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Building a SaaS based on Wordpress?

SparksCW

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We're currently trying to get an app made and one of the local developers we're talking to have suggested, and given us a quote, to build based on Wordpress.

At first I was a bit against it, but having done some research and looking into their reasoning it does sound pretty plausible.

I was just wondering if anyone here has built a SaaS web application with Wordpress as a backend??

The app is used for estimating jobs with some industry specific "trickery". it's essentially a very clever ecommerce site with some CRM features.

The company that have quoted it are aware of all of our future possible features and nothing seems impossible on Wordpress. They will be masking all wordpress specific URL's, custom dashboard, custom log in etc - to the paying software user they won't know it's wordpress. The Wordpress back end makes user management, content management etc. etc. really easy and thus cheaper.

The thing is, building on Wordpress is at the top of our initial budget, building bespoke is going to add another $15000 to the build cost which might delay us for some time.

Saving money is no good if the product doesn't work/isn't scalable - as I say though, they are very confident Wordpress is a commercially viable route to market.

What are your thoughts?
 
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LittleWolfie

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WordPress is a lot more than just the plain old LAMP these days. I think your prejudice against it might simply be a result of not being technical. I'm sure you can think of something in your area of expertise which the average person would be suprised at its usefulness

Assuming your running a proper progressive web app on your own server and your dev can add in plugins as needed, it sounds like it could be suitable. You can always write your own plugin for the extra functionality.

TechCrunch, zillow and etsy all run on WordPress, and those have scaled to market pretty well.

I can think of three major showstoppers;
1) SaaS needs to work offline
2) You need to store large amounts of data on local devices and it can't be easily split or restricted only to users with supported browsers
3) You have lots of complex interactive graphics (think app game)

I can't see how any of these woukd apply to an industry-specific CRM.

The thing is, building on Wordpress is at the top of our initial budget

That's the only real point of concern I can see here. What happens if you run out of money to complete the project when there is a sudden suprised?
 

RB96

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Wordpress is Brilliant but i would suggest going on Youtube or udemy and learning the basics for yourself as It will help drastically.

having dealt with devs, I have realized that it starts brilliantly BUT and its a big BUT most will hold you to Ransom with increased costs etc the closer you get to your milestones and deadlines. You WILL no doubt have new things come up to add to your Milestones that you initially think is enough for an MVP if you will and thats where you may get caught out.

What I am going to do now is find Devs that are interedted ina an equity share or get someone that is a Dev themselves and be a Co-Founder. Hopefully that helps but I am no Millionaire or Big Bucks Success (yet lol) just giving you my 2 cents
 

rpeck90

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We're currently trying to get an app made and one of the local developers we're talking to have suggested, and given us a quote, to build based on Wordpress.

At first I was a bit against it, but having done some research and looking into their reasoning it does sound pretty plausible.

I was just wondering if anyone here has built a SaaS web application with Wordpress as a backend??

The app is used for estimating jobs with some industry specific "trickery". it's essentially a very clever ecommerce site with some CRM features.

The company that have quoted it are aware of all of our future possible features and nothing seems impossible on Wordpress. They will be masking all wordpress specific URL's, custom dashboard, custom log in etc - to the paying software user they won't know it's wordpress. The Wordpress back end makes user management, content management etc. etc. really easy and thus cheaper.

The thing is, building on Wordpress is at the top of our initial budget, building bespoke is going to add another $15000 to the build cost which might delay us for some time.

Saving money is no good if the product doesn't work/isn't scalable - as I say though, they are very confident Wordpress is a commercially viable route to market.

What are your thoughts?

If you have budget > $5k, I'd strongly recommending talking to Anadea.info. They do this stuff all day.

I dealt with them in 2012 (went to visit in Ukraine), very proficient. Slava Dodatko will sort you out.

--

From my own experience, several points...

1. Data Management - modern web apps are basically made of 2 elements (front-end & back-end).

Because of mobile (native apps etc), front-end has scaled to become everything from iOS/Android apps to Angular-based JS web interface. The point is that WP only gives you ONE way to manage interactivity on the front-end. You'll find it difficult to split the front and back.

As a means of getting to market, it might serve you well for a time. However, if you truly wanted to scale / change flows etc - you'd need to separate both flows at some point.

2. API / Server Management - one of the primary issues you'll find with WP is that it will be severely limited in API or server-side solutions.

