When most people say MVP (or Minimum Viable Product) they picture a half working app that kind of does the job. Just enough features to work, nothing fancy.
That’s not totally wrong, but there’s a lot more to it.
In reality MVPs come in all shapes. Some are super simple. Some don’t even need a working product. Just a smart way to see if your idea is worth building.
In this article we’ll walk through the most common types of MVPs that you can use. Whether you’re building an app or just testing the waters, there’s an MVP that fits your stage and budget.
The Fake door MVP
Let’s be honest, this one barely counts as an MVP in the traditional sense. Mostly because there’s no actual product behind it yet.
But it works as a fast way to validate your idea.
It’s usually just a landing page describing the app, talks about the features, maybe even shows a mockup or prototype, and then asks people to sign up or click to get started.
The goal?
See if people are actually interested before you build anything.
It’s a quick way to test interest before you spend weeks or months building the full product.
Most people use a landing page because it’s easy and quick to set up. But honestly, you can use the same idea in an ad, an email, or even a social media post wherever you can test if there’s some interest.
Take Blitzit, for example.
About 3 years ago, before we wrote a single line of code, we launched a simple landing page for Blitzit. It explained what the app would do, showed a few mockup screenshots, and invited people to join a waitlist. We also listed it on Product Hunt and over 1000 people signed up.
The product did not exist at that point. But that early response gave us the confidence to move forward. It showed real interest, brought in useful feedback, and helped shape Blitzit into the product it is today.
This method can feel a little sneaky if you’re not careful. If someone thinks they’re signing up for a working app, only to hit a dead end, it might leave a bad impression. The key is transparency. Let people know you’re still building and just testing interest. Most will appreciate the honesty and some might even want to stay in the loop.
In the end, the fake door MVP is one of the fastest, most budget-friendly ways to test an idea. It helps you find out what people really want before you dive into development.
The Landing page MVP
A landing page MVP is an easy way to test your idea before building the product. It is a bit more advanced than just showing a concept or asking people for feedback.
You make a basic page that explains what your app will do. Add a few images or mockups if possible, and invite people to join a waitlist or get updates. If people sign up, it shows they are interested. You now have proof that the idea might work.
This is more than just testing curiosity. You are collecting emails from people who might become your first users. When your product is ready, you will already have a group to launch to instead of starting from nothing.
Before Dropbox built their app, they made a short video and put it on a landing page. The video showed how the app would work. That’s it. No app, no working code.
They also added a sign-up form. Thousands of people signed up in just a few hours. That was enough to prove that people really wanted this product. Only then did they start building the actual app.
Just because someone signs up does not mean they will still remember later. Many will forget. So, after they sign up, keep in touch. Send updates, share your progress, and stay on their radar.
You do not need to be a developer to create a landing page MVP. Tools like Framer, Carrd, Lovable, or Claude make it easy to build one without coding. It is a quick and low-cost way to check if your idea has a demand.
Email Campaign MVP
Sometimes, the fastest way to test your idea is to simply talk to people, and email can be a great way to do that.
Instead of building a website, you send an email to explain your app idea. You tell people what the app does, why it matters, and ask if they’re interested. You might invite them to click a link, reply with thoughts, or join a waitlist.
This is like a lighter version of the fake door MVP. You’re still testing if the idea is worth building, but without any design or code. All you need is a clear message and a list of people you trust.
The best part?
You already know most of the people on your email list. These are friends, colleagues, or past customers. They’re more likely to reply and give honest feedback. You can even group your list based on who might care about what you’re building.
Before Stripe became the go-to payment platform for developers, its founders did something very simple. They emailed friends and people in their network, asking if they had trouble accepting payments online. If someone said yes, they’d offer to set up Stripe for them right away (sometimes within minutes).
These personal conversations gave the founders direct feedback, helped them improve the product fast, and built a strong base of early users. All through email and word of mouth.
This method works best if you already have a list. If you’re starting from zero, it may not be the right fit. In that case, building a landing page or using another simple MVP might be a better start.
