The Complete SaaS Development Checklist

192 items · 7 stages

Founder's Guide

The Complete SaaS Development Checklist

A stage-by-stage guide to building, launching, and scaling your SaaS product—from initial validation to exit-ready. Built from 50+ real-world checklists and Reddit war stories.

192 items • 7 stages

Stage 2 / 28 items

Technical Foundation

Make the boring decisions that prevent painful rewrites later. Choose familiar over trendy, plan for the future without building it yet.

Choose tech stack for familiarity over trendiness

Document reasoning for tech choices

Start with monolith (unless strong reason otherwise)

Decide on rendering approach (SSR vs CSR vs hybrid)

Select PaaS/hosting prioritizing easy deploy over cost

Design database schema supporting future multi-tenancy

Use app.domain.com from day 1

Keep marketing site separate from app codebase

Plan API structure even if not exposed yet

Avoid naked domains for primary hosts

Enforce HTTPS everywhere

Hash passwords with modern algorithm (bcrypt/argon2)

Ensure no secrets in codebase or git history

Use environment variables for all configuration

Prevent SQL injection (parameterized queries/ORM)

Implement XSS protection

Configure CORS restrictively

Add rate limiting on authentication endpoints

Secure session management (httpOnly, secure flags)

Scan dependencies for vulnerabilities regularly

Implement password-based auth first

Build complete password reset flow

Implement email verification

Configure appropriate session timeout

Plan MFA architecture (even if not built yet)

Plan SSO architecture (even if not built yet)

Create protected admin role

Establish role-based access control foundation

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