Which Startup Tech Stack To Choose In 2023: Factors to Consider

While constructing a house, you need tools to help build it. The same concept goes hand in hand with building a startup. A technology stack is needed to make your project work. The startup tech stack you choose will have a significant influence on how your business scales. A good startup idea with poor implementation is like a brilliant cobbler but still wearing the worst shoes.

With a suitable tech stack, businesses can launch their startup fast, scale quickly and not worry about issues of growing the business. The platform will be able to cope with multiple requests and not shut down. In this article, we are going to talk about the following startup tech stacks:

1. Python
2. Java
3. MEAN Stack With AWS
4. LAMP Stack
5. RoR Stack
6. .Net Stack

What is a Tech Stack?

The technology stack is a set of programming languages, frameworks, libraries and tools for creating a software product. 

Any kind of application consists of two parts: server-side and client-side, or else known as front-end and back-end.

Imagine a house…

The foundation is the back-end side of your application. Basically, it is the foundation for your future development. 

The facade of the building is a front-end side. Together, you have a startup product that has enough living space for a whole megapolis.

Frontend Vs. Backend

Top 7 Factors to Consider While Choosing a Startup Technology Stack

#1: Cost

As a startupper, you are likely to have a strict budget that is split between development and marketing. So, here are a few things to know about the development costs.

• Technology Price

It is no secret that new technologies cost money, so being a startup founder, it is essential to save money where possible. Thus, one of the most profitable things is to embrace open-source solutions. 

The beauty of open-source is that the original source code is available and open to the public, meaning that such technologies can be used for free. 

The perks of open-source:

• Cost-effective
• Evolving
• Customizable
• Lasting

Remember: while choosing an open-source technology for your startup, keep in mind how long this technology is predicted to exist. To check, take a look at whether big companies are using a particular programming language and framework or not. 

• Developer’s Salary

Okay, let me break it down for you: the more popular the technology is, the more developers there are going to be on the market. Popularity results in higher competition and, thus, lower prices for developers. 

Below you will find the top-paying technologies in 2021. Notice that the technologies at the top are new. 

Top paying technologies in 2021

Note: Don’t be fooled by new ‘hype’ languages, since the newer the programming language or framework is, the more complex and more expensive it is to find a good developer. 

It is no secret that the older the version of any technology, the bigger the chances of finding a cheaper developer. 

If a business happens to have a very limited startup budget and decides to cheat using an old version of let’s say PHP to save some money on the development, they may end up spending so much more than anticipated in the future.

#2: Community

Make sure that the technology you are going to use for a startup has a vibrant and active community.

Source: SlashData

Overall, the community mirrors how good the technology is. If it is not good, then the community will be just as bad.

The community also indicates how rich the technology for learning resources which would be beneficial for any startup developer. Moreover, the community offers support for solving technical issues that a startup might have.

Our team happens to work with one of the most active communities – the Ruby and Python communities. The community is a significant factor in a startup’s success. Thanks to the communities of Ruby, Python, and their frameworks, they can be called “startup technologies”.

#3: Development Speed

Judging from the multiple startups that we’ve built, we can claim that speed is significant for ANY kind of startup.

Why?

Well, there are two reasons for this: 

First, somebody might be just doing the same. And the first one to launch will be the one to hit the jackpot; 

Second, startups have a limited budget, so the longer they are stuck in the developing phase, the more money they’re going to spend. 

That’s where external investments may come in handy. If you are not bootstrapping then raising investments before the development phase might be a good idea.

A startupper should not blow a chance of putting their product/service on the market as soon as possible. This is because once someone has a similar idea to yours, the race begins.

As a startup development company, our advice would be to choose technologies that are easy to implement and have a lot of useful third-party integrations for speeding up the development process.

The classic web technology stack that our company uses for creating a startup:

• Server-side: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Python, Django, and PostgreSQL
• Client-side: JavaScript (React.js, Angular.js, Vue.js, Node.js), jQuery, HTML, CSS
• Tools (hosting, monitoring, etc.): Docker, Capistrano

#4: Scalability

You are planning on growing your startup and engaging with more users, right? Well, then choosing an easily scalable programming language is a must-have.

What exactly does a scalable product mean?

