SaaS financial metrics like ARR and churn tell part of the story. Technical metrics reveal whether the platform can sustain growth and profitability.
Infrastructure Metrics
Cost Efficiency
- Infrastructure cost per customer: Should decrease with scale
- Gross margin by cohort: Should improve over time
- Cloud spend as % of revenue: Typically 15-25% for healthy SaaS
Scalability Indicators
- Cost scaling ratio: Infrastructure cost growth vs. revenue growth
- Capacity headroom: Current load vs. maximum capacity
- Auto-scaling effectiveness: Response to demand spikes
Reliability Metrics
- Uptime/Availability: Target 99.9%+ for enterprise SaaS
- Incident frequency: Trend over time
- Mean time to recovery: Speed of incident resolution
- SLA compliance rate: Meeting customer commitments
Development Metrics
- Deployment frequency: Release cadence
- Lead time: Idea to production timeline
- Bug escape rate: Issues reaching production
- Technical debt ratio: Remediation time vs. development time
Customer Experience Metrics
- Page load times: User experience indicator
- API response times: Integration partner experience
- Error rates: User-facing failures
- Support ticket correlation: Technical issues driving support
Key Takeaway: Strong financial metrics with poor technical metrics suggest unsustainable growth. The technology foundation must support the business trajectory.