Whilst you've got the likes of WP-Engine, since it's a PHP application, it's not conducive to being scaled across a fleet of servers (for example). Again, the point is that much of WP's hailed simplicity comes from its ability to combine the front and back end infrastructure that all web apps require.

If you went with a custom backend, you'd be able to extend the likes of an API or server-side management relatively easily. If you went with WP, this would mean an entire re-write later down the line (which I guarantee you won't want to do).

3. Marketability - if you design with WP, you get a WP website. No point beating around the bush - you'll be tied to using WP's internal infrastructure (shortcodes etc).

This might work for some, but I'll tell you now that it will inhibit you moving forward. It just wasn't designed to be anything other than a blogging platform. It's already painfully slow (has to reload literally every plugin etc each time). Back-end infrastructure (memcache, redis, elasticsearch) is almost unheard of.

Designing custom gives you complete control over the flow & marketability of the app. If you've validated the idea, this could be extremely important.

--

If you want me to look over your proposal / brief, I can give an opinion.

There are *SO MANY* MVC frameworks now (Ruby on Rails particularly popular) which wipe the floor with WP any day of the week. You can literally create a shitty ecommerce store in RoR in like 15 minutes - if you're going to be overriding most of WP's functionality anyway, what's the difference between creating a simple system in RoR which you can add to later on?
 
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LittleWolfie

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What I am going to do now is find Devs that are interedted ina an equity share or get someone that is a Dev themselves and be a Co-Founder. Hopefully that helps but I am no Millionaire or Big Bucks Success (yet lol) just giving you my 2 cents

Good luck with that.

having dealt with devs, I have realized that it starts brilliantly BUT and its a big BUT most will hold you to Ransom with increased costs etc the closer you get to your milestones and deadlines.

Why not look for a fixed cost arrangement?
 

GoGetter24

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At first I was a bit against it, but having done some research and looking into their reasoning it does sound pretty plausible.
That's a joke. The situation is this: those developers you talked to know how to wordpress, so they want you to accept that, and that's it. But Wordpress is a blog. It was never designed for SaaS & app stuff or ecommerce stuff, let alone clever ecommerce stuff. Do yourself a favour and find a developer who knows more modern and effective tech. They'd laugh at the idea of making a sophisticated web app on wordpress. They all use tech like "ruby on rails". Just because you can do it a certain way doesn't mean you should. I believe theres a plugin for chrome that lets you see what websites are made with: see how many SaaS / app websites are made with wordpress.
 

LeoistheSun

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That's a joke. The situation is this: those developers you talked to know how to wordpress, so they want you to accept that, and that's it. But Wordpress is a blog. It was never designed for SaaS & app stuff or ecommerce stuff, let alone clever ecommerce stuff. Do yourself a favour and find a developer who knows more modern and effective tech. They'd laugh at the idea of making a sophisticated web app on wordpress. They all use tech like "ruby on rails". Just because you can do it a certain way doesn't mean you should. I believe theres a plugin for chrome that lets you see what websites are made with: see how many SaaS / app websites are made with wordpress.

Just because Wordpress was originally designed as a blogging platform doesn't mean it is ONLY a blogging platform. Its had hundreds of updates from the developers who see it more than just a blogging platform.

I myself am planning to build a small SaaS, with a built in API. You can add so many bells and whistles to make Wordpress look like something you would download on the app store.

- Bottom screen navigation
- Notifications
- "Add to desktop/homescreen shortcut" prompt
- Plus built-in lead capture

Not to mention, there are 3x as many web devs on Upwork compared to IOS/Android combined.
 
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GoGetter24

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I myself am planning to build a small SaaS, with a built in API. You can add so many bells and whistles to make Wordpress look like something you would download on the app store.
Yes, and you can also eat cereal using chopsticks.

But it's not a matter of "can" but "best". Choosing a platform that was designed from the ground up with SaaS or web apps in mind will result in getting the job done better and faster. Otherwise they wouldn't have bothered creating those platforms, and would've stuck with ancient stuff like wordpress too.
 

MUISaiyan

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The keyword here is control.

If you are trying to build an MVP (minimal viable product) prototype to test your idea sure go with Wordpress to get up and running.

BUT if you’re building a web app that will scale or eventually be something that will be sold or even run long term I’d go with having it coded instead on its own.

Wordpress is great, but understand it’s built for generic use so any updates from Wordpress can break your app. Hence the need for updating plugins all the time in Wordpress. This will be a nightmare if you’re trying to scale a software company.

