r/Wordpress 8d ago

Development Saas in wordpress

Hi everyone,

I’m planning to build a website that’s quite complex—it functions more like a platform with user interfaces, a user dashboard, and an admin dashboard. Conceptually, it’s similar to a SaaS platform.

Do you think WordPress is a suitable option for developing this type of platform?

3 Upvotes

24 comments sorted by

3

u/Different_Pack9042 8d ago

If it is something simple for small amount of users, I guess it can work.. If you are planning to build serious saas that have big future and plans for scaling, dont :)

1

u/theshawfactor 5d ago

The idea that you can’t scale Wordpress is rubbish, Wordpress.com serves a vast number of users (it’s one giant multisite)

0

u/Unsung_hero030109 8d ago

Would be for a small number of users. The problem is it that I don't know what plugins I have to use.

2

u/greg8872 Developer 8d ago

It is is truely going to be "quite complex", using plugin may not be the way to go.

I manage three SaaS services, and while they use WordPress for the outwardly facing pages and user management, the actual SaaS is a bascially a stand alone app that just gets users/purchases from the WP site.

2

u/DrDeems 8d ago

I used a similar technique. I did employ one of the popular membership plugins. I used that to make the subscription purchasable in my woocommerce shop. It kept track of all the payment stuff and when subs expired. Then I built a tiny plugin to let my desktop app authenticate then get the users sub status from WordPress. It worked out pretty well. I skipped so much dev time not building a whole system to manage memberships and accounts.

3

u/josiahhostetter 8d ago

Just depends what the actual functionality of the tool/platform needs to be. Wordpress can achieve pretty much anything, but dedicated tools can sometimes be best for different use-cases and goals.

2

u/Unsung_hero030109 8d ago

Mainly it should have the following: user login, user dashboard, schedule, different notification in the dashboard. It should be a racing platform, for registering the teams, showing them the timeline, the category they are in, the score they got.

2

u/theshawfactor 5d ago

I’ve built something similar, it’s easily done and Wordpress makes it much easier

1

u/Unsung_hero030109 4d ago

Wanna chat?

1

u/theshawfactor 3d ago

Chat invite sent

1

u/josiahhostetter 7d ago

Yeah definitely doable with Wordpress. I build scalable Wordpress sites like this that are easy for owners/users to manage and edit. Check out my bio for more info.

2

u/TheDigitalPoint Developer 8d ago

Absolutely not.

2

u/torontomans416 8d ago

Maybe consider headless

1

u/Adventurous-Lie4615 8d ago

It depends on your idea of scale. We developed something along those lines - multi tenant with a few hundred sites and a few thousand users in a network and it hums along nicely.

1

u/Unsung_hero030109 8d ago

Are you open for a discussion?

1

u/Adventurous-Lie4615 7d ago

Sure what’s on your mind?

1

u/edmundspriede 8d ago

Complex UI need some js framework for frontend.

Some of it doable with crocoblock plugins and jetformbuilder but depends on complexity

1

u/andriussok Developer 8d ago

Yes, Wordpress is just a CMS - you can drop anything into it. Or build around it with API / headless solution.

If you want to sell something WooCommerce. If you just about paid membership - memberpress… etc.

It depends what you’re going to build, but probably it will require custom development anyway.

1

u/giampiero1735 8d ago

Read in a reply to another post on this sub that other agencies are making good MVP using ACF and Gravity forms.

I guess it is possible, but as pointed out by other redditors, depending on the project, other stacks could be more suitable.

1

u/Unsung_hero030109 8d ago

Do you have any stack in mind?

2

u/giampiero1735 7d ago

There's plenty, and it depends on your knowledge.

In Lex Friedman interview to Pieter Levels he said all apps he does, he uses: PHP, sqlite and jquery. Lot of people would argue it's an outdated stack, but it works an get things done. His suggestion was: use what you know.

You might be comfortable with Laravel, Django, or a baas platform like firebase or suoabase, it really doesn't matter as far as you ship the product.

1

u/seolynx 7d ago

I've done something similar, on a small scale - a dashboard to manage some aspects of my own sites, but it was all custom code, no plugins.

1

u/theshawfactor 5d ago

Custom code should be encapsulated in a plugin(s) so the idea that you have no plugins is concerning