I've worked with several startups and am now building my own, and I've noticed certain pieces of infrastructure that seem to be rebuilt from scratch in every case. I'm curious to hear what others have encountered that feels like it should already exist as a service. Here are some of the common pieces I've seen being built over and over: authentication systems, API keys and their related dashboard UI, rate limiting plus DDoS protection, webhook delivery with retries, payment processing (usually via Stripe), audit logs, and email verification flows. What are your experiences or insights on this?
5 Answers
I created my own framework that combines various libraries and reusable dependencies. Instead of starting from scratch, I just pull in needed components to get things done quickly. This way, I save tons of time compared to other teams that spend weeks building what I can integrate in a few minutes! Leveraging past experiences really pays off.
One overlooked aspect is lead data or prospect lists. Many SaaS companies trying to do outreach end up creating their own data scrapers that fail with updates to systems like Google Maps. Teams keep reinventing the wheel without realizing an equivalent to Stripe for data retrieval doesn’t exist yet!
That’s true! It’s so specific to each business, making it tough to automate or outsource—different from the more standardized systems like auth and payments.
It sounds like Laravel might be a great fit, as it already takes care of many of these needs out of the box. For example, it has authentication and API key support through Sanctum, and rate limiting is built into the middleware. You can easily handle webhooks and retries with its HTTP client and use Horizon for job queues. Payment integrations are supported through Cashier, and they even manage email verifications with Fortify. The only notable gap is audit logs, which you might want to manage in a more secure way by offloading them to an external log provider like Graylog.
Webhook delivery and retries can be more of a hassle than anyone anticipates, especially when things crash in production. Anyone else finding that to be one of the trickiest parts?
Totally! I was battling with failed webhooks just last night. Have you looked into any off-the-shelf solutions like Svix?
It’s true that a lot of SaaS businesses face similar challenges like authentication, tenant management, user profiles, and background job management. For instance, I’ve noticed issues with building notification systems where small requests turn into huge projects. You start with a simple email alert and end up needing Slack notifications, bell icons, and custom settings for different times of the day. It really spirals out of control!
Which of these tasks do you find the most overwhelming as you're preparing for your product market fit? I'd love to know what to prioritize!
That makes sense! The more familiar these tasks become, the easier it gets—still challenging though, I’m also keen to not outsource too early.