SaaS development cost
A focused SaaS MVP with authentication, one core workflow and Stripe billing runs $70,000 to $120,000. A production multi-tenant platform with roles, admin, integrations and SOC 2 readiness runs $220,000 to $450,000.
Cross-platform mobile, 30 screens, 3 user roles, with the compliance posture this vertical carries.
- Timeline
- 5.5 – 7.6 months
- Engineering hours
- 2,725 – 3,450
- Data sensitivity
- 3 of 5
- Default security posture
- Hardened
Compliance and security add $49,634 here
That is 12% of this build, measured rather than asserted: we priced the identical app with no named regime and a baseline security posture, and this is the difference. None of it produces a user-visible feature, and none of it can be retrofitted cheaply.
Regimes that apply in this vertical
- SOC 2 Type IINobody by law. In practice it is the entry ticket for selling software to any US mid-market or enterprise buyer, and it is asked for during procurement rather than after.
- $20K – $48K audit
- GDPRAnyone offering services to people in the EU or UK, wherever your company is. A US-only product with US-only users is generally outside it.
- $0 – $12K audit
- CCPA / CPRABusinesses over the revenue or data thresholds with California consumers. In practice, most US consumer products at any scale.
- $0 – $8K audit
- ADA / Section 508 accessibilityPublic sector procurement contractually, and in practice any consumer or education product large enough to attract a complaint.
- $6K – $20K audit
Systems you will likely integrate with
- StripePayments, subscriptions, payouts and hosted checkout.
- moderate
- SalesforceObject mapping, bulk API, field-level sync, sandbox cycles.
- complex
- HubSpotContact and deal sync, forms, lifecycle events.
- moderate
- SendGrid / PostmarkTransactional email, templates, deliverability and DMARC setup.
- simple
- AWSAccounts, networking, IAM, managed services, cost controls.
- moderate
- Custom / in-house APIA system you own, but did not build for this product.
- moderate
What makes technology & saas different
Multi-tenancy is a day-one decision
Tenant isolation, per-tenant configuration and the blast radius of a bad query are architecture, not features. Retrofitting isolation into a single-tenant data model is close to a rewrite.
SOC 2 is the price of enterprise deals
No US mid-market or enterprise buyer signs without it. Audit logging, SSO, access reviews and evidence collection are engineering work, and the assessor invoice is on top.
Billing is harder than it looks
Plans, trials, seats, proration, upgrades, dunning and invoices are a subsystem. Teams routinely underestimate it by a factor of three.
Who uses software in this vertical
Each additional role brings its own screens plus a row in a permission matrix that grows faster than the role count — because every new role is a question about every role that already exists.
End customer
The public-facing app
Administrator
Configuration, users, permissions
Customer support
Look up a customer and fix their problem
Manager / supervisor
Approvals, oversight, reporting
Partner / vendor
A second side with its own account
Four standards of finish
The same app in technology & saas, built to four different levels of depth.
| Level | Cost range | Timeline | Hours | Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MVP Prove it works | $260K – $350K | 4.6 – 6.5 months | 2,175 | 7 |
| Standard Production ready | $360K – $500K | 5.5 – 7.6 months | 3,025 | 7 |
| Advanced Built to grow | $460K – $625K | 6.2 – 8.5 months | 3,850 | 7 |
| Enterprise Audited and integrated | $600K – $825K | 7.2 – 9.7 months | 5,000 | 7 |
per month, cloud and vendors, at 45,000 monthly users
19% – 26% of build cost
Drives peak concurrency, and therefore the architecture.