How to launch your startup on Product Hunt
TL;DR
Product Hunt is a daily launch site where makers post new tech products and the community upvotes and comments on them. Launching is free ("It's 100% free to use"), you post from a personal account, and each launch day starts at 12:01 am Pacific Time. It suits software, AI and app founders with a live product who can rally real users for one day.
What is Product Hunt?
Product Hunt runs a homepage leaderboard that resets every 24 hours on Pacific time. Rankings move with upvotes, comments, time since submission and other factors. The launch with the most points that day wins Product of the Day, and points combine upvotes with comments and shares.
The Product Hunt team decides which launches get featured, the default homepage view. Its guidelines judge four qualities: useful, novel, well made and creative.
Its newsletters include The Leaderboard (top 10 launches, Monday to Friday) and The Roundup (Sunday recap of the week), so a high rank is how you get into them. The Stories section publishes no submission process.
Who should launch on Product Hunt?
Good fit:
- Founders of live digital products: SaaS, AI tools, apps, developer tools, browser extensions.
- Teams that ship a major new version and want a relaunch: Product Hunt allows it for each big update.
Skip it:
- Directories, lists, templates, boilerplates, podcasts, courses, reports, events, books and services: the guidelines exclude them from featuring.
- Shops, deal sites and waitlist-only products.
How much does Product Hunt cost?
A launch is free. Product Hunt sells display ads, a homepage billboard and newsletter sponsorships with no published prices, and ads stay separate from the rankings.
How do you launch your startup on Product Hunt?
- Sign up with a personal account (company accounts are prohibited) and finish the setup steps that new accounts need before they can post.
- Read the Launch Guide and the featuring guidelines.
- Click Post, or open producthunt.com/posts/new, and enter your product URL.
- Fill in the page: a name without emojis, a tagline of up to 60 characters, a description of up to 500 characters, up to 3 launch tags, a square thumbnail (240x240), at least 2 gallery images (1270x760, under 3MB) and an optional YouTube video.
- Choose Schedule: you can pick a date up to 30 days ahead. The page goes live at 12:01 am PT and nobody can upvote it before then.
- On launch day, share the link and ask people to try it and comment. Product Hunt's rule on upvote requests reads "Please don't," and paid or begged votes can drop your rank.
Tips to get more out of Product Hunt
- Write the first comment yourself: 70% of products that won Product of the Day, Week or Month had one from the maker.
- Add a video: about 53% of Product of the Day winners since 2021 had one.
- Consider a weekend: Product Hunt measured 15% more "Visit" clicks on weekend launches.
- Hunt your own product: the guide finds no advantage in a famous hunter, and each person can schedule only 2 hunts per day.
Our verdict
Product Hunt is the best free launch day for software and AI products, and a featured top 10 finish also lands you in the newsletter. The DA 90 belongs to producthunt.com, so count on users and feedback, and send services elsewhere.
More options: see all startup directories and launch sites. Planning the launch around this listing? The Fe/male Switch startup game walks women founders from idea to first customers.