# Web App Development: Launch a SaaS, Portal or Dashboard You Own

DreamLabs is an AI-powered app development agency in California — a fractional product team for mobile and web apps, from strategy to launch.

Launch the web app your customers or your team will log into every day, on code you own. DreamLabs builds SaaS products, customer portals and internal dashboards for founders and operations teams as an AI-accelerated fractional product team, from the first wireframe to production. Start with a $4,000 two-week strategy sprint, refunded in full if we don't move forward together; most builds take about 6 weeks from there.

By John Krueger and Tomás Quiñonez-Riegos. Updated October 7, 2026.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much does it cost to build a web app?

Every project starts with a $4,000 two-week strategy sprint, refunded in full if we don't move forward together. It produces a features table, wireframes for your core flows and the scope of your first release, and we quote the build from that scope. Our AI-accelerated process typically comes in at a fraction of what a traditional agency charges. Hosting, database and third-party services are billed to your own accounts, so you see those costs directly and stay in control of them.

### Should we build a web app or a mobile app first?

Build for where your users do the work. A web app needs no store review or install, runs on any device with a browser and ships updates the moment you release them, which suits dashboards, portals and software people use at a desk. A mobile app makes sense when the product lives in someone's pocket: the camera, location, frequent notifications or a home-screen habit. Many products need both. [Haikuists](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/project/haikuists)' poets use a mobile app while its booking team works in a desktop web app on the same back end.

### Can a web app be installed and send push notifications like a mobile app?

Partly. People can add a progressive web app to their home screen, and on iPhone and iPad, web apps added to the Home Screen can receive push notifications since iOS and iPadOS 16.4, after the person grants permission. That is often enough for an internal tool or an early product. If push notifications, offline use or device hardware sit at the center of the experience, plan a mobile app; Flutter can build the web app and the mobile apps from one codebase.

### How do you keep a web app's data secure?

By enforcing access rules in the database and testing them, not just hiding buttons in the interface. Firebase warns that rules allowing open reads and writes let anyone overwrite your entire database, and Supabase's docs say a table in an exposed schema without row level security is readable and writable by any role with a grant on it. We write and test those rules for every role, and senior engineers review AI-assisted code before it ships. Built yours already? Our free [Firestore rules](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/firestore-security-rules-checklist) and [Supabase RLS](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/supabase-rls-checklist) checklists walk you through the checks.

## Who we are

A web app puts your product in front of customers with no store review and no install, and every release is live the moment it ships. We build them as a small fractional product team in the San Francisco Bay Area, with Tomás Quiñonez-Riegos leading product and John Krueger leading development. We ask why before we build, so the first release solves the problem people log in for.

[KPI Dash](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/project/kpi-dash), an AI-powered web app that pulls a hospitality manager's numbers out of separate systems into one dashboard and explains them in plain language, went from wireframes to 15 features in four weeks of development. [CloudyHQ](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/project/cloudyhq)'s cloud-services directory, with separate provider and buyer profiles, paid listing tiers and a cleaned 5,000+ record data set, launched in six weeks. And [Haikuists](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/project/haikuists)' booking team runs events, poets, invoices and messages from a desktop web app we built alongside its poets' mobile app.

The code, the hosting accounts and the data are yours.

## What we do

We build web apps in React and Next.js, or in Flutter (KPI Dash and Haikuists' admin app are Flutter web apps), on a Firebase or Supabase back end chosen for your data. AI drafts the scaffolding, repetitive code and tests; senior engineers own the architecture and review every change before it reaches production.

The parts that decide whether a web app holds up are designed in, not bolted on: roles and permissions for each kind of user, access rules enforced in the database, payments and subscriptions, and the integrations that feed it data. KPI Dash, for instance, takes data from a manager's other systems by email forward instead of a custom integration for each one.

**When we're not the right team:** if what you need is a marketing site, a blog or a content hub, a website builder with a CMS will serve you better than a custom web app. If you're testing whether an idea has demand, an AI app builder can get a prototype in front of users first; bring it to us when it works. And not every web product needs custom code on day one: we built CloudyHQ's directory on Softr, Airtable and Make, and our [no-code migration](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/no-code-migration) guide covers what to do when a build like that outgrows its tools.

## What's included in Web App Development?

- **SaaS products and customer portals** — Accounts, roles and permissions, subscriptions and payments, search, notifications and the screens your customers use every day, built in React and Next.js or Flutter on a back end you own. CloudyHQ's directory, for example, gave providers and buyers separate profiles, charged for enhanced listings by subscription, and turned 5,000+ scraped records into a directory visitors could search and filter.
- **Dashboards and admin web apps** — One place for the numbers and the work: dashboards that pull data from the systems you already run, and admin apps your team uses to manage users, content, approvals and payments. KPI Dash groups revenue, labor and expenses beside an AI insights panel; Haikuists' admin app runs events, poets, invoices and messaging, with event data arriving from HubSpot automatically.
- **Your AI-built or no-code prototype, production-ready** — If you've already built a version in Lovable, Bolt or Bubble, we start from what you have. Lovable offers Git sync on every plan and code download on paid plans, and Bolt lets you download a project or connect it to GitHub, so that code can be reviewed, secured and extended. Bubble apps can't be exported as code, so moving off Bubble means rebuilding the logic on a stack you own. Our guides to [AI prototypes in production](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/ai-prototype-to-production) and [Bubble migration](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/migrate-from-bubble) go deeper.

## Plan your build

- [How Much Does an MVP Cost?](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/mvp-cost.md)
- [How Long Does It Take to Build an App?](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/how-long-to-build-an-app.md)
- [Marketplace App Development Cost](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/marketplace-app-development-cost.md)

## Related work

- [KPI Dash](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/project/kpi-dash.md): AI-powered web app
- [CloudyHQ](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/project/cloudyhq.md): Web app directory
- [Haikuists](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/project/haikuists.md): Private, native app for internal contractor management

> “They delivered on time every single time. They talked us through various options for each request and helped us to understand our problems more intimately. Their forcing us to translate our needs into "app-speak" gave us further clarity on what we were trying to accomplish.”

— Erick Szentmiklosy, Co-founder @ Haikuists

## More ways we build

- [App & Software Development in the San Francisco Bay Area](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/software-development-in-san-francisco.md)
- [Flutter App Development](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/flutter-mobile-app-development.md)
- [React & React Native App Development](https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/react-native-mobile-app-development.md)

## Links

- Full page: https://www.dreamlabs.pro/services/web-app-development
- Offerings & pricing: https://www.dreamlabs.pro/offerings
- Contact: https://www.dreamlabs.pro/contact