What kinds of services we mean
What sets an online service apart from a regular website is that it delivers a result to the user. A few typical examples:
- online scheduling and booking: doctors, workouts, hotel rooms, restaurant tables, equipment rentals;
- calculators and configurators that produce an estimate, a quote, or a document;
- subscription services: access to workouts, courses, data, or work tools;
- services for ordering technical resources, such as servers or licenses, with automatic access provisioning;
- internal company tools that automate a specific process and are available to customers online.
If the system has many user groups with separate dashboards and a large volume of content, the project is closer to a web portal.
A new product or a service for an existing business
A new product first has to prove that someone needs it. Speed to first launch and flexibility matter most here: features often change after conversations with users. We make technical decisions so they can be revisited without rewriting the entire codebase.
A service for an established company already has customers and processes. The priority is not to break what works: the service needs to exchange data with your CRM, accounting system, and phone system. The risk that nobody wants the service is lower, but the demands on stability and integrations are higher.
An MVP or a full product from day one
A minimum viable first version includes only the key action and the bare essentials around it. Pros: a smaller upfront budget, faster contact with real users, and less money spent on features nobody needs. Cons: the product looks modest, and some processes will have to be handled manually at first.
A full product makes sense when the market and users are already known, for example, when you are moving a long-running offline service online. Pro: customers get everything right away. Con: a higher risk of spending on things you don't need if your assumptions don't hold.
We'll tell you honestly which option we think makes more sense for your situation, and explain why.
Payments, subscriptions, and your users' money
Payments are the most sensitive part of any service. A mistake here means either lost revenue or angry customers. That's why we plan separately for:
- what happens if a payment fails or the payment provider is temporarily unavailable;
- how free trials, plan upgrades and downgrades, and subscription cancellations work;
- which emails and notifications the user receives at each step;
- how your team sees payments and can manually resolve a disputed case.
We typically use Stripe or PayPal. The choice depends on where your customers are and on your payment model.
We also set up receipts and invoices for business customers if your clients are companies. This is often overlooked at the start, and then has to be added in a rush when the first business clients ask for invoices for their accounting team.
Integrations and mobile use
A service almost always relies on external systems: calendars, CRMs, email marketing services, maps, partner databases. The more of these connections there are, the more important it is to plan for what happens when each one fails. Learn more on our integrations and automation page.
Many services are used mostly on phones, so we design user flows for small screens first. If users come back daily, the service can be built as a progressive web app that installs on a phone without an app store.
What to prepare before kickoff
- A description of the problem the service solves and how people solve it today.
- A profile of your first users and, if possible, a few people willing to look at a prototype.
- A revenue model: subscription, one-time payment, commission, or a free service for your company's customers.
- A list of systems the service needs to exchange data with.
Common mistakes when launching a service
- Too many features in the first version. Launch gets delayed, and users end up using only a third of the functionality.
- Mandatory sign-up at the first step. If people don't yet understand what they'll get, they simply leave. It's often better to show the result first and ask for registration later.
- No analytics at launch. Without it, you can't see where users drop off, and the next release is built on guesswork.
- A weak admin panel. Your team ends up fixing database records by hand instead of working with customers.
How to tell if the service is working
Visitor numbers say little about a service. What matters much more is the share of people who reach the key action, how many come back a second time, and how many convert from free to paid.
We build these metrics into analytics before launch. Some time after go-live, we review together where users drop off, and that is where planning for the next release begins. This way, product development is driven by how real people behave, not by a wish list written before launch.
What affects the cost of an online service
- Complexity of the key flow: a simple booking, or a calculation with dozens of parameters and rules.
- Payment model: one-time payments, tiered subscriptions, or commissions from multiple parties.
- Number of roles: just customers and admins, or also providers, partners, and managers.
- Integrations: how many external systems and how stable they are.
- Expected load: hundreds of users a day or peak waves of simultaneous requests.
We give an initial estimate once the key flow is described, and a more precise one after the prototype. We also show what goes into the first version and what can sensibly wait, so you can manage the budget according to product priorities.
Frequently asked questions
Can we launch without custom design, using a ready-made template? Yes, that's a reasonable option for validating an idea. But the key flow is still worth designing carefully, because it determines whether users come back.
Will I own the code? Yes. The service is built for you, and you can keep developing it with us or with another team.
What if the service starts growing fast? We design the architecture so the load can be distributed. Bottlenecks show up in monitoring, and we scale them step by step instead of rewriting everything at once.
How is user data protected? Passwords are never stored in plain text, and card data is handled by the payment provider, not your server. We restrict team access to personal data by role and keep an activity log.
Can you help with product strategy? We help define the first version and release priorities, while decisions about the market and revenue model stay with you.
Why Promodex
Promodex has been building web products since 2015. The online services in our portfolio include JustVPS, Online GYM, TickOps, and a community spatial development planning service. Our own in-house team of designers, developers, and marketers takes the product from prototype to deployment. And after launch, we stay with you to ship the next versions together.
