Anticode Open builder

How to soft launch a website: quiet first, loud later

A soft launch puts the site in front of real people before you tell everyone. It finds the broken form, the confusing button and the price you forgot to update while the audience is small and forgiving. The sequence: publish quietly, invite a handful of people with a specific task, fix what they find, then move to your own domain and make the announcement.

Updated · By the Anticode team

Quiet, not secret

Be clear about what a soft launch on Anticode is. A published site is public at its address; there are no password-protected or private published pages. Anyone with the link can open it, and each site serves its own robots.txt and sitemap, so search engines can find it in time. The soft launch is unannounced, not hidden. Don't publish anything you'd be unhappy for a stranger to see.

If you need something genuinely limited to a few people, share a client review link to the preview instead. It needs no account, expires after 14 days by default and can be revoked. The review page shows the page with no scripts or forms running, so it suits feedback on wording and layout, not testing forms.

The soft launch, step by step

  1. Publish to the free address. Your site goes live at <name>.anticode.dev straight away. Leave your own domain pointing at the old site, or at nothing, for now.
  2. Pick five to fifteen testers. A mix: two or three loyal customers, a friend who'll be blunt, someone who's never heard of you, and someone who uses an older phone. Not just colleagues, who know too much.
  3. Give each one a task, not "have a look". "Find out whether we deliver to your postcode." "Send us a booking request for next Thursday." "Find the price of the large box." Tasks expose problems that browsing doesn't.
  4. Ask three questions afterwards. What were you trying to do? Where did you hesitate? What would you change first? Collect answers in one document.
  5. Watch the plumbing. Every test submission should arrive in the dashboard, in your inbox if notifications are on, and in any connector. If one doesn't, you've found the most important bug.
  6. Fix in batches. Turn the feedback into a list of specific changes, make them with change requests or the visual editor, and publish. Recent saves stay in version history, up to your plan's number.
  7. Give it a week, or until two testers in a row complete their tasks without stumbling.

Moving to your domain and announcing

  1. On a paid plan, add your domain to the site. Anticode shows the CNAME or TXT record to add and issues the certificate itself once the check passes.
  2. Change the records at your DNS host at a quiet hour, and wait for the site to load on your domain over HTTPS.
  3. Test one form again on the live domain.
  4. Update the links you control: social bios, email signature, your Google Business Profile, printed QR codes.
  5. Announce: email your customers, post, and tell the testers first, with thanks.

Decisions and trade-offs

How long
A week is typical for a small site. Longer soft launches drift: testers stop testing and the announcement loses its moment.
Free address or own domain
The free address keeps your old site running during testing. Moving the domain early means testers see the real address, but any problem is public too.
Fix everything or launch
Fix anything that stops a task. Polish can follow the announcement.

What goes wrong

  • Testers who only say "looks great". That's why each gets a task.
  • The soft-launch link gets shared widely. It's public, so expect it. Make sure nothing on the site is unfinished in a way you'd regret.
  • Feedback by five channels. Ask everyone to reply in one place.
  • A last-minute change breaks something. Preview the version from before it in history and restore it if needed.

How you know you're ready

Every tester completed their task. Every test submission arrived where it should. No open item stops a visitor from doing what the site is for. Then announce, and keep the testers' list: they're the first people to ask when you change the site again.

Limits

Anticode publishes to a free address, connects your domain on paid plans, shares review links and keeps recent versions in history. It can't password-protect a site, hide it from search engines on request, recruit testers or collect structured feedback beyond review-link comments and your forms. See moving a domain to a new website, recruiting beta testers and the website launch checklist.

Questions people ask

Can I hide my website from Google during a soft launch?

Not on Anticode: published sites are public and serve their own robots.txt and sitemap. Treat the soft launch as unannounced rather than hidden.

Can testers try the forms through a review link?

No. Review links show the page without running forms. Testers should use the published free address for form tests.

Do I need my own domain to soft launch?

No. Publish to the free anticode.dev address first and move to your domain when you announce.