Most MVP launch checklists are either too abstract (“make sure your product works”) or too exhaustive (treating an MVP like a production app with five years of users). Neither is useful.

This MVP launch checklist is built from what actually matters when you’re shipping a first version to real users. It covers the non-negotiable items, the things you can safely defer, and the monitoring you need in place before you ask anyone to use your product.

Pre-Launch: The Non-Negotiables

These are items that will cause you significant pain if you skip them. Not theoretical pain — actual user data loss, security incidents, or debugging sessions that eat your week.

Authentication and Access Control

  • User registration and login working correctly
  • Password reset flow tested end-to-end
  • Session management: sessions expire, tokens refresh properly
  • If you have roles (admin vs user vs viewer): permissions tested at the route level, not just the UI level
  • Rate limiting on login attempts (prevents brute force; takes 30 minutes to implement with most frameworks)

What you can defer: SSO, OAuth with every provider, MFA (unless your users specifically need it). Get one auth method working well before adding more.

Error Handling

  • 404 pages that don’t expose stack traces
  • API errors returning structured JSON (not HTML error pages)
  • Global error boundary in your frontend so one broken component doesn’t crash the whole app
  • Email/Slack alert on server errors — you want to know when things break before users report it

What you can defer: Sophisticated error categorisation, full error analytics dashboards. A simple alert is enough at MVP stage.

Analytics

At minimum you need to know:

  • Who is signing up (acquisition source)
  • Whether users are completing your core flow
  • Where they’re dropping off

A basic setup: one analytics tool (PostHog, Mixpanel, or even GA4) with events on signup, first meaningful action, and core feature usage. That’s it. Don’t spend a week on analytics infrastructure.

What you can defer: Cohort analysis, revenue attribution, custom dashboards. Get the events in from day one — analysis can come later.

Basic Security

  • HTTPS everywhere (non-negotiable, no exceptions)
  • Environment variables for secrets — nothing hardcoded, nothing in the repo
  • Input validation and sanitisation on all user inputs
  • SQL parameterisation or ORM query building (no raw string concatenation with user input)
  • Dependency audit: run npm audit or equivalent before launch

What you can defer: Penetration testing, SOC 2 compliance, advanced WAF rules. These matter later; they’re not MVP blockers unless you’re handling financial data or healthcare.

Data Basics

  • Database backups configured and tested (test restore, not just backup)
  • Soft deletes if users can delete their own data — you’ll thank yourself later
  • Basic data validation at the API layer, not just the frontend

Pre-Launch: The Checklist in Order

Run through this in the week before launch:

  • All core user flows tested by someone who didn’t build them
  • Auth flows (register, login, reset password, logout) work on mobile and desktop
  • API returns correct error codes (401, 403, 404, 500 — not always 200)
  • No secrets in the codebase (use git grep or a secrets scanner)
  • HTTPS configured and redirecting HTTP
  • Error monitoring active (Sentry or equivalent)
  • Analytics events firing for core actions
  • Database backups running on a schedule
  • Rate limiting on auth endpoints
  • Load test if you expect traffic spikes (even a simple locust run)
  • DNS and domain configured correctly
  • Email deliverability checked (SPF, DKIM set up)
  • Terms of service and privacy policy live (legal requirement in most markets)

Soft Launch: Getting Real Feedback Without Breaking Everything

A soft launch means releasing to a limited group before full public launch. This is not optional — it’s how you catch the category of bugs that only appear when real users do unexpected things.

Who to Include in Soft Launch

  • 10–20 people who match your target user profile
  • At least 2–3 who are genuinely critical and will tell you when something is broken or confusing
  • Not just friends and family (they’ll be too polite)

What to Watch

  • Session recordings (Hotjar, PostHog recordings, or equivalent) — watch real users navigate your product
  • Where they get confused or stop
  • Support requests and questions — these are bugs in your UX even if the code works

Feedback Loops

Set up a simple channel for soft launch feedback before you send the invite. Options:

  • A dedicated Slack channel with an invite link
  • A simple feedback form embedded in the app
  • Direct email to a real person (not a no-reply address)

Respond to every piece of feedback from soft launch users. They’re doing you a favour.

What you can defer: Formal user research, paid user interviews, NPS surveys. Talk to the humans who are using it. That’s enough at this stage.

Post-Launch: Monitoring and Iteration

Monitoring to Have in Place on Day One

  • Uptime monitoring: Simple ping-based uptime check (Better Uptime, UptimeRobot — free tiers are fine for MVPs) with alerts to your phone
  • Error rate monitoring: Sentry or equivalent. Alert if error rate spikes above baseline
  • Performance monitoring: Response time tracking — you want to know if an API endpoint slows to 5 seconds
  • Database monitoring: Query performance, connection counts, disk usage trends

What to Do With the First 30 Days of Data

  • Review your analytics weekly — not daily. Daily is noise at MVP scale.
  • Identify the one or two features users actually engage with vs what you expected
  • Map where users are dropping off in your core flow
  • Prioritise fixes based on frequency, not severity — a mild annoyance affecting every user matters more than a critical bug affecting one

When to Iterate vs When to Stay the Course

The most common MVP mistake is iterating too fast on too little data. If you have 50 users and 3 of them ask for the same feature, that’s a signal — but it’s not enough to reprioritise your whole roadmap.

Wait for:

  • Clear patterns in analytics (not single data points)
  • Multiple users independently asking for the same thing
  • Evidence that a bug or UX issue is causing users to leave your core flow

What You Can Always Defer

These come up in every MVP conversation and most of them can wait:

  • Mobile apps — if your web app isn’t proven, don’t build native yet
  • Multiple languages/internationalisation — launch in one language, prove the product
  • Advanced admin dashboards — a shared spreadsheet and a few SQL queries is fine initially
  • Automated billing retry logic — handle failed payments manually at first
  • Comprehensive test coverage — have tests on critical paths; don’t aim for 90% coverage on an MVP
  • Dark mode — genuinely not a launch blocker
  • Extensive onboarding flows — a simple welcome email and a short guide beats a 10-step interactive tour

The goal of an MVP is to validate a hypothesis with real users as quickly as possible. Every item you add before launch is a week you’re not learning from real users.

If you’re building an MVP and want a realistic scope and timeline estimate, see our pricing or get in touch — we’ll tell you honestly what can ship in 6 weeks and what needs to wait.