HACKER Q&A
📣 pagelensai

What do you check before launching a web app?


I’ve been reviewing a lot of small SaaS, indie, and AI-built web apps recently, and I keep seeing the same pattern.

The product often works. The landing page looks decent. But the boring launch-readiness basics are missing.

Things like:

unclear positioning above the fold missing security headers weak or missing privacy / terms pages no obvious trust signals poor mobile experience basic accessibility issues SEO metadata that has clearly been left until the end exposed implementation details in client-side bundles APIs that look like they may not be properly isolated or proxied

I’m curious what other people here check before they consider a web app “ready enough” to put in front of real users.

Do you have a personal launch checklist?

And for people who review a lot of early-stage products, what are the most common issues you see?

  👤 benoau Accepted Answer ✓
You've covered a lot of the visible stuff but I would also go deeper into their API endpoints and make sure users can only access their own stuff, endpoints can't be repurposed to do destructive things, passwords are irreversibly hashed, sessions work, exceptions and logging don't leak secrets, and rate limiting on authentication and payment endpoints.