Okay -- "what it takes" is a pretty broad question, but I'll do my best to put some thoughts together. I run a few web applications, but the most popular one is

Okay -- "what it takes" is a pretty broad question, but I'll do my best to put some thoughts together. I run a few web applications, but the most popular one is http://sleepyti.me http://sleepyti.me -- with about ~50-60k views per day. - A reliable hosting environment. I currently have a Linode VPS (basic $20 package, with $5 monthly backups) that runs http://sleepyti.me http://sleepyti.me, my personal web site, an IRC server, a Mumble server, and a bunch of other stuff -- it's not even close to being maxed out resource wise, even with all the constant traffic the site is getting. It's important to remember that consistent network connectivity is a really important aspect here: a 30-minute downtime during peak hours can easily lose a lot of users. I'd say Linode is great, and I'm very happy with their service, but I also host several Sinatra web applications on a Digital Ocean VPS that only costs $5 per month (although I do my own backups, rather than using their service). I've noticed zero load-related performance impacts. Clearly, though, there is a limit to how far that can scale. - A production web server. This probably goes without saying, but a lot of webapp developers are used to just working on their own dev environment. For my apps, I use nginx (and thin, when necessary). - Security. Make sure that you have the basics of application security covered in your app itself. OWASP produces some pretty great "cheat sheets" that can help out in this area. Furthermore, make sure that your server is updated frequently, using SSL correctly, etc. I work in information security -- please believe me when I say that getting hacked is not something you want to deal with when you're trying to grow. Hope this helps, and good luck with launched your apps!