Discussion: Does anyone have experience in building a SAAS app?

Questions
#1

Please delete if this is irrelevant here @samgeorges @daft

Does anyone have experience in building a SAAS app with October CMS?

#2

Hey @chris,

October CMS powers some large SaaS implementations, but these teams mainly operate in stealth mode.

I’ve built several SaaS apps using October CMS, generally, where the backend is the super admin side of things; this was for a mortgage broker. Another gave each customer their backend panel, which was managed using a dedicated tool to set up the database, web server and DNS records, and instances; for a web hosting company.

October CMS is flexible enough to allow for many different SaaS configurations, and it mostly depends on the job requirements and how much to approach it. The most crucial consideration is building a firewall between the administration and customer-facing tools; the two should never share the same codebase for optimal security.

1Pilot is an excellent tool for managing several instances of October CMS and is an example of a SaaS application.

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#3

Hey @daft

thanks for your valuable input and for sharing your experiences in this.

I am working on a side-project intending to build a saas platform with OctoberCMS.

I am curious about what you mean by that exactly:

building a firewall between the administration and customer-facing tools; the two should never share the same codebase for optimal security.

What administration are you referring to here?

#4

This refers to SaaS as a multitenancy set-up. It only applies where there are three levels:

  1. Super admin (god mode)
  2. Customer’s admin
  3. Customer’s website

Super admin (1) should not share the same code base as the customer content (2,3). This protects other customers and the main business.

#5

(1) is usually the October CMS backend itself, right?
while (2) (3) is the SAAS product itself in my case.

hence, I don’t see how it can be separated.

#6

All three are October CMS. Ideally, (1) is placed on a different server than (2) and (3). If you don’t plan on giving the customer access to an October backend, you probably don’t need to go this far.

October already provides a strong firewall between the backend and frontend areas. If you are building the entire app in the CMS, it can be just two areas:

  1. Super admin (October backend)
  2. Customer’s admin/website (October frontend)

These are the two different system designs that I’ve worked with when building SaaS apps.

#7

got it.
For my project, I just need a specific admin built on top of the CMS to help the clients manage their data, etc…

#8

Hey @chris,

Take a look at Cumulus Core plugin - October CMS. This is a base framework to build multi-tenant SaaS applications on, developed by the team at inIT - inIT - October CMS.

#9

Thanks @responsive
yes this plugin could be interesting, but it requires additional effort to handle payment versus subscription.

#10

Hey @chris,

Yeh there are a few extensions available to handle the most common SaaS features. Either way OctoberCMS and Cumulus gives a massive leg-up compared to building a SaaS from scratch.

Have a chat to @tomaszstrojny from inIT about what’s possible.

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#11

Hi all,

Thanks @responsive for mentioning me here.

Yes, the Cumulus plugin is designed to build a SaaS app the way @daft suggested, where the backend is a super admin panel, and the frontend is separated by features. From my experience, it saves hundreds of hours when building SaaS app from scratch.

It’s true that in the current public Cumulus.Subscriptions version you have to handle payment yourself but it’s a very small piece in comparison with the whole app. And what is more, Cumulus helps a lot with this, too. Integration with the gateway can be handled by Responsiv.Pay plugin, for example.

By the way, the newest Cumulus.Subscriptions is going to be integrated with Responsiv.Pay or if the box.

Anyway, if you have any questions re Cumulus, feel free to contact us :slight_smile:

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#12

thanks @tomaszstrojny for chiming in.
I am indeed using Cumulus Core for my SaaS project. It saves quite a lot of time indeed.
Excited to hear more about the new version of Cumulus.Subscriptions then.
Do you have a release date in mind?
As well, is there a new version of the demo theme somewhere?

#13

Great to hear you use and like Cumulus @chris :slight_smile:

I don’t have any particular date in mind but we already used it in one of our client’s project that’s going to be live around mid-January. We’ll probably publish the newest Cumulus.Subscriptions at similar date.

Unfortunately, keeping demo theme up to date was difficult so we made a decision to keep only demo app (https://cumulus.init.biz). The demo theme and demo plugin were archived at that time.

Let me know in case of any questions,

Tomasz Strojny