Quality home services have always been essential to both towns and cities equally. With urbanization, the adaption of new innovative technologies, and home renovation trends, constant growth is evident in the industry. Speaking of the present times, various statistical estimations have shown that the home service industry generates more than $500 billion annually in the US alone.
However, the industry is also highly fragmented. There are multiple trade professionals contributing to the industry, including electricians, plumbers, roofers, carpenters, cleaners, gardeners, architects, and interior designers. Connecting them all, we have home service marketplaces like Handy and Angi. Due to the high scope of business in the home services industry, many founders look forward to launching their own home service marketplaces.
To do that, there are two very popular types of home service marketplace solutions that confuse entrepreneurs. These types are self-hosted home service solutions and SaaS solutions. While SaaS solutions lure many entrepreneurs with their small monthly recurring payments, our analysis uncovers a whole different picture.
In this article, we have shared our analysis of why self-hosted solutions are much better than SaaS solutions.
Benefits of Self-hosted Solutions Over SaaS
Before we begin, let’s take a closer look at what the terms; self-hosted and SaaS actually mean in the software industry.
- Self-Hosted Software: This type of home service marketplace solution can be hosted on any server. It can either be a third-party hosting server, such as GoDaddy or Bluehost, or even your own in-house server. The only condition is that the server should meet the minimum hardware requirements of the software.
- SaaS Software: The term SaaS itself is an acronym for Software-as-a-Service. The home service marketplace software is first hosted on the software provider’s very own servers and shared with you as a monthly service.
There is more to self-hosted and SaaS solutions than the aforementioned definitions. We have covered everything important in the following points.
1. Highly Cost Effective in the Long Run
Yes, you read it right, self-hosted solutions are highly cost-effective in the long run. The reason is that they come with a lifetime usage license. On the other hand, SaaS software is available at monthly or annually recurring costs which are never-ending. The end result, there is no breakeven point to SaaS software investment.
See How Self-Hosted Solution can Benefit your Business
2. Come with More Price Transparency
The pricing in self-hosted software is also more transparent. Usually, there’s just a lifetime cost involved and some prerequisites, such as a custom domain and hosting server. However, with SaaS software, there are many hidden costs involved that directly go to the solution provider. For example:
Hidden Costs in SaaS Software:
- The discounted price is only available on an annual subscription. Meaning, you need to pay the marketed price * 12 months on a recurring basis to get the marketed price for the software
- To access full features and accommodate business growth, there are package upgradation costs. Some SaaS solutions also charge a separate transaction fee depending on your sales volume
3. Are Highly Scalable
We talked about accommodating business growth in the previous point. As self-hosted solutions support unlimited listings, transactions, and user profiles and provide access to all the features at a one-time cost, they are highly scalable. In contrast, you will need to upgrade your SaaS subscription in order to scale the SaaS solution for business growth.
4. Are More Secure than SaaS Solutions
As self-hosted software is hosted on your own choice of server, you get the flexibility to select a more secure or faster server. Inherently, self-hosted home service software are also more secure than SaaS solutions. This is simply because instead of a shared hosting server, you can get a private server. On the other hand, SaaS solutions often share a single server with multiple businesses, which makes them a potential target for cyber fraud.
5. Provide a Competitive Edge
Self-hosted solutions provide a solid competitive edge to home service business owners. This is because, due to the small monthly costs of SaaS software, it becomes easier for your competitors to replicate your software technology and business model. When this happens, it becomes difficult to keep your value proposition distinct from direct competition.
Yo!Gigs: The Most Competent Self-Hosted Home Services Marketplace Solution
If you are interested in a self-hosted solution for your home services business, Yo!Gigs is a highly reliable option. It comes with comprehensive marketplace functionalities to help you connect customers with skilled service providers and manage different types of tasks on a single platform. Additionally, Yo!Gigs supports both direct hiring and bidding models to provide you with more flexibility in business operations. Being a self-hosted solution, there are no limitations on the number of user profiles and transactions on Yo!Gigs, making it a fully scalable solution as well.
Some of Yo!Gigs’ advanced features are:
- Task management
- User management
- Bidding management
- Order management
- Background checklist
- Verification badge
- eWallet
- Custom task groups
- Earnings withdrawal settings
- Content management system
- Reports and analytics
Furthermore, to ensure you with complete peace of mind, Yo!Gigs also comes with 1 year of free technical support.
Summarizing
To capitalize on the rapidly growing home services industry, both self-hosted solutions and SaaS solutions are advanced marketplace development methods. However, while the former comes with a lifetime license, the latter requires founders to pay monthly recurring costs. Also, there are too many hidden costs associated with SaaS solutions that make them very costly in the long run. In comparison, self-hosted solutions come with transparent pricing and are fully scalable. As a home service business owner, you only need to pay once to build your marketplace and can scale as much as you want. This makes self-hosted solutions very reliable.