Well, a scalable application, whether mobile or web, should be able to quickly process multiple requests to your server. 

For example, the app has a hundred requests per day, and it functions perfectly. But will this continue to happen as you begin to gain traction and get more requests? What if it crashes at the worst possible moment? Startup horror.

To avoid such horror, use scalable programming languages and frameworks, like PHP, Python or Ruby. 

#5: Project Size

The right startup goal should be not creating a large startup all at once but focusing more on gradual business growth.

Obviously, at first, you are going to focus on creating an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that will help collect the necessary feedback from your target audience and figure out what features are missing. 

However, your tech stack should have a promising future in creating not only a basic MVP but rather the grown-up startup that your heart desires.

#6: Project Type

Whether you want to build a marketplace, a social network app, or a file hosting service, your technology stack for web applications or mobile apps will highly depend on it.

If you are interested in building a marketplace, then Ruby is a suitable candidate for this job. Ruby on Rails with React is a perfect combination for an e-commerce website. There are many examples of service marketplaces built with Rails, to name a few: Fiverr, Airbnb, Salita, Shopify, and Couchsurfing.

If you are eager to develop a social network app or a file hosting service, then Python is your best shot. Just look at Facebook, Instagram, or Dropbox.

What about creating a game? Want to build another Minecraft? Then, you should choose Java.

Also, you can always have a look at the tech stacks of companies that are already on the market. You can check them out at Stackshare, a platform showing the software tools that companies are using.

#7: Web vs Mobile 

This is an everlasting question. You will be able to make a decision only if you know your target audience well. 

Would your customer use a mobile or a web app? Analyze your target audience and go ahead with a suitable type of product.

Choosing a programming language for a startup: comparison of Go, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Java, PHP, Dart

Best Startup Tech Stack Options Available

Every year new programming languages are added to the already existing ones. Some of which may be easier to use. However, choosing a tech stack for your startup should be done with utmost care because it will have a huge impact on the success of your company. 

So, here are some of the best tech stack options available in 2023:

Python

Python has a simplified syntax, which is similar to natural language. It was created in 1980 by Guido van Rossum, who ensured that it was a general-purpose language. This means that the language was designed to be used in a wide range of applications such as app development, data science, and automation. 

Because this language is over 30 years old, it has a huge and mature community with members ranging from beginners to experts. Getting adequate and quality help plays a huge role in the time-to-market of any project. 

Python Libraries

Python is known for its extensive libraries, contributed by its huge community. These libraries can help users save valuable time and effort in the software or web development process. Some of the most popular ones include: 

• Django for server-side web development
• SciPy for science, engineering applications, and mathematics
• NumPy for scientific computing
• BeautifulSoup for HTML parsing and XML
• matplotib for plotting charts and graphs

When choosing a startup tech stack, speed, reliability, versatility, and efficiency should be some of the top factors to consider. And most developers will confirm that Python offers these benefits. 

With the rise in automation, big data, machine learning, and cloud computing, programming languages like R and Python are now in high demand. Python is the best language to use for automation and the second most popular tool after R for analytics and data science. Also, Python has lots of libraries that are used in machine learning projects daily, such as OpenCV for computer vision and TensorFlow for neural networks.

Sloboda Studio provides Python web development services for existing businesses and startups using the Python programming language. 

An example of our work is Twitter Sentiment Analysis. It is an algorithm that helps to create a psychological portrait of a person based on his/her social network posts. The Sloboda team had to build an algorithm that analyzes a person’s profile and posts on Twitter and determines the degree of compliance of the author’s tweets with certain crucial requirements for job applicants. 

This helped to simplify the recruitment of new job applicants by analyzing their psychological portraits on Twitter.  

Java

Java is among the most widely used and popular object-oriented programming languages. It is highly favored by large companies because of its security features. Using Java, it is possible to build a variety of different apps such as games, web apps, enterprise apps, Android apps, and much more. 

Apart from security, the Java programming language is also very scalable. It is able to add system resources to augment systems without changing the deployment structure. To achieve scalability, Java permits users to increase resources like CPU and RAM. These are components that maximize productivity, handle the workload, and increase system performance.