When you code your own app you have control. Control of the source code, updates, etc.

Imagine if Facebook had to update their app every time Wordpress makes a change. This would be impossible to scale.

That being said some SaaS businesses are built on Wordpress like oncarrot.com. They’ve completely rebranded Wordpress to look like a saas app but the purpose of the app is building blog style sites anyways so it makes sense.

Just my thoughts.

I’ve built several apps with developers so just why I’d recommend the path of coding yourself especially when any developer now can build something quickly with all the tools and frameworks in any language like Ruby on Rails, PHP, or even lately Node JS.

Good luck!
 

LittleWolfie

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The keyword here is control.

WordPress is free and open source so you can have as much control as you like. Disable the updates etc, fork it if you want to and maintain your own version of wordpress. Of course building from scratch might be cheaper or easier and avoid legacy issues and perhaps have a faster response time. You can get just as much control with Linux and WordPress as you would with NodeJs.
 
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journeyman

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The keyword here is control.

If you are trying to build an MVP (minimal viable product) prototype to test your idea sure go with Wordpress to get up and running.

BUT if you’re building a web app that will scale or eventually be something that will be sold or even run long term I’d go with having it coded instead on its own.

Wordpress is great, but understand it’s built for generic use so any updates from Wordpress can break your app. Hence the need for updating plugins all the time in Wordpress. This will be a nightmare if you’re trying to scale a software company.

When you code your own app you have control. Control of the source code, updates, etc.

Imagine if Facebook had to update their app every time Wordpress makes a change. This would be impossible to scale.

That being said some SaaS businesses are built on Wordpress like oncarrot.com. They’ve completely rebranded Wordpress to look like a saas app but the purpose of the app is building blog style sites anyways so it makes sense.

Just my thoughts.

I’ve built several apps with developers so just why I’d recommend the path of coding yourself especially when any developer now can build something quickly with all the tools and frameworks in any language like Ruby on Rails, PHP, or even lately Node JS.

Good luck!

+1

Wordpress only if you want an MVP/Validation. If you have validation and you are sure what you want out of the app, go with a custom build that will keep your backend open to any future addon/improvement.

You might want to find another developer. Shop around and get multiple quotes!

You could even learn how to code yourself. I went down that route and loved it
 

LeoistheSun

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I think more context is needed. What kind of app? What would it do? Etc.

Maybe they recommended it because its super simple?

Granted, I chose to do WordPress because I can do 80% of everything myself.
 

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I agree with most of the arguments against that have already been posted.

As a software developer myself I wouldn't consider WordPress as a base for essentially a bespoke product.

I've previously been in a similar situation where I was asked to build a bespoke solution on top of a CMS platform (Umbraco if you're interested) and by the end I was pulling my hair out!

Initially, it seemed great. There was already a UI built-in for managing configuration and I could just about wrangle the document structure to resemble a 'proper' database. As the project wore on I felt like I was fighting it, having to hack the core functionality just to get it to work correctly! Instead, I should have been building out functionality.

I would say that WordPress is seen by that development company as a 'golden hammer' - essentially something that they think they can use to solve all problems.

I would stay away from that type of mentality as eventually I think your project will begin to be driven more by the limitations of the software platform and not by the features that it needs to be successful.
 
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ApparentHorizon

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I was just wondering if anyone here has built a SaaS web application with Wordpress as a backend??

I have/do and it gets clunky fast. It's good to prototype and test the market, but scaling is an issue. (There is a "right" way to do it, but very few people are capable)

WP runs on PHP. Building in JS is a much better option: Meteor
 

MUISaiyan

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I agree with most of the arguments against that have already been posted.

As a software developer myself I wouldn't consider WordPress as a base for essentially a bespoke product.

I've previously been in a similar situation where I was asked to build a bespoke solution on top of a CMS platform (Umbraco if you're interested) and by the end I was pulling my hair out!

Initially, it seemed great. There was already a UI built-in for managing configuration and I could just about wrangle the document structure to resemble a 'proper' database. As the project wore on I felt like I was fighting it, having to hack the core functionality just to get it to work correctly! Instead, I should have been building out functionality.

I would say that WordPress is seen by that development company as a 'golden hammer' - essentially something that they think they can use to solve all problems.

I would stay away from that type of mentality as eventually I think your project will begin to be driven more by the limitations of the software platform and not by the features that it needs to be successful.

