SaaS startup hosting?

Thanks for posting. I do not have the app developed yet. I am going to use Chargify or Zuora (probably Chargify) for customers to pay for their subscription. They say they are PCI compliant. Wherever we can avoid reinventing the wheel on this service, we would love to use good, existing "wheels" to use on our service. For any recommendations, I am all ears.

The service is mainly to let practice owners in business for themselves to take payment either through the website (subdomain) I host for them and let them manage by credit card, check (image deposit) or cash (just reconcile payment with the accounts receivable entry if expense tracking tests as a feature small business owners would ACTUALLY use). So for this I would like to integrate with PayPal, which offers credit card and check deposit, and/or Square. Again, no desire to reinvent wheels. What possibilities do these services offer for integrating into applications/websites/services?

You are right, I need to get a test application out right away, and I am one step away from hiring developers. Before I do that, I want an absolutely clear vision of how the service will look and work for customers.

Here is another question: Practitioners I have in mind (i.e. massage therapists, personal trainers, PTs, etc.) are on the go and rarely in front of a computer. But I want a website/portal where they can manage their website (a control panel as you said), which needs to be easier than the control panel on something like say Host Gator, which is hard for anyone not in the business to understand. We need the Model T of website design and management ("You can have any color you want, as long as it's black." applied to web choices and design, because I believe non-web designers are often hurt by their choices in web design). So easier than Weebly, and like a dashboard (like Google Adwords dashboard, where you manage and see everything from a page behind the scenes).

So that needs to be usable on a browser. And because they are so mobile they need iOS and Android apps to take money and set appointments so they will actually use the service. Here I am sure you would be right reminding me I don't know until I test, and you are right. These are my assumptions, many of which will probably not pan out.

Reading other forums and listening to your guys' advice, I will go with VPS over say Amazon EC2 or other things. What do you think about Linode? And is the 1GB option good for $40? What will tell me my hosting choice is either too much or too little?

Thank you for reading this, my Mastermind Group!

Does having a development server and a production server mean two separate subscriptions? What plans do you recommend that provide both at the level needed (starting out, scalable, and as economic as possible while still having competent specs)?

Also, what is the best way to learn what I need to know about building a web application on a VPS server? Is there reference material that's helped you learn what you needed to know?

You mention cloning a VPS. Is that like copy/pasting whatever passes testing on the development server and putting it on the production server as an "update"? What is the best way to document the development process, so there is an understandable record from Version 1.0 to infinity?

Thank you again for taking a look at my questions.

You can also run both staging and production environments on the same machine if you're running on a budget.

That's not true, Git is still free, though there's a lot of commercial server products for it. I like it a lot better than SVN also, it's easier to use all-around, and much more efficient. SVN has better user-interface tools for Windows users though.

I use Git mostly from the terminal, though there's a great GUI tool for Mac OSX called SourceTree that I love using. It's great for reading commits, and analyzing the differences between versions of documents. There's nothing as good as SourceTree written for SVN, that I know of, though there may be by now, I'm not sure.

I'd look at possible turn-key solutions on various platforms. I believe Drupal had one, but I can't find the link at the moment. I think it was commercialized through OfficeMedium. There are likely others too.

If you go with Python or Ruby you can check out Heroku (Heroku | Cloud Application Platform) for hosting. For payment, Stripe has been great for me and Square will allow a person to take a Credit card over their phone, but not everyone likes an email only receipt. Square does not have an open API to use via a web app (or at least not last time I checked). Paypal is good, except that it is paypal. Authorize.net is another big one, but they are pricier. You have the payment for the service which could be stripe and then the providers ability to use a gateway, which could be different.

But really, I feel you need to consider a higher level approach. There are simply too many things to consider in creating a full-scale web app for a non-technical person to execute successfully and with sufficient quality, imo. I'm certainly not trying to discourage you, but I would consider finding a technical partner who can choose the platform and hosting. Someone who can help hire technical resources if they themselves are not the developer. They could be an IT consultant you pay to do an architecture assessment and help you hire the right people. Having a proper architecture for the other folks to develop will save you time and money in the long run. I'll go so far as to say it is critical to get someone in that plays this role. If you feel confident in doing so, then go for it. But if not, don't skip it and try to do this stuff yourself and then hire people to develop that you have to manage.

My .02. Good luck with the project.

Thanks lordspace, I like the idea of getting the product out in thirty days and "selling then buying" -- get customers then give them a product.