But if you do have people to reach out to, sending a few thoughtful emails could be one of the fastest ways to see if your idea has potential.
Marketing campaign MVP
What if you combined a fake door, a landing page, and an email campaign MVP and then added paid ads to drive traffic?
That is what we call a marketing campaign MVP.
A marketing campaign MVP lets you run a full promotion for your app idea, almost as if the product already exists. You can test your messaging, observe how people respond, and build buzz. The only catch is that the app itself is not live yet.
A marketing campaign MVP involves many of the same steps you would take for a actual product launch. You do market research, study competitors, write copy, design ads, choose platforms, and set a budget.
You can reach more people than a simple landing page or email list. Ads bring in new audiences, and this wider reach gives you a better sense of what your audience looks like and how they respond. You are not just checking if people are interested. You are learning who they are and how they think.
That said, this kind of MVP requires more time, money, and effort. Ad spend, design, and copywriting costs can grow fast. If your message is off or the targeting fails, you might end up wasting a month with little to show for it.
For that reason, marketing campaign MVPs are usually better for companies with more resources. They work well when your app has strong competition or when knowing your audience in detail is key to success.
Pre-order MVP
A pre-order MVP is yet another variant of an MVP marketing campaign. It asks users to pay in advance for a product that hasn’t been built yet.
This is often done through crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or GoFundMe. You share your idea, show what you’re planning to build, and ask people to support the project by pre-ordering.
You raise money before you start building. That money can help you speed up development or fund extra features. You also build a core group of users who are invested in your success. Since they’ve paid, they’re more likely to give useful feedback and stick with you long-term.
A well-known example is Pebble, the smartwatch company. Before they had a product, they launched a Kickstarter campaign explaining their idea and showing early designs. The response was overwhelming, they raised over $10 million from backers, who pre-ordered the watch which helped them build a workable product that they could launch to an existing user base.
Of all types of MVPs, pre-orders have the greatest risk. You’re taking money for something that doesn’t exist yet. If you fail to deliver, it can damage your reputation and lead to legal or refund issues. For that reason, it would be prudent to validate your idea with a simpler MVP like a landing page before asking people to pay.
Therefore, the pre-order MVP is not for everyone. But if your idea is already validated, it’s a great way to confirm demand, raise money, and start building all at once.
Single-feature App MVP
A single-feature MVP is built around just one core function. The goal is to strip away everything else so users can focus exclusively on that one main feature and provide concentrated, and high-quality feedback.
This is the classic MVP. This is what people picture when they think of a MVP.
Many famous companies started this way. Take Facebook for instance; it was just a platform for Harvard students to connect with each other, no news feed, no video calls, no groups. Just basic profiles and friend requests. And Uber was a single-feature MVP with just that one intention of letting users book a black car with a tap. That’s it.
These products started small, did one job well, and then expanded based on feedback and demand.
Single-feature MVPs are effective by offering clarity. It’s faster to build, easier to test, and you’ll often get better feedback. If your core idea resonates, you now have something real to grow from. You’re not guessing—you’re building from a solid foundation.
Take Instagram as another example. At launch, it was just a photo-sharing app. Users could take a square photo, apply a filter, and post it. That was all. But that focus helped it stand out in a crowded market and quickly attract loyal users.
The biggest risk with a single-feature MVP is if that one feature isn’t valuable enough on its own. If it feels incomplete or not useful by itself, users might lose interest quickly. Also, if your idea is easy to copy, competitors could launch something similar while you’re still figuring out what to build next.
A single-feature MVP helps you stay focused, launch faster, and get honest feedback on your core idea. If users love it, you now have a clear direction for what to build next.
Piecemeal MVP
A piecemeal MVP takes a shortcut. Instead of building everything from scratch, you use existing tools and services to stitch together a working product.
It’s faster and much cheaper. You’re using tools that are already proven, so you save time on development and avoid early technical bugs.
