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01

Built for SaaS

We build the infrastructure so your team ships product.

Customer portals, subscription billing, admin dashboards, internal tools, and APIs. We handle the platform scaffolding so your engineers can work on what makes your product different. That includes full Stripe Billing integration with usage metering, dunning, and self-service plan management. We build marketing sites and landing pages too.

sonor.io

Our work · Sonor, built by Upforge

Hot metal squeezed through a narrow gap in dark steel, like the bottlenecks SaaS customer portals, billing and internal tools clear
02Sound familiar?

Why SaaS teams lose momentum on the wrong work

42%

of the average developer's week goes to maintenance, not product

Stripe's Developer Coefficient study measured 17.3 hours of a 41.1-hour week spent on technical debt and bad code. Outsourcing the undifferentiated infrastructure buys that time back. (Stripe / Harris Poll, 2018)

33%

of engineering time is spent building internal tools

Retool's survey found a third of dev time goes to internal tooling, and 57% of companies staff at least one full-time role for it. None of that work ships customer-facing product. (Retool, 2022)

62.4%

of professional developers name technical debt their top frustration

The 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey's number one workplace frustration. It compounds quietly until shipping anything new means paying interest first. (Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2024)

03The shift

The same saas business. A different machine.

Shift 01

Today

Engineers building billing UIs and admin dashboards

With Upforge

Your team ships product features while we build infrastructure

Shift 02

Today

Stripe billing, portal, and usage tracking in three separate tools

With Upforge

Unified billing portal with usage dashboards and self-service

Shift 03

Today

Internal tools built ad hoc, hard to maintain

With Upforge

Clean admin dashboards and operations tools with real UX

04What we build

Built for how saas actually works.

01

Customer Portals & Billing

Self-service billing, plan changes, usage dashboards, and invoicing, on Stripe or a custom setup, so your customers get a real portal instead of a Stripe checkout link. We build complete billing UIs with plan comparison, proration previews, payment method management, and invoice history. Usage-based metering tracks consumption in real time and shows it clearly to customers. Dunning sequences, failed payment retries, and churn prevention flows are all built in.

Learn more about Customer Portals & Billing
02

Admin & Internal Tools

Dashboards, support workflows, data pipelines, and audit logs, in internal tools with real UX instead of cobbled-together spreadsheets. We design role-based admin panels where support sees ticket context, ops sees system health, and finance sees revenue metrics. Search, filtering, and bulk actions are built around the workflows your team runs every day. Audit logging captures every action for compliance and debugging without slowing the interface down.

Learn more about Admin & Internal Tools
03

APIs & Developer Infrastructure

Public REST/GraphQL APIs, webhooks, OAuth flows, and developer documentation: the plumbing your product needs to integrate and scale. We build versioned API layers with rate limiting, authentication, and thorough error handling from the start. Webhooks come with retry logic and event logging, so integrations stay reliable. API documentation is generated from your codebase, so it never falls behind the code.

Learn more about APIs & Developer Infrastructure
Free saas audit

Want to know what your current setup is costing you?

The free audit checks your website the way your saas customers experience it (speed, mobile, accessibility, and search visibility) and puts what's worth fixing in writing. It's automated and free, and the report is specific about what it finds.

06What changes

How the machine removes each problem.

01

Infrastructure

Use existing platform functionality where it fits the product.

02

Engineering work

Separate shared infrastructure from the custom features your product needs.

03

Engineering cost

Compare implementation and ongoing costs before choosing the architecture.

04

Customer onboarding

Give customers a clear setup flow and measure where they need support.

SaaS FAQs

Common Questions From SaaS

Billing portals with Stripe integration, customer dashboards, admin tools with role-based access, REST and GraphQL API layers, onboarding flows, and internal operations tools. It's the infrastructure that eats engineering time but doesn't set your product apart. We built Sonor's entire SaaS billing and admin stack with this approach. See our application development services.

Yes. We can build directly in your repo, follow your coding conventions, match your CI/CD pipeline, and hand off cleanly with documentation and architecture decision records. Or we build separately in a standalone repo and integrate via well-documented APIs. Either way, your engineers review PRs and stay in the loop throughout. See our application development collaboration process.

We build full Stripe Billing integrations covering subscriptions, usage-based metering, invoicing, automated dunning, and self-service customer portals with plan management. Proration, free trials, coupon codes, and tax calculation are all handled natively. If Stripe doesn't fit your model, we build custom payment logic with your preferred processor. See our application development services.

Yes. We build fast Next.js marketing sites with Sanity or Contentful CMS integration, so your marketing team can update content, publish blog posts, and manage landing pages without waiting on engineering. Conversion-optimized layouts, structured schema markup, and sub-second page loads come standard. See our landing page and web development services.

You get clean code, documented APIs, architecture decision records, and a structured handoff process. We use modern stacks like React, Next.js, TypeScript, and Node.js or Python that your team already knows. Every endpoint is documented, every design decision is recorded, and your engineers get a walkthrough before we close out. See our application development handoff process.

Most SaaS infrastructure projects range from $5,000 to $50,000 depending on scope, and most land between $18,000 and $35,000. A billing portal with Stripe integration sits at the lower end, while a full suite of admin tools, customer portal, and API layer with documentation runs higher. Compare that to hiring 2-3 engineers for 6 months to build the same thing internally. See our application development services for pricing context.

We build with React, Next.js, and TypeScript on the frontend, Node.js or Python on the backend, and PostgreSQL for data. We also work in your existing stack if you prefer. Stripe handles billing, and we deploy to AWS, Vercel, or your preferred infrastructure. See our web development page for more on our technical approach.

We build with SOC 2 readiness in mind: audit logging, role-based access controls, encrypted data handling, and secure API authentication patterns. If you're pursuing SOC 2 Type II, we can structure the infrastructure to satisfy the Trust Service Criteria from day one. See our application development security approach.

You own everything we build. We provide thorough documentation, architecture decision records, and a structured handoff process so your team can maintain and extend the work independently. If you'd like continued support, we offer a maintenance retainer: you put down a deposit, bug fixes and feature additions are billed against it at $150 an hour, and you get a monthly summary.

A focused Stripe billing portal with self-service plan management is typically 6-8 weeks. Adding usage-based metering, invoicing, and a full customer dashboard extends to 10-14 weeks. We phase delivery so your team can start integrating early. See our application development timeline approach.

SaaS: key facts (with sources)

  • 42% of the average developer's week goes to maintenance, not product (source: Stripe / Harris Poll, 2018)
  • 33% of engineering time is spent building internal tools (source: Retool, 2022)
  • 62.4% of professional developers name technical debt their top frustration (source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2024)

Sources

Each source opened and verified · last checked
  1. · The average developer spends 17.3 hours of a 41.1-hour work week (about 42%) on maintenance: 13.5 hours on technical debt plus 3.8 hours fixing bad code, per Stripe's 2018 survey of 1,000+ developers with Harris Poll.
  2. · Developers and technical leaders report spending 33% of their time building internal tools on average, and 57% of companies have at least one full-time role dedicated to building or maintaining them, per Retool's May 2022 survey of 2,285 respondents.
  3. · 62.4% of professional developers name the amount of technical debt as a frustration at work, the top frustration in the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, consistent across individual contributors and managers.

Your saas business, running on your terms.

Tell us where the hours are going, and we’ll show you what a system built for your operation looks like, with a fixed price before any work starts.