Wordpress is awesome but this right here is exactly why I would stray away from building a SaaS on Wordpress, unless you’re just trying to create an MVP to gather interest and test the idea or some type of multi-site setup like the guys at oncarrot or restaurant engine.

If you grow into a successful SaaS, your future development team will have to constantly work around Wordpress.

Honestly, you can probably build your idea for way less than the $15k quoted. I would get more quotes on sites like Upwork.

Check out the lean startup book too.

Trust me prove your idea first, start small and lean. I burned over $20k on my first SaaS business hiring the wrong developers and thinking we needed more than we actually did.
 

SparksCW

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That's the only real point of concern I can see here. What happens if you run out of money to complete the project when there is a sudden suprised?

To be honest that's a very valid point that I hadn't considered. What if this budget doesn't get to a MVP sellable product either by their fault or ours. Not something I'd considered before, our budget is kind of fluid as our primary business is generating income. But either way I don't have a lot of money to throw into this.

You could even learn how to code yourself. I went down that route and loved it

I've spent an hour or so reading some RoR tutorials and it does look very clever, I can see that if you know how to code it you can build this app pretty quickly on this platform, however I'm not sure I'm cut out for learning it. Sure I could do the easy tutorials step by step but I think I'd fall flat on my face when trying to make my app actually do what it needs to do.

Honestly, you can probably build your idea for way less than the $15k quoted. I would get more quotes on sites like Upwork.

Check out the lean startup book too.

Trust me prove your idea first, start small and lean. I burned over $20k on my first SaaS business hiring the wrong developers and thinking we needed more than we actually did.

I kind of feel £15k GBP is a lot for what the app is, for a capable freelancer that's (guessing) a good 4-5 months of wages. Every dev we've spoken to thinks the app will take less than 2 months. Maybe we're looking in the wrong places and need to consider a freelancer.

My thoughts at this stage are that we need to build out the sales website and try and get some people signed up on a mailing list to further validate it before spending the big money.

I've spoken to a few different people I know in the target industry and they all think it's a good idea, and have given me a few other ideas. (for example, my software does everything thats needed for a specific time-consuming task in the industry, in theory we could make the app, copy it into a new app, remove a few features and add a different report template and we have another problem solving app! - I didn't even realise it solved this pain point until someone I was talking to who does this particular job pointed it out) - modifying the second app wouldn't cost too much compared to building the first one but may provide an additional revenue stream and overall lowers the risk a little. (provided the ideas validate)

I used to be in this industry as well so know there is a market for the second app as well, no software on the market for it at the minute. Just spreadsheets / paper documents or over the top hard to use generic software.

Just thinking outside the box a little here.. call me crazy, but has anyone been in this position and EMPLOYED a developer full time to work on their own projects??

It could work out cheaper in the short run, I guess the employees concern would be what happens when the app(s) are finished. I wouldn't want to employ someone to use them and bin them off when we're done. But potentially finding an all round coder, web tech type person would fit into our existing ecom business once the apps are created.
 

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We're currently trying to get an app made and one of the local developers we're talking to have suggested, and given us a quote, to build based on Wordpress.

At first I was a bit against it, but having done some research and looking into their reasoning it does sound pretty plausible.

I was just wondering if anyone here has built a SaaS web application with Wordpress as a backend??

The app is used for estimating jobs with some industry specific "trickery". it's essentially a very clever ecommerce site with some CRM features.

The company that have quoted it are aware of all of our future possible features and nothing seems impossible on Wordpress. They will be masking all wordpress specific URL's, custom dashboard, custom log in etc - to the paying software user they won't know it's wordpress. The Wordpress back end makes user management, content management etc. etc. really easy and thus cheaper.

The thing is, building on Wordpress is at the top of our initial budget, building bespoke is going to add another $15000 to the build cost which might delay us for some time.

Saving money is no good if the product doesn't work/isn't scalable - as I say though, they are very confident Wordpress is a commercially viable route to market.

What are your thoughts?

Highly recommend you read this book from 37Signals also if you haven’t (its free).

https://basecamp.com/books/Getting Real.pdf

Helped me a lot.

Edit: Also to answer your recent question, we currently have a full time developer we found on upwork. He’s a full stack developer so he can handle everything from the backend to the front end. We just recently also brought in a front end developer to help him out.

