The operator's nodes
Nodes in the operator panelThe servers the panel runs customers' services on, with their health, memory and number of resources.
SaaS development after the MVP: organisations, billing and scale
The first version works and has paying customers. Now you need organisations and roles, subscriptions with invoices, an API for customers and control over server costs. We run our own SaaS products, so we know these problems from the inside.
From user accounts to organisations with roles
The most common rebuild after an MVP: the product started with single accounts, but customers buy for teams.
Company 21 Ltd.Team plan, 11 people
Seats in the plan. Seats in the subscription and buying more from the panel, with prorated billing.
Seats in the plan12 of 12 taken
11 people1 invitationa new seat to buy
Roles and permissions
Owner, admin, member and guest with clearly described permissions, checked on the server.
- Ownereverything, including handing over and deleting the organisation
- Administratorpeople and roles, plan, seats, invoices, API keys and data export
- Memberthe organisation's projects and files, tasks and comments
- Guestonly the projects shared with themno seat
Organisations and invites
Data belongs to the organisation, not the person who created it. An employee leaving does not take the customer's data with them.
- Projects and filesThey stay in the organisation, whoever added them.
- API keysFour keys with the organisation's permissions, not those of the people who created them.
- InvoicesIn the organisation's name; the invoice goes to KSeF.
- Customer data exportCustomers can download their data in an open format. Many contracts require it and GDPR grants it.
User 07left the organisation on 06.10
38 projects and 214 files stayed in the organisation, taken over by User 02. The API key they created still works.
Development as a service. We run changes like these as platform development, and quote new modules separately.
Billing that needs no human
Subscriptions, invoices and failed payments have to handle themselves before you have a few hundred customers.
Subscription
Plan, seats and billing period through Stripe.
Invoice
A company invoice with the organisation's details.
KSeF
Invoices for Polish companies sent to KSeF. A paid period goes back to the subscription.
Retries
Payment failed: more payment attempts and emails asking for a new card.
Suspension
Overdue: read-only mode instead of deleting data.
A public API customers can integrate without calling you
SaaS customers want to connect your product to their systems. We describe the API in OpenAPI from the first endpoint.
Keys bound to the organisation
An API key is generated in the panel and carries the organisation's permissions, not those of whoever created it.
Cursor pagination
Lists do not lose records when data is added during a fetch.
Limits instead of outages
Too many requests end with a 429 and a retry time, not a slowdown for every customer.
Flaem: a SaaS we build ourselves
A panel for hosting companies with provisioning, a store, a wallet and billing. We solve the problems described here on our own product first.
The service lifecycle
The storePurchase, provisioning, payments, limits and renewals in one product.
Live metrics
A customer's game serverLive resource usage for the customer and the operator.
Many customer brands
The customer's dashboardThe panel runs under the brand and domain of the hosting company using it. The same product in the browser, on the desktop and on the phone.
Performance and costs before they become a problem
What we check in a growing SaaS. Each one usually shows up with the first large customer. More on our blog: Business hosting: VPS or cloud, After launch: monitoring and maintenance.
Queries that grow with data
We look for queries that were fine at a hundred rows and slow at a million, and add indexes or change the data model.
Infrastructure cost per customer
We work out what one customer costs to serve, so pricing does not grow slower than the server bill. Options are compared in our article on business hosting.
Background jobs
Exports, emails and reports move to a queue so they do not block user requests.
Monitoring and alerts
Response times and errors per organisation, to know which customer is hurting. Part of our DevOps work.
Questions SaaS companies ask
The most common questions from teams growing a product after the MVP.
Read next
Before the MVP, billing and servers.
Show us your product
Tell us what is blocking development or sales today. We will reply with a plan for the first changes and a free quote.