So you have a tech startup idea and are wondering about the roadmap of the company. Execution is the key and most startups fail to achieve their goals because of poor on-ground implementation.

 

One of the most essential decisions at the beginning of a venture is to choose a technology stack that suits your organization. Sometimes founders do not give so much importance to it but they surely realize later that they should have done more research on this. Maintenance, scalability, and user experience are directly or indirectly dependent upon picking the right tech stack or technology.

 

What is a Tech Stack?

 

To put it in simple words, the tech stack is a set of programming languages, tools, patterns, servers, software(s), and frameworks that are used in building software applications.

 

If you do not have a tech background, then it may look a little daunting to understand everything and this article aims to simplify that process.

 

What are the Benefits of Choosing Right Tech Stack?

 

1. Better scalability and performance
2. Less maintenance costs for the upkeep
3. Better consumer experience

 

Web applications would typically have the following Structure:

Backend

 

The backend technology powers your application and therefore the choice of the backend is of vital importance for the success of the start-up. It has a few major components like the backend language and database.

 

Some of the popular open-source backend programming languages:

 

• Java: It has been a proven workhorse and it is suitable for processor-intensive tasks since it is multi-threaded.
• Node.Js: Suitable for high IO and realtime communication with front end. Important part of MERN and MEAN stack.
• Php: Relatively shorter development timeframes and good for certain kind of MVPs.
• Python: One of the most popular languages and widely used for Data Analytics, AI and machine learning.

 

Popular open-sourced databases:

 

• MySQL: The most popular SQL database. SQL databases are useful if you have relational data.
• PostgreSQL: Perhaps the most feature-rich open-sourced  SQL database
• MongoDB: The most popular NoSQL database. It can be used standalone or in conjunction with SQL databases
• Cassandra: A large column database that offers high availability with fast read or write speeds. Does increase your infrastructure costs but in modern applications, high availability is an important requirement.
• Redis: Great for caching or queue management

 

Web Front-end

 

The front-end means what the user sees on the screen of the website and there are three major front-end technologies stack used majorly which are:-

 

HTML– It defines how the information will be displayed.

 

CSS– It is used to define the style, such as fonts, colours, and size.

 

JavaScript– It allows the interactivity of the web page.

 

The Angular JS and React JS are two of the most preferred choices for the front-end activity by many start-up owners.

 

Size of your Project

 

The technology stack will play a crucial role in every stage of the business, so determining the size of the project is 100% essential.

 

1. MVP
   The first step in the new project development is to launch the MVP that is the minimum viable product. This type of product contains only basic features and it is typically used for testing an idea. You could potentially use Php or node for backend and a simple HTML/CSS based frontend. When you are creating an MVP then speed and flexibility become important. Database selection becomes a very important decision at this stage because it is difficult to change your database type later. After all, your app logic depends on it.

 

2. Mid Sized Projects
   Once you have successfully launched an MVP and customers are demanding more features then you would need to take care of scale, reliability, and security. Depending on the requirements you may want to go with a monolithic architecture or microservices-based.

 

3. Large Project
   These projects are a mix of programming languages, web frameworks, and strategies. Large e-commerce solutions, social network projects, or SAAS applications come under this. These types of projects focus on reliability, scalability, and security. Typically for such projects, you will have a microservices architecture which reduces your point of failures but it also means more infrastructure to manage, and 2 or more types of database. For a typical social media network, you may need to use MySQL for storing user data but also a NoSQL database that requires high-speed read and writes.

 

Are Resources Available?

 

Now, what resources to consider while choosing the right stack? You must be thinking that. Right? The availability of developers with the chosen technology stack is one of the major factors. What we mean here is that if you choose any programming language that is a bit uncommon, then picking the right developers is going to be difficult. So pick a tech stack that has a vibrant and large developer community. So if in the future you wish to expand the team, you could do it easily.

 

Cost

 

The tech stack also influences the development cost. So if you want to spend smartly on development, then choose the tech stack wisely. The developers you hire should be well-versed with the language they work and the cost of hiring them shouldn’t cross your budget. Also, do look upon the maintenance cost of the project. Try to adhere to open source technologies as they are easy to maintain and cheaper also and you can easily update them.

 

Time to Market

 

Another factor that is significant to all start-ups. The development of your product should be fast because the faster you and your company develop, the faster your startup would get exposure in the market. You should not invest much time in development in the initial stages of the startup if you are concerned to have feedback from the target audience. You need to make sure that the technology stack you pick allows third-party integration for a faster development process.

 

This way your web or mobile development would be done at a faster pace. Another point in stimulating time to market is the developers’ availability which again needs to be focused on. As the ideas you have thought are to be processed seamlessly. Now, once you develop your product, then it has to undergo the testing phase. So make sure that your chosen technology stack allows you to locate bugs and fix them as soon as possible without consuming much time.

 

Scalability

 

Business is all about expansion and to expand it in the right manner, your venture should be structurally scalable. For this to happen, you need to clearly understand your business requirements and its dynamics. So at the time of picking the technology, make sure that you check the horizontal and vertical scalability of the technology.

 

• Horizontal Scalability
  The horizontal scalability refers to adding of more machines to your applications and that potentially reduces a single point of failure.
• Vertical Scalability
  The vertical scalability means that you increase the hardware of your server in order to meet the growing needs of your business.

 

Security

 

The security feature of the tech stack is necessary to discuss as we live in a world where anything can be hacked. In these times, developing a product needs to be secured in all aspects. More importantly, when the application is handling sensitive data of the users. Your tech stack should be able to handle threats and secure your product from all sides. The more robust your product is, the more users will use it, and the more it is going to be sold in the market.

 

Budget

 

Estimation is good and when it comes to business start-ups, then it plays a crucial role. So think well for the tech stacks in regards to the budget. Try to find the best solutions within the budget. If you are planning to build a product that fulfills your need, make customers happy and outshine in the target market. Then yes, estimation is necessary. So that product can give you the results you desire.

 

Conclusion

 

The process of picking the right tech stack for your start-up us an important one and solid research should be done before you choose the tech stack. Factors like the size of the project, scalability, security, maintainability, budget are the major factors that affect a lot while deciding. So, don’t just depend on others to tell you the right tech stack coz the stakes are high and you would not want to go wrong on this one.

 

At Techtonic we work together to craft & develop modern tech solutions every day. It is our responsibility to help our clients choose the right tech stack for their business. We are a Web And Mobile App Development Company and with our team of experts and experience working with major industries we have managed to pull off multiple app & mobile development projects all over the world.