SaaS Launch Checklist for Laravel Apps: What to Check Before Day One
By Amit Gupta··8 min read
Nobody launches a SaaS in one big moment. You launch when a hundred small things happen to be ready at the same time, and the one you forgot is usually the one a customer finds first. This SaaS launch checklist is my list for a Laravel app, split into the product, accounts and security, billing, legal pages, operations, monitoring and support. I kept each item short and linked to a longer guide wherever there is one.
I'm not covering server setup here. That lives in deploying a Laravel SaaS to production. This list asks a different question: are the product and the business around it ready for people who pay?
How to use this SaaS launch checklist
Copy the lists into your issue tracker and put one name next to every line. Not everything applies to you. A free beta for ten friends needs far less than a paid launch in several countries, and that's fine. Just make sure you skip items on purpose, not because nobody noticed them.
My rule of thumb: if something breaking would wake you up at night, it needs a check before launch and an alert after it.
Product readiness
- A new customer can get from signup to their first useful result without your help.
- Empty states tell people what to do next instead of showing a blank table.
- Every transactional email works: verification, password reset, invitations, receipts.
- Emails come from your own domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up, and they don't land in spam.
- Error pages (403, 404, 500, 503) look like your app and offer a way back.
- The most common tasks work on a phone.
- Every language you advertise is complete, validation messages included.
- Demo data, test accounts and placeholder text are gone.
Then do the boring thing I'd never skip. Open a private browser window, go to the production URL and sign up with a fresh email address. Walk the whole journey. You'll find broken links and confusing steps faster this way than any other.
Accounts, access and security
Go through the Laravel SaaS security checklist in full. If you only have time for the minimum:
APP_DEBUGisfalseandAPP_ENVisproduction.- Seeded default users and passwords are removed or changed.
- Admin accounts use two-factor authentication.
- Login, password reset and invitation routes are rate limited.
- Tenant data is isolated. A user in one workspace can't read another workspace's data, even by editing an ID in the URL.
- Permissions are checked on the server, not just hidden in the UI.
- Secrets live in the environment, not in the repository.
The tenant isolation line is the one I'd test by hand. Log in as one customer, copy a URL, and try it as another.
Billing and pricing
If you charge money, billing is where a mistake costs you trust fastest. People forgive a slow page. They don't forgive a double charge.
- Plans and prices are final and match your pricing page. See how to price your SaaS.
- Live API keys are set, and test keys are gone from production.
- The live webhook endpoint is registered and its signing secret is set.
- A real card payment works end to end. Refund it afterwards.
- Failed payments, trial endings and cancellations each have a clear email and in-app message.
- Customers can update their card, download invoices and cancel without contacting you.
- You know who handles sales tax and VAT: you or your provider.
For the setup itself, read adding Stripe billing to a Laravel SaaS, and if you haven't picked a provider yet, Stripe vs Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy.
Legal pages and policies
What you need depends on where you and your customers are. Treat this as a starting point and get proper legal advice for your situation.
You'll want terms of service that say what customers may do, what you're liable for and how accounts end. You'll want a privacy policy that covers what personal data you collect, why, where it's stored and how people can ask for it to be deleted. If you use cookies that need consent, such as analytics or marketing tags, add a cookie notice or consent banner. Write down your refund and cancellation policy and link it from checkout.
Business customers may ask for a data processing agreement, along with a list of the services that process their data. Some countries also require company details on your website. And make sure signup records that the user accepted the terms, and which version they accepted. That last one is easy to forget and hard to add later.
Link the legal pages from the website footer, the signup form and your emails.
Infrastructure and operations
- The app deploys with a repeatable process. See deploying a Laravel SaaS.
- Queue workers run under a process manager and restart after each deploy.
- The scheduler runs every minute through cron.
- Wildcard DNS and a TLS certificate cover every tenant subdomain.
- Automated backups run for every database, and you've restored one to prove they work. See backups for a multi-database Laravel SaaS.
- You know how to take the app offline for planned work. See maintenance mode for multi-tenant apps.
- You can lock a single abusive or unpaid account without deleting it. See suspending customer accounts.
- Rolling back a bad deploy is written down and has been tried once.
A backup you've never restored is a hope, not a backup. Of everything in this section, that's the one I'd do first.
Monitoring and alerting
Monitoring is how you hear about a problem before a customer emails you about it.
| What to watch | Why | Example tool or check |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime | Know within minutes when the app is down | An external uptime check on your health route |
| Exceptions | See errors with stack traces and context | An error tracking service |
| Queues | Stuck or failing jobs mean missing emails | Queue size and php artisan queue:failed |
| Scheduler | Silent cron failures stop reports and cleanups | A heartbeat ping from a scheduled task |
| Disk and database | Full disks take everything down | Server and database metrics |
| TLS certificates | Expired certificates block every visitor | Expiry alerts |
| Logs | Needed to debug what monitoring caught | Central log storage with retention |
Send alerts to a channel someone actually reads, and make them specific enough to act on. Then break something on purpose and check that the alert arrives. An alert you've never seen fire might not fire.
Support and communication
You need a support email or contact form that someone checks every day, and a few help docs for the questions you expect most. Set up a status page, or at least one known place where you post incident updates. A changelog helps customers see the product getting better, and you'll want some way to collect feedback and feature requests.
I'd also write saved replies before launch for the obvious questions: password resets, invoices, cancellations. You'll answer them more often than you think.
Launch day and the first week
| When | Task |
|---|---|
| A week before | Freeze big features. Fix bugs, polish onboarding and test backups. |
| The day before | Deploy the final version and walk through signup and payment once more. |
| Launch day | Watch errors, queues and signups closely. Reply to every message quickly. |
| First week | Talk to your first customers. Note where they get stuck and fix the top issues. |
| After two weeks | Review alerts, support questions and churn reasons. Adjust the checklist for next time. |
Don't launch right before a weekend or a holiday unless you'll be online. The first few days bring the most surprises.
Frequently asked questions
What should be on a SaaS launch checklist?
At the very least: a signup flow that gets people to value, reliable transactional email, the security basics, billing you've tested, legal pages, backups you've actually restored, monitoring with alerts, and a way for customers to reach you. Each of those has its own section above.
Do I need terms of service and a privacy policy before launch?
If you collect personal data or take payments, yes, have both in place before the first real customer signs up. The rules differ by country, so get them checked by someone who knows the law where you operate.
How do I soft launch a SaaS?
Invite a small group first, like your waitlist or a handful of beta users, before you announce anything publicly. You get real feedback and real bug reports while the stakes are low, and you can fix onboarding before most people ever see it.
What should I monitor after launching a Laravel app?
Uptime, exceptions, queue health, the scheduler, disk and database resources, and TLS certificates. Each one needs an alert that reaches a person. A dashboard nobody looks at doesn't count.
How SaaS Laravel helps with launch prep
To be honest about it: SaaS Laravel covers some of this list, not all of it. The kits register Laravel's /up health route for uptime checks and render 403, 404, 500 and 503 errors as styled Inertia pages outside local and testing environments. Invitation emails, and the password reset links an admin sends to a tenant, are queued, so you'll need a queue worker running. The environment reference has a production checklist that includes removing the seeded default users. Tenant maintenance mode and suspension let you take every tenant workspace offline, or lock just one, while the central app stays up. Billing, legal pages and monitoring services aren't included. You add those for your own product and market.