SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Architecture patterns, scaling decisions, and the boring discipline behind systems that survive growth.
59 posts · page 1 of 3
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
The Compliance Dashboard: A SaaS Asset Worth Building Internally
A compliance dashboard surfaces security and regulatory status in real time. Here is why it is worth building internally and what it should include.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Tenant Isolation: How Much Is Enough for B2B Customers
B2B customers want their data separated from other customers. Here is how to think about the right level of tenant isolation for your SaaS product.
7 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Soft Locks vs Hard Locks: A Database Concurrency Primer
Concurrency bugs are among the hardest to reproduce and the most expensive to fix. Here is how locking actually works.
7 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Soft Limits, Hard Limits, and Rate Limiting: A SaaS Survival Guide
Limits protect your product from abuse, misuse, and accidental destruction. Here is how to implement them properly.
7 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Soft Deletes vs Hard Deletes: A SaaS Data Strategy Debate
Soft deletes seem safe but create long-term complexity. Here is how to decide and what you are trading away.
7 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Sharding Strategies for SaaS: When to Start and When to Stop Avoiding It
Sharding is a last resort, not a first move. Here is the honest decision framework for SaaS teams.
8 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Service Decomposition: Drawing the Right Lines
Breaking a monolith into services is often the right move and often done wrong. The lines drawn between services determine whether the architecture produces independent deployability or distributed complexity. Here is how to draw the right lines.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Schema Design Decisions That Haunt You at Million User Scale
The schema decisions that feel fine at 10,000 users become migration nightmares at a million. Here are the specific choices that cause the most pain, and how to make the right call earlier than most teams do.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Scaling from One Thousand to One Hundred Thousand Users: The Invisible Database Bottlenecks
The performance problems that kill products at 100,000 users were invisible at 1,000. They are almost always in the database. Here is what they are, when they appear, and how to address them before they become outages.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
SaaS Webhook Reliability: From At Most Once to At Least Once to Exactly Once
Webhooks that fail silently destroy integrations and erode customer trust. Here is how delivery guarantees work, what each level costs to implement, and which one your SaaS product actually needs.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
SaaS Search at Scale: Postgres Full Text vs Algolia vs Typesense
Search that returns the right result instantly is a product feature users notice. Search that is slow or irrelevant is a product problem they complain about. Here is how Postgres full text, Algolia, and Typesense compare for SaaS products.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
SaaS Onboarding Architecture: From Signup to Aha
Onboarding is not a UX problem. It is an engineering problem. The technical decisions made in signup, setup, and first use determine whether users reach the aha moment or abandon. Here is the architecture that works.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
SaaS Multi Tenancy Patterns: Database per Tenant vs Shared Schema
Multi-tenancy is the architectural decision that determines how customers share infrastructure. The wrong choice creates migration pain later. Here is how database-per-tenant and shared schema compare and when each is appropriate.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
SaaS Analytics Infrastructure: PostHog vs Mixpanel vs Snowflake vs Build Your Own
Product analytics and data warehousing solve different problems. Mixing up the two leads to the wrong tool for the job. Here is how PostHog, Mixpanel, Snowflake, and custom pipelines compare and when each is appropriate.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Read Replicas: When They Save You and When They Lie to You
Read replicas distribute database read load and improve availability, but replication lag creates consistency hazards that catch teams off guard. Here is when read replicas help and when they introduce subtle bugs.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
PostgreSQL Performance at Scale: The Tweaks That Move the Needle
PostgreSQL performance problems at scale almost always trace back to missing indexes, wrong query plans, and misconfigured memory settings. Here is what actually moves the needle and what is usually a waste of time.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Plan Upgrades and Downgrades: A Billing Architecture Story
Handling plan changes mid-billing-period is one of the most underestimated engineering problems in SaaS billing. Here is how to architect upgrade and downgrade flows that are correct, predictable, and fair to customers.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Multi Tenant Background Jobs: Fair Scheduling and Noisy Neighbors
One customer running a large batch job should not delay every other customer's jobs. Here is how to design fair scheduling for background jobs in a multi-tenant SaaS product.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Multi Region Deployment: When It Is Worth the Pain
Multi-region deployment multiplies your infrastructure complexity. Here is when the latency reduction or compliance requirement justifies that complexity, and what the implementation actually looks like for a SaaS product.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Monolith vs Microservices: Why Most Startups Get It Wrong
Microservices are the architecture that works at Netflix and fails at early-stage startups. Here is why the monolith is the right default, when microservices become rational, and how to make the transition without breaking everything.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Job Failure Recovery: How Good SaaS Companies Sleep at Night
Every background job will fail eventually. The companies that sleep at night are the ones that built failure recovery into the system from day one, not as an afterthought when something broke in production.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Internal Admin Tools: Build vs Buy vs Retool
Every SaaS needs internal tools. The question is whether to build them, buy a platform like Retool, or use a lighter alternative. Here is the decision framework that saves engineering hours without creating tool debt.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Idempotency in API Design: Why It Matters More Than You Think
An idempotent API is one that handles repeated requests gracefully. Building it in from the start is far cheaper than retrofitting it after your first double-charge incident.
6 min read
- SaaS Architecture and Scaling
Feature Flags: A SaaS Engineer's Best Friend
Feature flags decouple deploy from release. The team that ships flags by default moves faster than the team that branches and waits. Here is what makes flags worth the discipline.
11 min read
More than blog posts.
The Labs folder has the experiments themselves. The Systems folder has the stack and architecture. The Journey folder has the timeline. Pick whichever pulls you.