Reactive Support vs Reliability Engineering: What Every SaaS Founder Should Know
As a SaaS product grows, so does the complexity behind the scenes. More users, more features, more infrastructure—and inevitably, more things that can go wrong. Most SaaS companies begin their journey relying on reactive support , but as scale increases, many founders discover that reactive support alone is no longer enough. This is where the distinction between reactive support and reliability engineering becomes critical. Understanding the difference isn’t just a technical concern—it directly impacts uptime, customer trust, team productivity, and long-term business growth. What Is Reactive Support? Reactive support focuses on responding to problems after they occur . An alert fires, a customer reports an issue, or a system goes down—and the support team jumps in to fix it. Reactive support typically involves: Troubleshooting live incidents Restoring services as quickly as possible Managing customer escalations Measuring success by response time and resolution ti...