This approach works well when you have big ideas but limited resources. Say you want to let users buy digital products. You could use Google Forms for orders, Stripe for payments, n8n to automate repeated actions, and Loops to send transactional emails. You don’t need to write any backend code.
And it’s not just for early-stage founders. Even established businesses use this method to test new ideas or try a product pivot.
One of the most well-known examples is Groupon. In the beginning, they used WordPress for the website, manually created PDF coupons, and sent them through Apple Mail. Not scalable, but good enough to prove people wanted local deals.
The biggest downside of a piecemeal MVP is scalability. As more users join, connecting many tools together can get messy. You might face issues with speed, reliability, and maintenance. At some point, you’ll need to rebuild the whole thing with custom code.
Another risk is that your product might look polished from the outside but be held together behind the scenes. That’s fine in the early days, but if users start expecting more, the cracks can show.
Piecemeal MVPs are great for testing big ideas with low risk. They let you move fast, launch early, and see if people care before you invest months building from the ground up.
Concierge MVP
A concierge MVP is a hands on way to test your product idea. Instead of building a working backend or writing automation, you manually deliver the experience your future app would provide.
To the user, it feels like software is doing the job. But behind the scenes, it’s you (or your team) making everything happen.
This might mean sending emails manually, creating spreadsheets instead of dashboards, or doing tasks one by one that your future app will automate.
You get to test your idea fast with little to no tech. You can talk directly to users, spot patterns, and learn what really matters to them.
This approach is especially valuable when your product requires complex decision-making, personalization, or service that is fundamentally difficult to automate in the early stages.
One great example is Food on the Table, a meal planning app. In the beginning, the founder didn’t build any algorithms. Rather than rely on an algorithm for meal plans, the founder created a weekly menu for each user based on their preferences for each week. He would go through the grocery store manually to match recipes to deals in store to add immense value for his users. It was a beautiful way to really understand user behavior and iterate before any automation was done.
While a concierge MVP gives you rich insights and a great user experience, it’s not built to scale. You can only serve a small group of early users unless you have significant backend operations in place. As demand grows, manually delivering everything quickly becomes unsustainable.
Wizard of Oz MVP
A Wizard of Oz MVP works a lot like a concierge MVP. The actual work behind the scenes is done manually by people, not software. In this model, users believe they are interacting with a fully functioning, automated product. Everything appears smooth and digital on the surface, but the reality is that humans are operating everything behind the interface.
This type of MVP is incredibly effective when you want to observe user behavior or test whether people are willing to pay for specific features. It allows you to validate your idea and understand how users engage with it, all before writing a single line of backend logic.
To the user, the product appears complete and fully automated. The interface looks polished, and every interaction feels like it’s powered by code. But behind the scenes, it’s actually humans doing the work.
Running a Wizard of Oz MVP can be surprisingly demanding. Since users believe they are interacting with a fully built product, they naturally expect it to be fast, reliable, and consistent. Meeting those expectations manually can become exhausting very quickly.
Which MVP do you need?
A minimum viable product doesn’t have to be polished, sophisticated, or even fully built to do its job. Sometimes, the best way to learn whether your idea has legs is through something incredibly simple like a landing page, a basic waitlist, product hunt listing, or even just an email campaign.
A good MVP helps you figure out if people care enough about your idea to click, sign up, or buy. It gives you insight before you pour time, energy, and money into building the full product.
That said, at some point, you’ll need more than signals. You will need something people can interact with. Even a rough version of your product can give you valuable feedback that no survey or mockup will ever provide.
But turning an idea into something tangible takes more than inspiration. It takes the right team of designers, developers, product experts who know how to turn ideas into a functioning MVP.
At Spacebar, we’ve done exactly that for early-stage founders and growing businesses. We’ve helped launch MVPs that went on to generate over $5000 per month and even crossed $100k in revenue within their first year. Whether you’re testing the waters or preparing to launch your first app, we know what it takes to turn early ideas into products people actually want and pay for.
Send us a request to start your project.
