Web App Launch Checklist: 18 Steps to Ship

You don’t need a massive team to build like one.

Whether you’re a developer working on a new product, a startup shipping your MVP, or an agency delivering client work — the difference between a side project and a production-ready app often comes down to what happens before you write your first feature.

This is the checklist I follow every time I start a new project. It’s opinionated, ordered by priority, and every item earns its spot. Enterprise-grade practices, streamlined for real-world delivery.

Here’s the process, broken into four phases:

1. Foundation — repo, branches, code quality
2. Security — secrets, dependencies, headers
3. Infrastructure — hosting, database, monitoring
4. Deployment — CI/CD, CDN, uptime

Let’s get into it.

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Phase 1: Foundation

1. Set up your GitHub repository

Your repo is the single source of truth. It’s where your code lives, where your team collaborates, and the backbone that every other tool on this list plugs into.

Create it first. Push your initial commit. Move on.

Tool: GitHub

2. Create staging and production branches

Set up a staging and production (or main) branch before you write a single feature. This gives you a safe place to test changes before they go live.

Think of it this way:

• Staging = dress rehearsal
• Production = opening night

Nothing hits the stage without a run-through first.

Tool: GitHub Branching Docs

3. Set up linting and auto-formatting

A linter is a spellchecker for your code. It catches mistakes and enforces consistent style automatically — so you never waste brain power debating formatting.

• Prettier handles formatting (spacing, indentation, punctuation)
• ESLint catches actual errors and bad patterns

Set them up together once and forget about it.

Tools: Prettier · ESLint

4. Add pre-commit hooks with Husky

Pre-commit hooks are automated checks that run every time you commit. Husky makes this easy — it runs your linter and formatter automatically, so bad code never makes it into the project.

Two-minute setup. Runs silently in the background forever.

Tool: Husky

5. Enable TypeScript strict mode

TypeScript with strict mode is the single biggest upgrade you can make for code reliability. It catches entire categories of bugs at the time you write them — not when your users find them.

The upfront learning curve pays for itself fast, especially on projects where multiple people touch the same code.

Tool: TypeScript

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Phase 2: Security

6. Connect GitGuardian

One leaked API key can compromise your entire app. GitGuardian scans every commit for accidentally exposed passwords, API keys, and sensitive credentials — automatically.

This is one of the most common security mistakes developers make, and it’s completely preventable.

Tool: GitGuardian

7. Enable GitHub Dependabot

Your app uses dozens (sometimes hundreds) of open-source packages. Any one of them can have a security vulnerability.

Dependabot monitors your dependencies and automatically opens a pull request when a fix is available. It’s built into GitHub — you just need to turn it on.

Tool: GitHub Dependabot

8. Set up environment variable management

Sensitive values should never be written directly into your code. Database passwords, API keys, third-party tokens — all of these belong in environment variables.

Your hosting platform manages these per environment, so staging and production can have different credentials safely.

Tool: The Twelve-Factor App — Config

9. Add security headers with Helmet.js

One line of code. Protection against the most common web attacks. Helmet sets protective HTTP headers that tell browsers how to behave when loading your site — blocking clickjacking, cross-site scripting, and more.

Tool: Helmet.js

10. Set up CORS and rate limiting

Two defenses that work together:

• CORS controls which websites can make requests to your app
• Rate limiting caps how many requests a single user can make in a given window

Together, they stop bad actors from hammering your server or tricking your API into serving unauthorized data.

Tools: CORS middleware · express-rate-limit

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Phase 3: Infrastructure

11. Create staging and production hosting environments

Two environments. One for testing, one for users. A platform like Railway makes this straightforward — connect each environment directly to a GitHub branch.

• Push to staging → deploys to your staging server
• Push to production → deploys to your live server

You only pay for what you use.

Tool: Railway

12. Set up database migrations and a seed script

Two tools that save enormous time and prevent catastrophic mistakes:

• Migrations track every database structure change in code, so you can reproduce your database exactly on any machine
• Seed scripts fill your dev database with test data, so you’re not manually creating fake users every time you start fresh

Tools: Prisma · Drizzle

13. Connect Sentry and set up structured logging

Know the moment something breaks — and exactly why. Sentry monitors your live app and alerts you with a full trail: what happened, who was affected, and the exact line of code where the error occurred.

Pair it with a structured logger (instead of console.log statements) and you have complete visibility into your app’s health.

Tool: Sentry

14. Add error boundaries (frontend)

A safety net for your UI. If one component crashes, an error boundary catches it and shows a friendly fallback — instead of a blank white screen.

Without them, a single bug in one corner of your app takes down the entire page.

Tool: React Error Boundaries

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Phase 4: Deployment & Monitoring

15. Set up GitHub Actions (require PR from staging to production)

Force a pause-and-review step before every deploy. GitHub Actions lets you require that all code goes through a pull request from staging to production.

This gives you:

• A place to run automated tests
• A review checkpoint before code reaches live users
• A full audit trail of what shipped and when

Tool: GitHub Actions

16. Put Cloudflare in front of your app

Ten minutes of setup. Massive impact. Cloudflare’s free tier gives you:

• CDN caching — static files served from servers worldwide
• DDoS protection — malicious traffic blocked automatically
• Free SSL — HTTPS with zero configuration

One of the highest-impact, lowest-effort improvements you can make.

Tool: Cloudflare

17. Set up uptime monitoring and database backups

Your always-on safety net. These two tools run in the background and protect you when things go wrong:

• Uptime monitoring pings your app on a schedule and alerts you (email, Slack, or text) the moment it goes down
• Database backups are your insurance policy — restore to a previous snapshot if something goes catastrophically wrong

Tools: Better Stack Uptime · Railway Backups

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The Optional Power Move

18. Set up end-to-end (E2E) tests

The most time-intensive item on this list — and the one that lets you deploy fearlessly. E2E tests simulate a real user clicking through your app and verify everything works as expected.

Start with just the critical path:

• Sign up
• Log in
• Complete a core transaction

That’s enough to deploy with confidence that the main experience isn’t broken.

Tools: Playwright · Cypress

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Final Thought

None of these steps are glamorous. None of them will impress your users or show up on your landing page.

But they’re the difference between a product that’s held together with tape and a product that’s built on a real foundation.

Set these up once, and every project you build starts from a position of strength.

Ship it right. Ship it once.