Folioss: how we built a SaaS from scratch to reinvent the CV

At DominaInternet we don’t just build websites and automations for clients: we also roll up our sleeves to help build real digital products, the kind that start as an idea and end up being software people use every day. One of those projects is Folioss, and we want to tell you what it’s like to build a SaaS from scratch, what problem it solves and which part we take on.

What Folioss is

The premise behind Folioss is simple and, when you hear it, it makes you nod: a paper CV no longer makes much sense in the digital age. They say so themselves on their website, and they’re right. You send a PDF, it stays static, it doesn’t update, it doesn’t tell who you really are, and it competes with another fifty identical PDFs in the recruiter’s inbox.

Folioss turns that on its head. It’s a platform that turns your CV into a “Folio”: an interactive professional profile, alive, visual and shared instantly with a link. Instead of a flat document, you have an online professional identity you can show to whoever you want, whenever you want.

Who is it for? The product is designed for several very recognizable profiles:

• Anyone job hunting who wants to stand out among hundreds of identical résumés.
• Anyone working as a freelancer who needs a showcase for their work.
• Companies that want to present their team or services in a modern way.
• People who network and want to share their profile without any hassle.
• Anyone building their personal brand.

It is, in essence, a professional branding tool. And like any good SaaS, it runs on a subscription model with a free plan to get started and paid plans for those who need more.

An honest note: the specific features and the plans are set and updated by Folioss on their own website. Here we mostly tell you how a product like this is built, which is the part we’re involved in.

Why building a digital product from scratch is a different sport

Building a corporate website and building a SaaS are alike only up to a point. A website tells who you are; a SaaS does something for whoever uses it, again and again, and it has to hold up when a thousand people use it at once without breaking.

When you start a digital product from scratch, you face questions a regular website never has to ask:

• How do you manage users and accounts? Sign-up, login, password recovery, profiles, permissions.
• Where and how do you store the data? Each Folio is information that has to be stored, served fast and protected.
• How do you charge? Subscriptions, plans, sign-ups, cancellations, recurring payments that always have to add up.
• How do you scale? What works with ten users has to keep working with ten thousand.
• How do you keep it alive? A product is never “finished”: you iterate, fix and improve it based on what users say.

That’s why a SaaS isn’t “thrown together” in an afternoon with a template. It is designed, custom-coded and built on top of an infrastructure meant to grow. And that’s where our work comes in.

DominaInternet’s role

When we help launch a product like Folioss, we do it on three fronts that have to go hand in hand.

Design: make it clear and a pleasure to use

A digital product wins much of its success on the first screen. If the user doesn’t understand within ten seconds what they gain, they leave. That’s why we take care of:

• A clear value proposition from the first glance, with no jargon.
• A simple usage flow: from the usual CV to a finished Folio in just a few steps.
• An interface that invites you to edit with no instruction manual, with blocks anyone can move and change.

Designing a SaaS isn’t decorating: it’s organizing complexity so that it looks easy from the outside. The more care you put into that simplicity, the more invisible the work behind it becomes.

Custom development: the engine of the product

There are no page-builder shortcuts here. A product like this is coded, because every piece is business logic:

• The editor where each person composes their Folio with blocks.
• The generation and publishing of each profile with its own link.
• The management of accounts, plans and subscriptions.
• Everything the user doesn’t see but that holds up what they do see.

It’s exactly the kind of work we do in custom software development: software designed for a specific case, without the limitations of a generic tool that almost fits. And when what’s being built is a subscription product, we move into the realm of SaaS development, with its own challenges of multi-user, plans and scaling.

Infrastructure: keep it up and never let it fall

A SaaS lives on the internet 24/7. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the editor is if the service goes down on a Sunday night. That’s why infrastructure is part of the product, not a separate technical detail:

• Servers sized to grow without scares.
• Secure and backed-up data, because each Folio is someone’s work.
• Controlled deployments to improve the product without breaking what already works.
• Careful performance so it loads fast no matter who’s viewing it.

In projects that also involve artificial intelligence, for example to help turn a flat CV into a well-structured profile, we also set up the AI infrastructure that makes it possible, keeping an eye on costs so they don’t spiral as the product grows.

What we learn by building product (and what’s in it for you)

Building Folioss reminds us of something we repeat to any client who wants to launch their own:

1. Start with the problem, not the feature. Folioss wasn’t born from “let’s make an app”, but from “the PDF CV no longer works”. That clarity guides every decision.
2. Launch to learn, not to have it perfect. A digital product improves with real use. A solid, honest version ships sooner than a “definitive” one that never arrives.
3. The product is design, code and infrastructure together. If any of the three legs fails, the user notices. That’s why it pays to have them under one roof.
4. Iterate. What works today falls short tomorrow. A good SaaS is one that’s cared for and evolves.

Got a product idea in your head?

If you too have an idea that looks more like a product than a website, a tool, a platform, a SaaS, and you don’t know where to start, that’s exactly our favorite conversation. We help you ground it, decide what to build first and actually get it off the ground: design, development and infrastructure, no smoke and mirrors.

Tell us your idea and we’ll tell you frankly what it takes to get going. And if you already have the project clear, ask us for a quote and we’ll get down to numbers on the table.