SaaS (Software as a Service)

SaaS is software delivered over the cloud on a subscription basis, letting users access full functionality without installing or maintaining their own servers.

The difference between SaaS and custom development is often oversimplified as 'subscriptions are cheaper,' but comparing five-year total cost of ownership (TCO) usually shows the gap is under 5% — at a mid-sized deployment scale, SaaS runs about NT$3.7M versus about NT$3.69M for custom, so the real difference isn't total price but data control and long-term flexibility. SaaS fits scenarios like analytics platforms or online-education systems that need fast launch and multi-tenant architecture, with third-party API/SaaS subscription fees typically running NT$16k-160k a month, climbing year over year with usage and headcount rather than being a one-time payment. Picture an early-stage online-course company: using SaaS to quickly wire up enrollment and payments is a reasonable, practical starting point, but as the user base grows and platform limits start to cap growth, the steadily rising subscription cost becomes a real issue. A common misconception is that SaaS is always cheaper than custom — subscription costs compound over time, and functional flexibility is capped by the platform itself. If requirements are highly standardized and the company has no engineering capacity to run its own system, SaaS remains the faster, lower-risk choice — starting there and switching later, once you actually hit a real bottleneck, is fine too.