The Website Launch Day Monitoring Checklist

You've built the product. The marketing is ready. Launch day is tomorrow. But have you set up monitoring? Here's a 25-point checklist to ensure you're not flying blind when real users arrive.

Before Launch

Uptime Monitoring

  • [ ] Primary URL monitored — your main domain with HTTP check
  • [ ] API endpoints monitored — critical API paths separately
  • [ ] Check interval set — 1-5 minutes depending on criticality
  • [ ] Multi-region enabled — at least 3 regions to avoid false positives
  • [ ] Expected status code configured — 200 for pages, 301 for redirects

SSL & Security

  • [ ] SSL certificate monitored — alerts at 30, 14, 7 days before expiry
  • [ ] HTTPS redirect working — HTTP → HTTPS redirect verified
  • [ ] Security headers set — HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options
  • [ ] CORS configured — if you have an API, test from the frontend domain

Alert Channels

  • [ ] At least 2 alert channels — email + one instant channel (Telegram, Slack, SMS)
  • [ ] Test alerts sent — verify every channel receives notifications
  • [ ] On-call person assigned — someone is responsible for launch day
  • [ ] Escalation path defined — who gets called if primary doesn't respond in 15 min

Status Page

  • [ ] Public status page created — your users need somewhere to check during incidents
  • [ ] Status page URL shared — linked from footer, docs, support page
  • [ ] Subscription enabled — users can subscribe for updates

Performance Baseline

  • [ ] Response time baseline recorded — know your "normal" before launch traffic
  • [ ] Page speed test run — Core Web Vitals baseline (LCP, CLS, INP)
  • [ ] Load test completed — verify your infrastructure handles expected traffic

On Launch Day

  • [ ] Monitoring dashboard open — keep it visible throughout the day
  • [ ] Alert volume on maximum — don't miss anything today
  • [ ] Team communication channel active — Slack/Discord channel for launch team
  • [ ] Rollback plan ready — know exactly how to revert if things break
  • [ ] Scaling plan ready — can you add capacity quickly if traffic exceeds expectations?

After Launch (First 48 Hours)

  • [ ] Review all alerts — any false positives to tune?
  • [ ] Check response time trends — are they stable or degrading?
  • [ ] Review error rates — any 5xx errors appearing?
  • [ ] Check from mobile — mobile experience might differ
  • [ ] SSL certificate chain verified — sometimes works on desktop, fails on mobile
  • [ ] Search console checked — any crawl errors?

Common Launch Day Failures

Issue Cause Prevention
Site down under load Insufficient capacity Load test beforehand
SSL warnings on mobile Incomplete certificate chain Check with SSL monitoring tool
DNS not resolving Propagation not complete Lower TTL 48h before launch
API timeouts Database connection exhaustion Set connection pool limits
Payment processing fails Wrong API keys Test with real transaction
Email not sending SPF/DKIM not configured Test email delivery beforehand
CDN serving stale content Cache not purged Clear CDN cache before launch
Mixed content warnings HTTP resources on HTTPS page Audit with browser dev tools

Launch Day Communication Template

Pre-launch (to team):

We're going live at [TIME]. Monitoring dashboard: [URL]. On-call: [NAME, PHONE]. War room channel: [LINK]. If anything goes wrong, ping #launch-war-room first.

Post-launch (to users, if issues):

We're experiencing higher than expected demand following our launch. Some users may see slower load times. Our team is actively scaling infrastructure. We'll update in 30 minutes.

Post-launch (to users, all clear):

Launch successful! All systems are running normally. Thank you to everyone who signed up on day one. If you experience any issues, check our status page at [URL].

Tools You Need

Purpose Minimum Recommended
Uptime monitoring External HTTP checks Multi-region with alerts
SSL monitoring Expiry tracking Full chain validation
Performance Manual page speed test Automated Core Web Vitals
Status page Simple HTML page Branded, subscribable
Alerting Email Email + Telegram/Slack + SMS
Logging Server access logs Centralized log aggregation
Metrics Server resource usage Application-level metrics

Conclusion

Launch day is the worst time to discover that your monitoring doesn't work. Set everything up at least a week before launch, run through this checklist, and test every alert channel. The 30 minutes you invest in monitoring setup will save hours of panic on the most important day of your product's life.