title: SAAS Start Up DB Schema and Security Considerations
body: <p>I am about to dive headfirst into an SAAS project that I have put together a small team to produce. For the most part we already have everything feature wise planned out, but I'm at the point where I need to begin thinking about database architecture and security concerns.</p>
  
  <p>Are there any security concerns that are different than a normal web application project since you'd be having potentially hundreds of users?</p>
  
  <p>As far as the database goes, I've been reading posts all day about database design and I think I'm going to go with a single database for everything, but I'm wondering if that will get slow? Lets say you have a "clients" table with 30,000 records in it. Won't that be way slower loading than doing a db for each customer?</p>
  
  <p>Also, should the signups and MY customer information go on the same database as the actual SAAS app. In other words, should a user that comes to my site and signs up for a free trial go into one database while all of his team and clients etc go into the actual product database, or should it all just be one database?</p>
  
  <p>Any other considerations before diving into this? I'm going to be building it on the Codeigniter framework.</p>