Programs that are compiled using Java can run on all platforms that have Java Virtual Machine. Once the Java program is compiled, the code is then converted to platform-independent bytecode. The Java virtual machine can understand bytecode which can run on any platform. 

Java has a unique feature called garbage collection, which is its own way of managing memory. Users do not need to worry about managing their memory or implementing this feature. It automatically disables objects that are not used by the application. This increases the speed of the software. 

MEAN Stack with AWS

MEAN stands for MongoDB (database), Express.js (server-side web framework), Angular.js (client-side framework), and Node.js (back-end runtime environment). These technologies have been grouped together into this stack because they take their origin from JavaScript. JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages used in front-end and back-end web development.

Some developers prefer this stack because they only have to use a single language from start to finish. This is because all these languages are written in JS. So, they use Node.js on the backend and Angular.js on the front end. 

Included in this stack is MongoDB, which is a database good at managing huge amounts of data. An app’s capacity to store data is critical and should be made a priority when developing the app. MongoDB can be easily updated when compared to other databases. 

Using the MEAN stack is cost-effective because companies do not need to hire different developers to work on a single project. A few JS experts will be enough to build the entire app. Also, the deployment of an app built with the MEAN stack is cheaper because the components are free and can run on any server. 

All of the programming languages included in this stack are open-source. Therefore they are updated frequently. So, developers are able to customize the code base according to their needs. The MEAN stack also has a huge global community that provides support at all levels. 

LAMP Stack

The LAMP stack is one of the most common stacks used for hosting websites and web applications, especially among small to medium-sized sites. 

LAMP is an acronym that stands for four major components – Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Each of these components is open-source and free to use, which has helped contribute to their popularity. 

On the server side, the LAMP structure is based on the Linux operating system. Here, the operating system manages communication with the MySQL database server and the Apache web server. Now, these components use PHP to present the data on client devices. 

LAMP stack is an efficient, open-source solution. With a relatively small amount of money, developers can download, develop, and deploy web content. This ecosystem saves developers time with existing code pools, peer forums, and tools.

RoR Stack

Ruby on Rails is a very popular framework, and the community support is incredible. It receives constant updates, and new libraries are created regularly to serve the developers’ needs. It is expanding and improving with every new iteration to meet users growing needs and expectations. 

ROR is still among the most popular frameworks when thinking about quickly building an MVP, prototype, or checking a concept. 

Ruby is logical, simple, clear, and has a lean code base. This means that developers write fewer lines of code preventing redundancy, which significantly increases the speed of development. 

Since developers a paid hourly, the less time they spend on a project, the less money the customer has to spend on development. And with ROR, developers write fewer lines of code, making the development process quicker. 

Ruby on Rails is user-friendly and flexible. It allows developers to scale applications based on the business needs of a company. If in the future, your business needs more functionality in its app, developers can use separate modules to include them.

We are experts in Ruby on Rails with more than 13 years of experience providing Ruby on Rails development services such as full-cycle software development and enterprise modernization. 

Using Ruby technology, we have built and scaled successful projects like CityFALCON. It is a financial news aggregator that scores rates financial tweets, news, and authors using Natural Language Processing. Our client came to us with the MVP of the product, which we scaled by adding features like real-time word processing, 3 voice assistants, a scoring algorithm, and much more.

.Net Stack

This is a programming language for building applications. That means it is a runtime, a series of languages, and a bunch of libraries that can enable you to build basically any app that can run anywhere. It is a framework for C#, F#, and basic visual programming languages. 

.Net helps developers build high-quality apps faster. Modern language constructs like Language Integrated Query (LINQ), generics, and asynchronous programming make devs productive. 

Together with a huge amount of libraries, multilanguage support, common APIs, and powerful tools provided by Microsoft, .Net is now one of the most productive platforms for devs. 

Deployment happens when the application goes into production. The easier it is to deploy, the better for the whole team. .Net includes several base features that will simplify deployment. 

Given its cross-platform possibilities, reliability, lightweight applications, and support from Microsoft, .Net is considered a solution for enterprises. Besides the mentioned qualities, .Net applications are considered easy to scale as the business expands. This eliminates the need to reinvest in building a new application or changing the technology stack.

