Outsourcing to external web and mobile app development agency is an option when you need to build a fully customized social network. It would take high capital and time investment. Usually, the core idea of the social site would be so unique that none of the existing services would be able to fulfill that requirement.
With a SaaS product, you don’t have to take care of hosting, coding, maintenance, security, and other facets of running an application. A SaaS solution allows you to customize your community up to a great extent and helps you get started with a monthly subscription. Cost is considerably lower than outsourcing.
Another approach is to assess open-source software such as Telescope Nova or WordPress and BuddyPress ecosystem and find up to what extent you can reuse these existing solutions. Then you would have to again work with a development team to customize your professional social network and take care of maintenance as well as security.
This approach primarily encompasses hiring and building a technical team that can develop the social network exactly based on your specifications. This is also capital intensive and the timeline to launch the social network also takes a longer time. Just like any other option apart from SaaS, the in-house solution also requires you to take care of the maintenance.
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