True difficulties to maintain a website(SaaS)

Published By zooboole

I used to think a lot and even get anxious about starting and finishing any new project I undertake.

Recently I decided to dive deep into entrepreneuship, specifically, solopreneurship. Being a long time developer with experience in building various kinds of websites, I thought I would be of great fit to handle things on my own. Sadly, i quickly realised that things don't work like that.

Another misconception I had was that I needed to fully plan and fully execute every project from the start to the end before launching it. A good proof is this website. It was PHPOcean.com which re-branded in to Lancecourse.com to handle more topics than PHP. Unfortunely I was not able to add my custom newsletters model due to some challenges I went through. So, because of that, I never officially introduce the project to anyone, even to my existing audience.

I wrote on why websites need maintenance before. But I realized now that it is even more than I could think then.

In general, it's better to start with a MVP and then grow the product by adjusting it to fit the actually need of your potential users. Following this process, you quickly realize that building is not really the biggest challenge, but maintaing and growing it.

Another type of maintenance that you might thibk about at the early stages is that you may have less paying customers and you need to keep the business running while growing it. You don't only have to improve the product, but you also have to maintain it alive by paying for the server, domain name, SSL certificates, etc.

Over time, when your product does well, and you decide to scale it, you will hire a team to join you. Mostly, all these people will work to keep the product running. The whole thing becomes just about making sure that the service is alive.

When starting a new product, make sure you have a clear and sustainanble maintenance plan, because that's what you might be doing in a longer time.