SaaS Infrastructure Checklist: Everything You Need Before Launch

**Primary keywords:** saas infrastructure checklist, saas launch checklist, saas hosting requirements, saas pre-launch checklist, saas deployment checklist

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Launching a SaaS product is one of the most exciting things a developer or founder can do. It's also one of the most nerve-wracking. The difference between a smooth launch and a chaotic one often comes down to whether you've properly worked through your infrastructure checklist before going live.

This is a comprehensive checklist of the infrastructure you need to audit before launching a SaaS product. Work through it systematically, and your launch day will be significantly calmer.

## 1. Application Hosting

### Core requirements
- [ ] Application deployed to a production environment (not just running locally)
- [ ] Production environment using your actual domain, not a platform-assigned URL
- [ ] HTTPS enabled on all endpoints (auto-SSL should handle this)
- [ ] Zero-downtime deployment configured — your users shouldn't see downtime when you ship
- [ ] Application starts cleanly from the deployment command (`apexweave deploy`)

### Environment configuration
- [ ] All environment variables set in the production environment
- [ ] No hardcoded secrets, credentials, or API keys in source code
- [ ] Separate credentials for production vs. any staging environments
- [ ] `NODE_ENV=production` (or equivalent) set correctly

### Logging and observability
- [ ] Application logs accessible in real-time (via `apexweave logs` or equivalent)
- [ ] Error tracking configured (Sentry, Bugsnag, or similar)
- [ ] Application errors generating appropriate log output
- [ ] Health check endpoint implemented (e.g., `GET /health` returning 200)

## 2. Database Setup

### Database instance
- [ ] Managed database instance provisioned (not self-hosted)
- [ ] Production database is not shared with staging or development
- [ ] Database connection pooling configured if using a high-concurrency framework
- [ ] Database URL stored as environment variable, not hardcoded

### Backups and recovery
- [ ] Automated daily backups enabled and verified
- [ ] Backup restoration tested — don't assume backups work, verify them
- [ ] Recovery time objective (RTO) documented: how long to restore from backup?
- [ ] Recovery point objective (RPO) understood: what's the maximum acceptable data loss?

### Performance baseline
- [ ] Indexes created for all frequently queried columns
- [ ] Slow query logging enabled
- [ ] Database plan sized appropriately for expected initial load (not theoretical peak)

## 3. Security

### Authentication and authorization
- [ ] User authentication implemented correctly

- [ ] Passwords hashed with bcrypt or argon2 (never stored in plaintext)
- [ ] Session management secure (HTTPS-only cookies, proper expiry)
- [ ] Authorization checks in place — users can only access their own data
- [ ] Admin access properly restricted

### Secrets and credentials
- [ ] All API keys in environment variables (not in code)
- [ ] Database credentials in environment variables
- [ ] Secret rotation process documented (what to do when a key is compromised)
- [ ] `.env` files added to `.gitignore`

### Network security
- [ ] Database not publicly accessible (only accessible from application server)
- [ ] SSH access restricted to necessary team members
- [ ] Dependencies scanned for known vulnerabilities (GitHub Dependabot, Snyk)

## 4. Payments and Billing

- [ ] Payment processor integrated (Stripe or equivalent)
- [ ] Subscription billing configured if offering recurring plans
- [ ] Webhook endpoint secured with signature verification
- [ ] Test mode thoroughly tested before switching to live keys
- [ ] Failed payment handling implemented (dunning process)
- [ ] Receipts/invoices emailed to customers

## 5. wordpress agency hosting Email Infrastructure

- [ ] Transactional email provider configured (Postmark, SendGrid, Mailgun)
- [ ] Welcome email sends correctly on signup
- [ ] Password reset emails working
- [ ] SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records configured for email deliverability
- [ ] Unsubscribe/email preference management in place (legal requirement in many jurisdictions)
- [ ] Email from a domain you control (not a generic @gmail.com address)

## 6. heroku alternative git deployment Domain and DNS

- [ ] Custom domain pointing to your application
- [ ] SSL certificate active (verify at sslshopper.com or similar)
- [ ] www redirect configured if needed
- [ ] MX records configured for your business email
- [ ] DNS TTLs set appropriately (lower TTL before major changes)

## 7. Performance Baseline

- [ ] Page load time measured on production (target: under 2 seconds for primary actions)
- [ ] Database query times reviewed — no queries taking over 1 second
- [ ] Application memory usage stable (not growing over time — potential memory leak)
- [ ] CPU utilization baseline documented

## 8. Monitoring and Alerting

- [ ] Uptime monitoring configured (UptimeRobot, Pingdom, Better Uptime)
- [ ] Alerts configured for downtime — you should know before users tell you
- [ ] Error rate alerting configured
- [ ] Database storage alerts configured
- [ ] On-call process defined: who responds to production incidents and how?

## 9. Legal and Compliance

- [ ] Privacy policy published and linked
- [ ] Terms of service published and linked
- [ ] Cookie consent implemented if serving EU users (GDPR)
- [ ] Data processing agreements in place with sub-processors
- [ ] User data deletion process in place (GDPR right to erasure)

## 10. Customer Support Infrastructure

- [ ] Support email or contact form configured
- [ ] Support ticket routing process defined
- [ ] Status page set up (statuspage.io has a free tier)
- [ ] Documentation or FAQ published for common questions

## 11. Deployment Pipeline

- [ ] Deployment from CLI working (`apexweave deploy`)
- [ ] Rollback process documented (what to do if a deploy breaks things)
- [ ] Database migrations running correctly as part of deploy
- [ ] At least one full end-to-end test before going live

## 12. Launch Capacity Planning

- [ ] Expected launch day traffic estimated (honestly)
- [ ] Application plan sized to handle estimated traffic
- [ ] Database plan sized appropriately
- [ ] Load test run if expecting significant launch day traffic
- [ ] Scaling plan documented: what do you do if traffic is 10x expected?

## Pre-Launch Final Checklist

The day before launch, verify:

- [ ] Can you successfully deploy a change? (Run a trivial deploy end-to-end)
- [ ] Does your app work correctly in production? via ApexWeave (Test the core user flow yourself)
- [ ] Are your payments working? (Run a test transaction)
- [ ] Are your emails delivering? (Test signup email, password reset)
- [ ] Do you have logs streaming? (`apexweave logs` should show live activity)
- [ ] Is your monitoring alerting? (Test your uptime alert by temporarily breaking something)

## The Most Commonly Missed Items

Based on common launch failures, these are the items teams most often overlook:

1. **Backup restoration never tested**: Backups that can't be restored aren't backups.
2. **No health check endpoint**: Without a health check, load balancers can't route traffic away from unhealthy instances.
3. **Email deliverability not configured**: Missing SPF/DKIM means your emails land in spam.
4. **No incident response plan**: When something breaks at 2am, who do you call and what do they do?
5. **Secrets in source code**: This causes breaches. Check your repository for hardcoded credentials before making anything public.

## Get Ready to Launch

Working through this checklist thoroughly is the difference between a launch you're proud of and a launch you're recovering from. Take the time to check each item for real — not just skimming past it, but actually verifying it works.

ApexWeave's managed cloud hosting handles many of these automatically: auto-SSL, managed database backups, real-time logs, and CLI-driven deployments. wordpress hosting philippines A 7-day free trial (no credit card required) gives you time to work through this checklist before going live.

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Pub: 23 Apr 2026 22:11 UTC

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