Building SaaS Products in 2025: What We've Learned

Over the past several years, we've built and launched multiple SaaS products at Getia. Some have succeeded beyond our expectations. Others have taught us expensive lessons. This article distills what we've learned about building software products in 2025.

The Technology Stack Paradox

One of the most common questions we get from aspiring founders is about technology choices. What framework should they use? Which database? Cloud provider? The honest answer is that these choices matter far less than most people think—until they suddenly matter a lot.

Our Current Stack

Across our portfolio, we've standardized on a modern stack that prioritizes developer productivity and maintainability:

• Frontend: Next.js with TypeScript
• Styling: Tailwind CSS with shadcn/ui components
• Database: PostgreSQL with Prisma ORM
• Hosting: Railway for deployment
• Payments: Stripe
• Authentication: Custom solutions or NextAuth

This stack allows us to move quickly while maintaining code quality. More importantly, it's a stack our team knows well. The best technology stack is the one your team can execute with effectively.

When Technology Choices Matter

Technology becomes critical in specific situations: when you need to scale beyond typical loads, when you have specific compliance requirements, or when your product's core value proposition depends on technical capabilities (like real-time processing or AI inference). For most B2B SaaS products, standard modern tools will serve you well until you have problems that require custom solutions—and by then, you'll have the resources to address them.

The Real Challenge: Distribution

If we could go back and change one thing about our early ventures, it would be to focus more on distribution from day one. Building a great product is necessary but far from sufficient. You need to figure out how to consistently acquire customers at a reasonable cost.

Channels That Have Worked for Us

Content Marketing and SEO

For B2B products, content marketing remains highly effective. We invest heavily in creating genuinely useful content that addresses our target customers' problems. This content serves multiple purposes: it attracts organic search traffic, establishes credibility, and provides materials for other marketing activities.

Our key insight: The bar for content quality keeps rising. Generic, AI-generated articles don't perform well anymore. We've found that content needs to offer genuine insight, unique perspectives, or proprietary data to stand out.

Product-Led Growth

Several of our products use freemium or free trial models where the product itself drives acquisition and conversion. This requires building products that deliver value quickly—users need to experience the core benefit before they'll commit to paying.

Partnerships and Integrations

Building integrations with popular tools in your target market can be an effective distribution channel. When you integrate with platforms your customers already use, you tap into their existing distribution.

Channels That Haven't Worked (For Us)

Not every channel works for every product. We've found limited success with:

• Paid social advertising for B2B products (CPAs too high)
• Cold outreach at scale (response rates declining)
• Traditional PR (hard to measure, unpredictable)

Your mileage may vary. Our point is to test channels systematically and double down on what works for your specific product and market.

Pricing: Harder Than It Looks

Pricing is one of the highest-leverage activities in a SaaS business, yet founders consistently underinvest in getting it right. We've made every pricing mistake in the book.

Common Pricing Mistakes We've Made

Pricing Too Low

Our default tendency was to price conservatively, reasoning that lower prices would attract more customers. The reality: low prices attract price-sensitive customers who churn quickly and consume disproportionate support resources. Low prices also signal low value.

Complex Pricing

We tried usage-based pricing, feature-based tiers, add-ons, and various combinations. Complex pricing creates friction in the buying process and confusion after purchase. Simple, predictable pricing—even if it's not perfectly optimized—performs better.

Not Testing

For too long, we set prices based on intuition rather than data. Now we systematically test pricing with real customers before committing to a pricing strategy.

What We've Learned About Pricing

• Charge more than you think you should
• Simpler is better (2-3 tiers maximum)
• Annual plans improve retention and cash flow
• The pricing page is one of your most important pages—invest in it
• Talk to customers who didn't buy to understand price sensitivity

The Importance of Speed

In a competitive market, speed is a genuine competitive advantage. The faster you can ship, learn, and iterate, the more opportunities you have to find product-market fit before running out of resources.

How We Maintain Speed

Small Teams

We keep teams small. A team of 2-4 talented, aligned people can move faster than a team of 20. Communication overhead grows exponentially with team size.

Aggressive Scope Cutting

We're ruthless about cutting scope. The question isn't "would this feature be nice to have?" but "is this feature necessary for the next learning we need?" Almost always, the answer is no.

Automation

We automate everything that can be automated: deployments, testing, monitoring, routine customer communications. This frees up human time for work that requires human judgment.

Decision-Making Frameworks

We use simple frameworks to make decisions quickly. For most decisions, we ask: "Is this easily reversible?" If yes, we make a quick call and move on. We save extensive deliberation for decisions that are hard to reverse.

Building for Retention

Acquiring a customer is expensive. Keeping them is where the economics of SaaS really work. We've shifted significant focus to retention and expansion.

What Drives Retention

Core Product Value

Nothing substitutes for a product that genuinely solves an important problem. If your product delivers real value, customers will stay. If it doesn't, no amount of engagement tactics will save you.

Habit Formation

Products that become part of users' daily or weekly workflows have much higher retention. We think carefully about how our products fit into existing workflows and how we can become essential rather than optional.

Switching Costs

Products that accumulate valuable data or integrate deeply with other systems create natural switching costs. This isn't about trapping customers—it's about building products that become more valuable over time.

Proactive Customer Success

We monitor usage patterns and reach out proactively when we see signs of disengagement. Often, customers churn not because the product isn't valuable, but because they haven't figured out how to use it effectively.

What We're Focused on Now

Looking ahead, several trends are shaping how we build products:

AI Integration

Every product we build now considers AI integration from the start. Not as a gimmick, but as a genuine capability multiplier. AI can automate routine tasks, surface insights from data, and personalize experiences in ways that weren't possible before.

Vertical Focus

We're increasingly building products for specific verticals rather than horizontal tools. Vertical products can be more tailored to customer needs, command higher prices, and face less competition.

International from Day One

With software distribution global by default, we design for international markets from the start. This means considering localization, payment methods, and compliance requirements early rather than as an afterthought.

Conclusion

Building SaaS products is both harder and more accessible than ever. The tools for building are better than they've ever been, but competition is fiercer and customer expectations are higher. Success requires not just building great products, but excelling at distribution, pricing, and retention.

The good news: these are learnable skills. The patterns of what works are increasingly well-understood. Founders who approach company-building systematically—learning from others' mistakes and applying proven methodologies—have better odds than those who insist on figuring everything out from scratch.

That's exactly what we're trying to enable at Getia. Not by removing the challenges of building companies, but by creating an environment where founders can learn faster, execute more efficiently, and ultimately build more successful businesses.