What to keep in mind before making your app live

I went live too fast. Here’s the checklist I wish I had on day one.

Security basics you can’t skip

These aren’t optional. I skipped some of them on my first launch and paid for it.

Environment variables — no secrets in your codebase. Use .env files locally and your platform’s secret manager in production. Check your git history for anything accidentally committed.

Rate limiting — add it to every public endpoint. Without it, one script can take your app down or exhaust your database. Tools like Upstash Rate Limit or Cloudflare Rules make this a 20-minute job.

HTTPS everywhere — no exceptions. If your hosting doesn’t do this automatically, you’re using the wrong host.

Authentication — if you rolled your own, audit it. Prefer a battle-tested library or a service like Auth.js, Clerk, or Supabase Auth over building your own session management.

Monitoring and error tracking

You will have bugs in production. You need to know about them before your users tell you.

Set up Sentry before launch. It takes under 30 minutes. It catches unhandled exceptions, slow transactions, and gives you a stack trace with context. Free tier is enough to start.

Add uptime monitoring. Betterstack or UptimeRobot are free. They ping your app every minute and alert you if it goes down.

Log everything that matters. Not noisy debug logs — structured logs on key user actions: created account, completed checkout, hit an error.

Backup and recovery

If your database gets corrupted or you accidentally delete something, how long does it take you to recover?

Before launch, answer this question: “If production goes down right now, what do I do?”

Most managed databases (Supabase, PlanetScale, Railway) handle backups automatically. Verify it’s on and test a restore at least once.

You need both before collecting any user data. Not optional.

Generate them from a service like Termly or Iubenda — it takes 10 minutes and costs under $100/year. Add them to your footer. If you’re running in the EU or targeting UK users, GDPR applies.

I skipped this for the first two weeks of MagicSell. Don’t.

Performance baseline

Before traffic hits, run a basic load test. I use k6 or Artillery — both free, both take an hour to learn. Test your most important endpoint at 10x expected traffic.

Check your Lighthouse score. Fix any Core Web Vitals issues before launch. These matter for SEO and first impressions.

The takeaway

Security, monitoring, backups, and legal are the non-negotiables. Do them before launch day, not after. Everything else can wait — these cannot.

Building something? Follow me on Instagram and Twitter — I document everything.