The Non-Negotiables

Some things simply can't be missing on launch day. Not "should have" — must have.

1. Automated backups

Your database needs daily automated backups with tested restore procedures. "Tested" means you've actually restored from backup once to confirm it works. Most managed database services (RDS, Supabase, PlanetScale) handle this automatically — verify that it's enabled and that backups are retained for at least 7 days.

2. Error tracking

Install Sentry or a similar error tracking tool before launch. When your product breaks in production (it will), you need to know about it before your users email you. Sentry captures full stack traces, user context, and release information. Setup takes 30 minutes and saves hours of debugging later.

3. Uptime monitoring

A simple uptime check (BetterUptime, UptimeRobot, or Checkly) that pings your app every minute and alerts you when it's down. Free tier is sufficient for most MVPs. This is the difference between knowing about an outage immediately vs. finding out from a user's support ticket.

4. HTTPS everywhere

All traffic must use HTTPS. No exceptions. Most modern hosting platforms (Vercel, Render, Railway, AWS) handle SSL certificates automatically. Verify there are no HTTP endpoints in your product.

5. Environment variables managed properly

No secrets in your codebase. Database URLs, API keys, JWT secrets — all in environment variables, never committed to git. Use a secrets manager (AWS Secrets Manager, Doppler) if your team is larger than two people.

The Security Basics

Rate limiting: API endpoints need rate limiting to prevent abuse. Without it, your product is one script away from being DoS'd or having your AI inference budget drained in an afternoon.

Input validation: Sanitize all user inputs server-side. Client-side validation is for UX, not security.

Authentication security: Use a well-maintained auth library (NextAuth, Clerk, Supabase Auth, Auth0) rather than rolling your own. Implement session expiration and refresh token rotation.

Dependency scanning: Run npm audit or equivalent before launch. A product launched with known critical vulnerabilities in dependencies is a liability.

Observability: Can You See What's Happening?

Beyond error tracking, you need visibility into your system's behavior:

Logging: Structured logs (JSON) that capture request IDs, user IDs, action types, and timing. Not console.log statements — proper log aggregation via Datadog, Logtail, or CloudWatch Logs.

Performance monitoring: Track API response times, database query durations, and page load times. P95 and P99 latency are the numbers to watch. Axiom, Datadog, or New Relic work well.

Alerting: Define thresholds and get alerted when they're breached. Error rate > 5%, latency > 2s, database CPU > 80% — these should trigger PagerDuty or Slack alerts to on-call.

For MVP launches, you don't need enterprise observability. Sentry + basic structured logging + one uptime monitor covers most situations.

Deployment and Release

CI/CD pipeline: Code should deploy via an automated pipeline, not manual file uploads. GitHub Actions + Vercel/Render is the easiest setup. Every push to main should run tests and deploy automatically.

Rollback capability: Can you revert to the previous version in under 10 minutes? Know the procedure before launch.

Database migrations: Use a migration framework (Prisma Migrate, Flyway, Alembic). Never modify database schema manually in production.

Feature flags: A way to enable/disable features without deploying. Even basic environment variable feature flags prevent the need for emergency rollbacks when something misbehaves.

The Launch Day Process

Don't launch on a Friday afternoon. Launch early in the week, early in the day (your timezone), when your team is alert and has time to respond to issues.

Before pressing the button:

• Run the deployment once on staging with production data patterns
• Verify all environment variables are set correctly in production
• Confirm backups are running
• Check that error tracking is connected and receiving events
• Have a communication plan ready if something breaks (Slack status message, Twitter/X post, email template)

The first hour after launch is when most production issues surface. Be present and watching your dashboards.

What Can Wait

Not everything needs to be production-grade on day one:

• Full observability stack (Datadog/New Relic) — basic monitoring is sufficient early
• CDN for global performance — unless you have global users at launch
• Auto-scaling — vertical scaling handles most MVP-stage traffic
• Disaster recovery across multiple regions — single-region is fine at MVP
• Penetration testing — important before processing payments or health data, optional for a general SaaS MVP

The goal isn't a perfect infrastructure — it's a production-grade foundation that keeps your data safe and tells you when something breaks.