Operate
Monitoring uptime, customer support, and system maintenance.
The operate stage begins once your product is live and real users rely on it being available. This ongoing phase covers tracking system health, reviewing error logs, responding to user feedback, running regular database backups, and applying dependency security updates.
Questions to answer before moving on:
- How will you receive immediate alerts if an external service or database goes offline?
- Are automated database backups scheduled and tested for reliable data restoration?
- What is your exact rollback strategy if a newly deployed release breaks production features?
- How can end users submit bug reports, payment queries, or account support requests?
Payments & Billing
Gumroad
E-commerce storefront and payment platform for creators to sell digital products, memberships and physical goodsPayments & Billing
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Lemon Squeezy
Merchant of record platform for global payments, subscriptions, checkout and sales tax compliance for software businessesPayments & Billing
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Paddle
Merchant of record platform managing SaaS billing, global tax compliance, subscriptions and fraud preventionPayments & Billing
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Stripe
Financial infrastructure platform for payment processing, billing, payouts and financial services for internet businessesPayments & Billing
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Hosting & Deployment
Fly.io
Public cloud platform for running full-stack applications and isolated code execution sandboxes close to usersHosting & Deployment
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Railway
Cloud deployment platform for application hosting, database provisioning, automated environments and observabilityHosting & Deployment
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Render
Cloud hosting for web apps, APIs, background workers and managed databasesHosting & Deployment
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Email Services
Kit
Creator marketing platform and REST API for automating workflows, managing email subscribers and delivering broadcastsEmail Services
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Mailgun
Email delivery and deliverability platform with REST APIs and SMTP to send, receive and track emailsEmail Services
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Postmark
Transactional email delivery service designed for web applicationsEmail Services
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Resend
Email API and platform for creating, sending and tracking transactional emails using web frameworksEmail Services
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SendGrid
Cloud-based email platform with REST APIs and SMTP relay for sending transactional and marketing emailsEmail Services
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Analytics & Monitoring
Plausible
Web analytics platform that tracks website traffic without cookies or collecting personal visitor dataAnalytics & Monitoring
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PostHog
Developer platform integrating product analytics, session recordings, feature management and experimentation toolsAnalytics & Monitoring
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Sentry
Application monitoring and developer observability platform that identifies, diagnoses and tracks software errors and performance regressionsAnalytics & Monitoring
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Umami
Open-source web analytics solution for website visitor tracking and custom event measurement without cookiesAnalytics & Monitoring
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CMS & Content
Storage & CDN
Cloudflare R2
S3-compatible object storage service with zero-egress fees for developers and applicationsStorage & CDN
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Cloudinary
Cloud-based media management platform for uploading, optimizing, transforming and delivering images and videosStorage & CDN
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Marketing & SEO
Ahrefs
SEO and marketing platform for search analytics, backlink research, keyword exploration and site auditsMarketing & SEO
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beehiiv
Newsletter platform for email publishing, website building, audience growth and monetizationMarketing & SEO
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Semrush
Online visibility and search marketing platform for SEO, keyword research, competitor analysis and AI searchMarketing & SEO
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