What is Multi-tenancy? Pros, Cons & Best Practices

Multi-tenancy is an architecture where multiple users share a single application instance while keeping their data separate, making it cost-efficient and easier to manage. It contrasts with single-tenancy, where each tenant has its own independent instance of the application. Advantages of multi-tenancy include lower infrastructure costs, less maintenance time, simplified marketing, and scalability. However, there are also disadvantages such as security concerns, single point of failure, and potential prohibition in certain industries due to regulatory requirements. Best practices for implementing multi-tenancy include treating it as an access control concern, being prepared to run multiple instances, building to scale, using feature flags, and ensuring a smooth onboarding process.