SaaS MVP Launch Checklist: What to Ship and What to Skip

Most SaaS MVPs include too much. Founders add features because they imagine competitors, future customers, and edge cases that do not exist yet. The result is a product that takes 9 months to build when it could have shipped in 3, with features nobody asked for and missing the one thing early adopters actually need.

I have helped launch over a dozen SaaS products. Here is the checklist I use to decide what ships in v1 and what waits.

Must Have: The Non-Negotiables

These features must be in your MVP. Not because they are impressive, but because the product does not function without them.

Authentication and authorization. Users need to sign up, log in, and have their data protected. Use a proven auth library — Lucia, better-auth, or Auth.js — rather than building from scratch. Email/password plus Google OAuth covers 90% of users. Skip SSO, SAML, and magic links for v1. Follow the authentication security fundamentals and move on.

The core value action. Identify the one thing your product does that no spreadsheet, email chain, or existing tool does well enough. Build that. If you are a project management tool, that is creating and organizing tasks. If you are an analytics platform, that is connecting a data source and displaying insights. Everything else is secondary.

Billing. If you are charging money (and you should from day one — free products attract the wrong audience for validation), integrate Stripe billing. Start with one or two pricing tiers. Skip annual billing, metered usage, and complex proration for v1. Stripe Checkout handles the payment UI, and Stripe's Customer Portal handles subscription management. You do not need to build these yourself yet.

Transactional email. Signup confirmation, password reset, and essential notifications. Use a service like Resend or Postmark. Template them cleanly but do not spend time on elaborate email designs for v1.

Basic error handling and monitoring. Users will hit bugs. You need to know about them before they tell you. Integrate Sentry for error tracking and set up uptime monitoring. This is an hour of setup that saves days of debugging.

Should Have: Ship If Time Allows

These features improve the product meaningfully but are not blockers for launch.

Settings and profile management. Users should be able to update their name, email, and password. This is straightforward but not launch-critical — you can handle profile changes manually for early users if needed.

Onboarding flow. A guided first-run experience improves activation rates. But for your first 50 users, you can onboard them manually via video calls or personal emails. Build the automated onboarding when you understand what early users struggle with.

Search. If your product has more than a few pages of content or data, users will need search. PostgreSQL full-text search handles most cases without an external service. Implement it simply and improve later.

Team invitations. If your product is for teams, the ability to invite members matters. But many early SaaS products can start as single-user and add team features when customers request them.

Data export. CSV export of user data is important for trust and compliance. Include it if you can, but for v1, you can export data manually for the rare user who asks.

Skip for V1: Build These Later

These features consume significant development time and provide minimal value before you have product-market fit.

Custom domains. Unless your product is a website builder, custom domains are a nice-to-have that adds operational complexity. Build this when enterprise customers ask for it.

Advanced analytics dashboards. Your v1 dashboard should show the essential metrics users need. Customizable widgets, date range pickers, exportable charts, and comparison views are features for v2 and beyond.

Third-party integrations. Zapier, Slack, and API integrations are valuable but time-consuming to build and maintain. Your first users will tolerate manual workflows. Build integrations when you understand which ones customers actually need.

Native mobile app. Unless your core use case requires mobile, start with a responsive web app. A progressive web app provides mobile access without app store complexity. Build a native app when mobile usage data justifies the investment.

Multi-language support. Internationalization adds complexity to every feature you build after implementing it. Launch in one language and expand when you have users in other markets.

Admin dashboard. For v1, use direct database queries, Prisma Studio, or a tool like Retool for internal operations. Building a custom admin dashboard before you know what operations you need is premature.

The Decision Framework

For every feature request, ask three questions:

Can we launch without this? If users can complete the core value action without the feature, it is not a launch requirement.
Can we fake it for now? Many features can be handled manually, with simple tools, or with third-party services for the first 50-100 customers. Manual processes teach you what to automate.
Will we learn something from building this? Features that validate or invalidate your core assumptions are worth building. Features that add polish are not, because you might need to change everything based on early feedback.

The MVP development approach is about learning, not shipping a complete product. Build enough to put something real in front of paying customers, watch what they do with it, and let their behavior guide your roadmap. The features that matter most are usually not the ones you expected.

Ship when it is embarrassingly simple. If you are not uncomfortable with how basic your v1 is, you waited too long to launch.