We first hired an agency to build our app and just over $10k in we realized we were in trouble. They weren’t building what we really needed, communication became an issue, and many other issues.

Then we hired a local developer for $100/hr to takeover. We figured his high price per hour meant a better developer. We were wrong again. Another $10k or so in we realized he was taking us to the cleaners so to speak barely making progress and racking up the bill.

Eventually we wised up asked for some help from people who already built successful apps and posted an ad on upwork. We found our current full time dev, gave him a test project first to see how he worked before having him full take over, and he’s awesome. We also track everything in Trello and communicate daily with our developer.

Whichever route you choose, have small test project first. It can be a smaller feature of your big project. See how you work with them and how well they communicate. This will save you thousands maybe more.

Hope that helps!
 
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Hi @SparksCW

Can you say a little more about what the application is for? Don't give away any specifics if that's sensitive information, but it would help to know more about what you've got in mind.

For some of the reasons already mentioned, WP can be limiting. My biggest concerns would be more to do with the limitations of SQL and PHP when you look at what you could do with something like ROR, Node, or Django.

But it also might not be a big deal. You can do some snazzy things these days with WP's new REST API, if you want to use some fancier JS front-end tools. With the right setup you can make it hum as well as any web-app will hum (I've got a pretty sweet little setup with Nginx + fastcgi + redis which blows the doors off most anything else per unit of server horsepower.)

It will all depend on what you're looking for here. I wouldn't rule it out just because it's WP, if that's what you're asking.
 
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SparksCW

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Highly recommend you read this book from 37Signals also if you haven’t (its free).

https://basecamp.com/books/Getting Real.pdf

Helped me a lot.

Edit: Also to answer your recent question, we currently have a full time developer we found on upwork. He’s a full stack developer so he can handle everything from the backend to the front end. We just recently also brought in a front end developer to help him out.

We first hired an agency to build our app and just over $10k in we realized we were in trouble. They weren’t building what we really needed, communication became an issue, and many other issues.

Then we hired a local developer for $100/hr to takeover. We figured his high price per hour meant a better developer. We were wrong again. Another $10k or so in we realized he was taking us to the cleaners so to speak barely making progress and racking up the bill.

Eventually we wised up asked for some help from people who already built successful apps and posted an ad on upwork. We found our current full time dev, gave him a test project first to see how he worked before having him full take over, and he’s awesome. We also track everything in Trello and communicate daily with our developer.

Whichever route you choose, have small test project first. It can be a smaller feature of your big project. See how you work with them and how well they communicate. This will save you thousands maybe more.

Hope that helps!

I have read half of that book already and along with your post and the other posts in this thread this project may have just got back on track! It's also helped me realise a way to completely solve the biggest and most expensive issue we were struggling with!

The whole purpose of my idea is to SIMPLIFY a process people are doing manually. Software does exist already but most are completely overkill, complicated and not highly targeted to a specific niche. We have got carried away with making some very clever things happen at MVP when ultimately, they don't need to happen for the app to still be a success in the niche.

All we need to do, is make the thing they need (PDF report) happen quicker and easier.

The bells and whistles can come later when people are giving us money.

From doing a small amount of RoR research I really don't think this is a hard app to make at all whatsoever. I think we will give the UpWork route a look, my team mate on this (employee of my existing ecom company) keeps asking to go this route but I've kept squashing it. Time to open my eyes. Do you have any advice for finding a quality, reliable coder?

Wordpress will be a mistake, regardless of whether it'll physically work or not.

There is an INSIDERS thread on this project for anyone interested in following it.
 

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Hi @SparksCW

Can you say a little more about what the application is for? Don't give away any specifics if that's sensitive information, but it would help to know more about what you've got in mind.

For some of the reasons already mentioned, WP can be limiting. My biggest concerns would be more to do with the limitations of SQL and PHP when you look at what you could do with something like ROR, Node, or Django.

But it also might not be a big deal. You can do some snazzy things these days with WP's new REST API, if you want to use some fancier JS front-end tools. With the right setup you can make it hum as well as any web-app will hum (I've got a pretty sweet little setup with Nginx + fastcgi + redis which blows the doors off most anything else per unit of server horsepower.)

It will all depend on what you're looking for here. I wouldn't rule it out just because it's WP, if that's what you're asking.

Hi, there's an INSIDERS progress thread with a little bit more detail (not a lot admittedly) but the app is a relatively simple database app.