Best Mobile App Development Technology Stack

As the world becomes more mobile-centric, people demand a near-perfect and seamless experience when using apps on their phones. That is why the tools and tech stack used to build these apps can make or break users’ experiences. 

So, make sure you use the right stack to reduce expenses, make your release cycles more efficient, and ensure that the apps run well after launch. Now, let’s talk about the best app development tech stack for Android and iOS.

For iOS Platform

There are two main programming languages that are used for iOS app development – Swift and Objective-C:

Objective-C is a programming language supported by Apple, which can be used to build iOS apps. From its name, we can begin to understand that it provides developers with an object-oriented and dynamic runtime environment. This language is losing popularity because it is difficult to use, and experts are drifting towards Swift. 

Swift is the main programming language used to build iOS applications. Because it has no string identifiers, fewer errors are made during the process of development. One of the main reasons why it is the preferred programming language for iOS development is because it requires less code usage. Also, it is easy to learn, edit, and debug when compared to other languages. 

For creating user interfaces, developers commonly use two main frameworks – UIKit and SwiftUIM.

For Android Platform

The most common programming languages developers use to build Android apps are Java and Kotlin:

Kotlin is not as popular as Java. This is because will Java is an all-purpose language, and Kotlin was designed to build only Android apps. However, Kotlin is compatible with the JVM. So, developers have the option to use either language when building their apps. The popularity of this language is skyrocketing because it has been recommended by Google for use in the development of Android apps. 

The Android OS has built-in UI software for developers to create user interfaces easily. Jetpack Compose is also one of the newly released UI kits for Android used in building native Android user interfaces. 

Our Experience: What Startup Tech Stack We Can Recommend

As a company that has been building startups for more than 13 years, we recommend using the tech stack the outsourcing company or in-house team advises on. Choosing a tech stack the team is not familiar with will lead to a delay in development and increased cost. Ultimately, you may end up with a failed project. 

Also, as a client, you may have done your research or prefer a particular tech stack for your startup. However, it is always better to consult with an expert to make the final decision. 

Now, let’s look at some of the startup projects which we have built and then scaled using well-known stacks:

CityFalcon

This is a 21st-century financial news aggregator based in the UK. Its score rates financial tweets, news, and authors by using Natural Language Processing. 

The Client came to us at the very early stages of the project. Their goal was to launch a new and improved MVP with a focus on clean and simple UX to demonstrate the huge potential of his Social Media Aggregator. 

We were able to improve the design and create a scalable infrastructure successfully. Also, we added features such as: 

• Real-time word processing: each new article appears in our feed and side resources (Twitter, any RSS, etc.) at the same time. The delay is around 20 seconds;
• API – so that other sites can use our information and share CityFALCON’s articles 24 servers make up the infrastructure;
• We developed a CityFALCON scoring algorithm to identify relevant & personalized financial content. The algorithm leverages AI and crowd-curation;
• 3 voice assistants. Using machine learning for big data and text processing, we integrated Voice Assistant support (Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana).

To complete our work, we used the following tech stack:

• Server side – Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Grape, Apache Cassandra
• Client side – React, Redis

Salita

This is a B2G and B2C marketplace that offers access to different interpreters over video and phone conferences on a number of platforms (web, Skype for Business, mobile apps).  

We met our client at the idea stage of the project. We created a platform that connects interpreters with businesses, governments, and individuals. It also provides private meeting rooms with in-person assignments. 

In short, we’ve built the platform from scratch.

Right now, Salita offers online translation services and has more than 1700 Interpreters ready to help. The platform collaborates with governmental healthcare organizations. The online translation marketplace connects users from 72 countries and supports 67 languages. Salita has 1,247 monthly web visitors.

This platform went on to raise more than $1.5M in two rounds of seed investments.

Here is the tech stack we use for Salita:

• Server side – Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Grape, I18N [2 languages], Rack, Sidekiq
• Client side – HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, Vue.js, Redis

Conclusion

Choosing the right tech stack for your startup heavily depends on your developmental approach toward the product you are building. 

Consulting tech stack experts can reap lots of benefits. It helps you make the best choice for your business.

If you need better insight on how to choose a tech stack for your project, contact our team and present your project goals. 

We will help you identify your software’s specific needs and objectives. We can also put together the best team to bring the project to life. Contact us.