SaaS Post-Launch Hardening Checklist
You launched. Now there's a list of things you skipped to get out the door. None of these are launch blockers, but ignore them long enough and they become incidents.
Security
- CSP headers set (at minimum, prevent inline script injection)
- API keys and secrets rotated from any that were exposed during development
- Dependency audit — run
npm auditorpnpm auditand fix critical vulnerabilities - If you have an admin panel, make sure it's behind proper auth (not just a hidden URL)
Data Protection
- Cookie consent if you're tracking anything (especially for EU users)
- GDPR: users can request data export and deletion
- Data retention policy — decide how long you keep user data and logs
- PII (emails, names, IPs) scrubbed from logs or stored in a way that respects your privacy policy
Resilience
- Add timeouts to all external HTTP calls (10s default is reasonable)
- Fallbacks for third-party services — if OpenAI is down, show a useful error instead of a blank screen
- Queue long-running tasks instead of blocking the request (email sending, PDF generation, AI calls)
Business Entity and Legal
- Business entity set up (LLC, sole proprietorship, or equivalent in your jurisdiction)
- Understand your tax obligations — especially if you're selling across borders
- Stripe Tax or a similar service configured if you have EU customers (VAT)
Performance
- Database queries have proper indexes — check slow query logs
- N+1 queries identified and fixed
- Static assets served with cache headers (
Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable) - Images optimized and served in modern formats (WebP, AVIF)
- Frontend bundle size reviewed — lazy load routes and heavy components
Operational Basics
- Rollback plan tested — can you revert to the previous version in under 5 minutes?
Scaling Preparation
You don't need to scale yet. But you should know where the bottlenecks will be:
- Identify which database table will grow fastest and plan for it (pagination, archiving)
- Know your server's resource limits — at what point do you need a bigger box or a second one?
- File uploads stored externally (S3, R2) not on the app server's disk
Monitoring Gaps
You set up basic monitoring before launch. Now fill in the gaps:
- Alerting on elevated error rates, not just individual 500s
- Slow query alerts from your database
- Disk space alerts (logs and database will grow)
- SSL certificate expiry alerts (even with auto-renewal, verify it's working)
- Monitor background job failures if you have any
User Trust
- Changelog or release notes visible to users — they want to know you're actively improving
- Account deletion flow works and actually deletes data (not just soft-delete forever)
When to Do All This
You don't need to tackle everything in the first week. A reasonable timeline:
Week 1-2: Security items, data protection basics, resilience (timeouts, fallbacks)
Month 1: Performance review, business entity, operational basics
Month 2-3: Scaling preparation, monitoring gaps, user trust items
The order depends on your traffic. If you have 10 users, scaling prep can wait. If your AI API costs are climbing, spending controls and rate limiting move to the top.
If you haven't launched yet, start with the SaaS Launch Checklist.