How I built and launched a SaaS app in one month

In June of this year, I had an idea for a software-as-a-service (Saas) application that I wanted to build and launch. On July 1st, I committed the first lines of code to a git repo for the app. After about 200 hours of development time, on August 10th I launched the first version of the application into the world, ready for users and subscribers.

The service is called WP Lookout and you can read more about the service itself and why I built it on wplookout.com. This post is about the process, tools and services I used to build and launch a SaaS application in what felt like a relatively short period of time.

Here’s the short list of resources I used along the way if you just want to explore them without further commentary:

  • Laravel for the application framework
  • Laravel Homestead for my local development environment
  • PhpStorm for software development
  • Laravel Spark for scaffolding the SaaS subscription and account management
  • Stripe for subscription payment processing
  • Laravel Nova for an administrative dashboard
  • Git and GitHub for tracking code development, to-do items and feature branches
  • Upwork for hiring and paying a software code reviewer and consultant
  • Slack for coordinating with my contractor
  • TermsFeed for generating privacy policy and terms of service documents
  • Amazon Web Services for application hosting
  • Laravel Vapor for managing AWS setup and deployment
  • WordPress for building the WP Lookout marketing website
  • Matomo for privacy-focused analytics
  • HelpScout for managing user support interactions
  • MailerLite for handling new user onboarding and marketing automation

I’m not going to go in-depth on all of these tools, as some of them are pretty simple and self-evident in their value. Others are just magical and deserving of some additional observations. Here are some things that stood out and what I learned along the way:

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