code exists. After launch, ongoing development costs depend on your product’s rhythm – busy sprints when there’s momentum, quieter maintenance when there isn’t.

So it’s impossible to give a ball park cost without knowing what you need – but because we try to be transparent and appreciate you’ll want to know what you might be letting yourself in for – you could be looking at anything between £10,000 and £50,000+.

Be aware that if a quote seems too cheap, you might be buying a template with your logo on it, or a codebase nobody – including its authors – will want to extend. Both of these get expensive the moment your idea works and you want to develop it further. If you’d like to use us on a consultancy basis to sense-check the quotes you’re receiving, please do get in touch.

What about funding?

A common chicken-and-egg: you need quotes to raise money, but agencies don’t love speccing projects that might not happen. But have no fear, we developed a solution to this conundrum. Our brief writing and specification service produces a clear document that defines the build, so agencies can give you an idea of costs without having to spend days thinking about what they’re quoting on.

Who’s this for?

Founders with an idea and a budget who want a senior team, not a production line. Established companies productising an internal tool – honestly some of our favourite projects, because the market’s already proven. Non-technical founders in particular: you’ll be talking directly with the directors doing the work, in plain English, every step – no account-manager filter, no jargon fog.

And SaaS companies past the MVP stage, whose product has outgrown its original developers. Inheriting and growing other people’s builds is half of what we do – if your version one has become the thing holding back your version two, that’s a conversation we have a lot.

The technical bit (for those who speak it)

Laravel on PHP 8.x, Cashier/Stripe for subscription billing, queues for background work, multi-environment deployment from day one. Frontends in Blade + Alpine.js or React as the product demands. Hosting sized honestly – an MVP rarely needs auto-scaling on launch day, and we’ll say so – but architected so scaling up is a config conversation, not a rebuild. Monitoring via SiteVitals from launch, if you want to know it’s always being watched.

Tell us what you need

Tell us where you are – an idea in two sentences, an MVP that needs building, or a live product that’s outgrown its developers. Rough budget if you know it. A director will get back to you as soon as possible with an honest first take: what your next version probably is, what it probably isn’t, and whether we’re the right people to build it. NDAs are no problem if you’d rather talk under one. Get in touch >