A practical guide for founders — timelines, team, cloud and hidden costs.

What is an MVP for SaaS?

An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) focuses on the smallest set of features that deliver value to early customers. For SaaS, this usually means core user flows: signup/login, core feature(s), billing, and basic admin/analytics.

Typical feature list for a SaaS MVP

• User authentication & onboarding
• Core product workflow (example: analytics dashboard, booking flow, CRM list)
• Basic billing (Stripe/PayPal) or manual invoicing in India
• Admin panel for users & settings
• Basic telemetry/usage analytics

Cost breakdown (India, 2025)

Below are typical ranges depending on team composition and complexity.

Breakdown example for a ₹8 lakh project:

• Design & prototyping: ₹75k–1.5L
• Frontend engineering (React/Angular): ₹2–3L
• Backend & APIs (Node/Java): ₹2–3L
• QA & testing: ₹50k–1L
• Cloud costs & third-party (first 6 months): ₹20k–80k

Recurring & hidden costs

• Cloud hosting (starting ₹1k–10k/month depending on usage)
• Third-party API costs (email, SMS, payments)
• Support & maintenance (10–20% of development cost per year)

How to reduce SaaS MVP cost

• Prioritize features strictly — cut anything not needed for early validation
• Use managed services (Auth0, Stripe) to avoid re-building common features
• Use cloud credits from AWS/GCP for early-stage cost relief

Timeline

Typical delivery: 8–16 weeks for a standard MVP with 2–4 people working. Sprint-based delivery with demos every 2 weeks reduces risk and improves clarity.

How VMB can help

We offer fixed-scope MVP builds and flexible engineering teams. See our services or contact us for a free estimate.