You add some database entries, it does a little bit of maths and gives you a pre-styled report. It's not going to be the next facebook/instagram that sells for billions of dollars, it's just making something certain people (including ours existing customers) do daily, faster and easier.

The core app is not complicated at all, I think we've complicated it ourselves by trying to do some "trickery" to make some more things even easier - without even making the basics work first.

I guess that's where the saying "don't run before you can walk" comes in....
 

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You add some database entries, it does a little bit of maths and gives you a pre-styled report.

Well, when you put it like that, it definitely doesn't seem like a 5 figure job, or 2 month job for that matter.

That seems like too much.

As for what to build it with, I couldn't give an opinion without more details.

Do you have any advice for finding a quality, reliable coder?

This is always a challenge, even for companies who look for full time worker and offer great salary and perks.

As a developer myself, I can only tell you what I have encountered when applying for some jobs:

- Ask to see their previous work. Verify.

- If you can, give them some test or challenge. Not sure how appropriate it is for one-off work (so not a full time position), but maybe it can be some sort of "implicit" test. For example you may ask as part of application what technology would they recommend and why.

Ask other open-ended questions which can reveal you their thought process, and maybe even a level of skill. Such questions are also good because they can't so much figure what you want to hear, but have to come up with their own answers.

- Have someone look at their code. The fact that an app seems to be working properly on your phone/computer, doesn't guarantee that it was coded well, or that it can deal properly with all possible user inputs etc.

As you go along, I guess you can post further questions here.

All we need to do, is make the thing they need (PDF report) happen quicker and easier.

The bells and whistles can come later when people are giving us money.

Yes! This!

I've seen this scenario before, where features kept getting added before users even had a chance to test the app. And then, they didn't seem to even like the app.

Save your money. Make a great basic solution.

Then your subscribers can pay for it's growth, and you can also ask them - the actual paying customers, which changes and features they'd like to see next.

Sometimes you can't even know this until you start using the app.
 
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LittleWolfie

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Wuh? Do you have evidence of that? Because I don't think they do.

On WordPress Scaling and Performance, The Zillow Way - Zillow Engineering

What Technology Stack do Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com Use for Property Listings?

ZILLOW.COM Technology Profile on BuiltWith

I think I might have gotten mixed up between etsy and ebay. Obviously they are not running wordpress.com but wordpress.org with various plugins (plus in zillow case it is the front+API layer, the backend database is separate.) There is much more to it than 'just' wordpress. Perhaps I should have said they are all running wordpress plus others. I don't see anything wrong with the idea of building a clone with fuctioanlity as an MVP on wordpress. Then just code the extra bits you need as you need them.

I don't have a reference, but I do remember a startup saying this is how they saved a large amount of money by building on open source that did 95% rather than building 100%.

Doesn't seem like they do. Whitehouse.gov runs on it though.

You can check, on Chrome, by pressing Ctrl+U. Ctrl+F, search for wp-content

Code:
view-source:https://www.sonymusic.com/

Unless they are running a hide and security enhancer plugin, that is trivial to install and then you wouldn't be able to tell. Better to run a stack explorer.

They wont be able to do that on the more basic packages though. A lot of people can confuse WordPress.com and WordPress.org. That's like comparing a landrover and SMART Fortwo, obviously the first has a lot more power and adaptability. I can see how with non technical client and non native English speaking developers there could be some confusion.

Quentin Tarantino did a good job with that movie. Can't wait for his next one "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood..." about the Manson Murders.

I think you should use Rockstar, just so you can say you need rockstar developers /s
 

ApparentHorizon

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ApparentHorizon

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Unless they are running a hide and security enhancer plugin, that is trivial to install and then you wouldn't be able to tell. Better to run a stack explorer.

I'm not sure the actual zillow site runs on wp.

Just their agent sites. You can see the wp- tag in the source.

Yeah....(agent site)

upload_2018-8-5_11-2-42.png
 
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GoldMan79

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Hey mate, if you're ready to spend $15000 (at least) on your SaaS app it's not an MVP.

WordPress will be good to start fast and test the market but you will have big problems when you will need to add new features or simply scale the app (based on previous experience) without even talking about the things that will break after each general update/security update (that you don't control).

PHP and MySQL will not be a problem, actually, it's a good choice to go with PHP, there is a lot of developers out there and the LAMP stack is the cheapest.

Check this: Introducing the New WordPress.com
 

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