How to build SaaS/Web app? (7)
Hi There,
I'd like to build (outsource) an online service (just for the discussion think of a paid image hosting).
It will have free and paid plans, login system and a dashboard and affiliate tracking system so people will be able to promote it.
1. Which platform should I use? WordPress? PHP?
2. How should I manage the login system if not built with WordPress? Amember? Custom built script?
Thx
Judging by those two questions, you must have very little experience with web development lol
It's impossible to give you accurate advice without knowing exactly what you want to build.
If it really is a basic paid image host, you could use https://membermouse.com (it's like amember, but 10x better) to act as the shopping cart/user management. Then use the wordpress ability to upload images, but serve those images across AWS cloudfront. Payment would be done through Stripe (membermouse already has it integrated). This won't be as fast as actual app because wordpress is quite slow, especially if you got a large database, but this will cost you like $100 to get started.
If I was going to build an actual app (not some hack together wordpress thing): Here's the way I would do it
Just keep in mind, there are a million ways to build the same thing as a dev. This is just my go-to method:
1. NodeJS + ExpressJS, MongoDB for the database and I'd have the images hosted on AWS
2. PassportJS for user authentication
The dev would need to build a backend for user management etc.
For payment I would use stripe.com
I would hire somebody on Upwork. I'd look to spend <$2,500 (depending on the amount of features) and two weeks max to have it built.
thx for your reply.
I am not a developer indeed 
With your way of doing it, there is no need for membership management tool as we will develope it all from scratch?
thx
The membership management tool will need to be developed from scratch, which will take time and money.
@tenaciousd, there are a some missing info in order to be able to give some good advice as adivity said.
For example how many users will eventually use the service? Will it also have some kind o image processing (in which case you need to also think about performance) or only hosting? Will you need a DB? Is security very important?
There are tons of choices that may be suitable, including Wordpress. But, as a software engineer, if you are going to build a service for which users are going to pay for, I would suggest to look for a more performant/secure framework rather than wordpress (wordpress was not created to build web apps, but as a blogging platform with some side functionalities).
Pick a popular PHP framework, like Symfony, Laravel or CodeIgniter, this way will be really easy to find good and not expensive developers online, as PHP is one of more popular languages. .
Regarding the membership platform it is really a waste of time building your own, unless you have really special needs, so I'd say just go for an existing platform. Keep in mind that building a good membership system, which supports a few payment systems is an important project on its own.
Good luck
Originally Posted by tenaciousd
Lots of good suggestions here, but I'd suggest a slightly alternative point of view.
First, find your developer. I'm assuming you're not going to learn to code and build this yourself - if you are, then ignore the rest of this comment!
Really do your due dilligence. Find the best damn dev you can - someone who communicates well, gets things done efficiently, and has done stuff like this before. And in order to do that, here's a big tip: don't limit yourself on technologies whilst doing so.
You should make sure they're using a reasonably common language so you can hire someone else if they leave - no Haskell or F# please! But beyond that, allow them to use whatever tech they think is best.
You can build a great SaaS in many languages and with many technologies: Rails, Python, PHP, Node are all credible choices.
But if you keep your options open on the language front, you give yourself access to a much wider pool of developers, and that gives you the best chance of making a really good app.
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