The Minimal Tech Stack to Ship Your First Product
A production-ready infrastructure checklist that takes 1-2 days to set up and costs under $20/month
Starting with a small tech stack and shipping fast is the key to building maintainable and scalable applications. This checklist covers the essential infrastructure you need for your first production release.
Monolith Architecture
Your tech stack is the foundation of your product. Choose wisely, but don’t overthink it. I recommend an MVC framework like Ruby on Rails or Laravel.
Embrace the monolith. It’s simpler to deploy, easier to debug, and perfect for early-stage products. You can always scale or split into microservices later when you actually need to.
For rapidly building your frontend, consider using V0 by Vercel. It’s an AI-powered tool that generates React components and UI code from text prompts or images. This can speed up your frontend development significantly, especially when prototyping or building standard UI components.
Recommendation: MVC Framework + V0 (for frontend)
CI/CD
This is about deploying automatically instead of manually uploading files like it’s 2010. There are plenty of CI/CD tools—Circle CI, Jenkins, GitLab CI, Travis CI—but GitHub Actions is the most straightforward choice for startups.
It integrates directly with your repository, offers a generous free tier, has solid documentation, and supports workflow pipes to deploy your app with every push. Set up automated testing and deployment from day one. Your future self will thank you.
Recommendation: GitHub Actions
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
Skip the headache of configuring AWS or GCP directly. Use a PaaS for faster deployment. Options like Heroku, Render, Railway, and Vercel are all solid choices.
I prefer Railway for full-stack applications: pre-built GitHub integration means you can deploy with minimal setup. It handles automatic SSL and database provisioning. The pricing is reasonable and predictable. It hides the infrastructure complexity while still giving you control when you need it—perfect for getting your app live without wrestling with server configs.
For frontend-focused or Next.js applications, Vercel is unbeatable. It’s built by the creators of Next.js, offers instant deployments, automatic HTTPS, and excellent performance out of the box. The free tier is generous, and it pairs perfectly with V0 for rapid UI development. If you’re using V0 to generate your frontend, deploying to Vercel is a natural fit.
Recommendation: Railway (for full-stack) or Vercel (for frontend/Next.js)
Object Storage
Modern applications need object storage. Use it for user uploads, static assets, and backups. While Google Cloud Storage, MinIO, Cloudflare R2, and AWS S3 are all viable options, I recommend starting with AWS S3 or any S3-compatible storage.
S3 compatibility is the gold standard. Its API is widely supported, and the ecosystem is unmatched. Most libraries and frameworks work seamlessly with S3. Consider adding CloudFront as a CDN in front of S3 for better performance and lower costs.
Recommendation: AWS S3
Mail Server
Mailtrap is excellent for development and staging—it catches all emails so you never accidentally spam real users during testing. For production, pair it with a reliable service like SendGrid, Postmark, or AWS SES to ensure deliverability.
Recommendation: Mailtrap (for testing) + Production SMTP Provider
Crash Error Reporting
Catch errors before your users report them. There are several tools—Bugsnag, Rollbar, Sentry—but Sentry is my top choice.
Sentry tracks errors in production and provides real-time alerts, stack traces, and context about what users were doing when things broke. Set this up before launch. You need to know when your app fails, not hear about it from frustrated users.
Recommendation: Sentry
APM (Application Performance Monitoring)
You shouldn’t have to monitor your app manually for slow performance or bottlenecks. While Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace, and AppDynamics are all solid options, I recommend New Relic for its generous free tier and simple setup.
New Relic helps you monitor performance, identify bottlenecks, and understand user behavior. Track response times, database queries, and external API calls. Performance issues often hide until they become critical—APM tools help you catch them early.
Recommendation: New Relic
Uptime Monitoring
You can’t manually check if your app is up 24/7. That’s what uptime monitoring is for. Better Stack, Uptime Robot, and Pingdom all work well, but I prefer Better Stack for its clean interface and solid alerting features.
Better Stack monitors your uptime and alerts you immediately when something goes down. It provides status pages, incident management, and detailed reports. Set up monitors for your critical endpoints and sleep better knowing you’ll hear about issues before your users do.
Recommendation: Better Stack (formerly Better Uptime)
Alert Notifications
Connect your monitoring tools (Sentry, Better Stack, New Relic) to either Slack or Discord for centralized alerts. Use whichever platform your team already lives in.
Set up different channels for different severity levels—critical errors in one channel, deployment notifications in another. This creates a real-time operations dashboard where your entire team stays in the loop.
Recommendation: Slack or Discord
DNS and WAF (Web Application Firewall)
Cloudflare handles DNS management, DDoS protection, and web application firewall protection in one package. The free tier is surprisingly generous and adds a security layer to your application. It also speeds things up through its global CDN.
Recommendation: Cloudflare
Summary
This stack represents a practical approach to launching your first product. Each piece serves a specific purpose:
Monolith + MVC Framework: Fast development, easy maintenance
GitHub Actions: Automated, reliable deployments
Railway: Quick hosting without infrastructure headaches
S3: Reliable, scalable file storage
Email Service: Professional transactional emails
Sentry: Know when things break
New Relic: Keep your app fast
Better Stack: 24/7 uptime monitoring
Slack/Discord: Centralized alerts and team visibility
Cloudflare: Security and performance boost
Estimated Monthly Cost (Starting): $5–20
Estimated Setup Time: 1–2 days
Start simple, ship quickly, and iterate based on real user feedback. Don’t over-engineer your infrastructure before you have users to serve. This checklist gives you production-ready foundations without the complexity that kills momentum.
Now stop planning and start shipping. Your first version doesn’t need to be perfect—it just needs to exist.