Buying Product Hunt upvotes: what happens and what to do instead
Buying Product Hunt upvotes breaks its rules and can get the product removed and you banned. Bought votes bring no users; paid placements sold openly do.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·7 min read
Buying Product Hunt upvotes breaks its community guidelines, which forbid "incentivizing upvotes" and "any other form of artificially increasing activity," and Product Hunt says products caught breaking the rules will be unfeatured or removed, with their makers possibly banned for good. Even when it goes unnoticed, a bought vote comes from an account that is unlikely ever to use your product, so it buys a rank and no users.
The alternative is paid reach that is sold openly as advertising: Product Hunt's own display campaigns and newsletter sponsorships, and labelled featured placements on other sites. You can share your launch as widely as you like; the line Product Hunt draws is at asking for, paying for or faking the votes themselves.
What are Product Hunt's rules on upvotes?
You can share your launch, but you cannot ask for upvotes, pay for them or inflate them. Product Hunt's launch guide calls the upvote rule "the only real rule": "you cannot ask people directly to upvote your product. Instead, ask them to visit and comment." Its community guidelines extend it to every form of manufactured activity.
What people try
Product Hunt's wording
Asking for upvotes
"You cannot ask people directly to upvote your product. Instead, ask them to visit and comment."
Paying for votes or incentives
"Incentivizing upvotes" is listed as not acceptable
Bots and bulk messages
"Mass messaging users, asking for upvotes, using bots, incentivizing upvotes, and any other form of artificially increasing activity on your contribution is not acceptable."
Paying a hunter or buying traffic
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
Can you buy upvotes on Product Hunt?
Services sell them, but Product Hunt forbids it. Its community guidelines say incentivizing upvotes, using bots and any other form of artificially increasing activity is not acceptable, and can lead to removal or suspension of your account or products.
02
What happens if Product Hunt catches bought upvotes?
"Please do not pay anyone to hunt or send traffic to your product"
Company or brand accounts
"We don't allow company or brand accounts to post products or comment."
Self-promotional comments
"Self-promoting in comments will also be removed."
Sharing stays allowed. A message that says "we launched on Product Hunt today, we'd love your feedback" is sharing; a message that says "please upvote us" is asking; a paid service that delivers votes is buying.
What happens if you buy Product Hunt upvotes?
The launch and the account are at risk. Product Hunt's community guidelines say failing to meet them "may result in the removal or suspension of your account and/or products from the Product Hunt community," and that gaming its systems can mean "the removal of your contribution(s) and the loss of contribution access." Its launch guide is sharper about paid help.
On paid hunting and traffic, the guide says it "goes against our guidelines and will result in us taking action to remove your product, and you could be permanently banned from the site." And on hunters: "Products caught breaking the rules will be unfeatured or removed and the makers associated with the product may be permanently banned."
Product Hunt keeps the details of detection to itself. Its leaderboard ranks on "the number of upvotes, comments, time since submission, and other factors," and it says it cannot publish the exact algorithm "because doing so would make it easier to be gamed." Other launch platforms describe what they look for: Uneed, for example, says votes from batches of accounts created at once, or from a single IP address, are flagged and removed, and that a final ranking can differ from what you saw during the day.
There is also a legal angle in the US. The FTC's final rule on fake reviews and testimonials, announced on 14 August 2024, "prohibits anyone from selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by a bot or hijacked account." Whether a particular vote purchase falls under it is a question for a lawyer, but it is one more reason the practice is risky.
Why don't bought upvotes produce users?
Because the people behind them are not your users. A vote service sells votes, not interest: the accounts behind them were not looking for your product, so the rank rises while signups, comments and feedback stay where they were. What a Product Hunt launch is actually good for (a day in front of early adopters, their comments, reviews on a permanent product page) comes from real people who tried the product.
The rank itself is also worth less than it looks. Product Hunt's leaderboard counts comments and timing alongside upvotes, so votes without conversation may not move you as far as expected. And the prizes that do outlast the day depend on real engagement: its Daily Digest, which its guide says reaches over 350,000 readers, features the previous day's top 10, and Product Hunt says launches below the top can still be picked, with a thoughtful first comment giving its writers the material to tell your story.
Bought votes also contaminate your own data. If a quarter of your launch-day upvotes came from a service, you cannot tell which channel sent real visitors, and you lose the one clear lesson a launch gives you: whether the people who saw it wanted it.
How do you tell an upvote service from legitimate promotion?
Look at what the seller promises. Legitimate promotion sells a placement in front of an audience and lets that audience decide; an upvote service sells the outcome, a number of votes or a rank, which only fake or incentivized activity can guarantee.
Signal
Legitimate paid reach
Vote service
What you buy
A slot, an ad or a newsletter mention for a stated period
A number of upvotes, comments or a leaderboard position
How it is shown
As advertising or a labelled placement
Disguised as organic activity
What it promises
An audience or impressions, sometimes with counted clicks
A rank or a "top 5" finish
Where the votes come from
Not applicable; it buys attention, not votes
Accounts you do not know and cannot check
Platform rules
Sold by the platform itself or allowed as ordinary advertising
Breaks Product Hunt's community guidelines
If a seller mentions upvotes, a rank or "real accounts," it is selling the thing Product Hunt bans.
How do you get more upvotes without breaking the rules?
Give real people a reason to visit and a reason to comment. Product Hunt's own data points to preparation over tricks: 79% of featured posts were by makers who self-hunted, and 70% of products that achieved Product of the Day, Week or Month had a first comment from the maker.
Launch a product Product Hunt features: live, usable, and useful, novel, well-crafted or creative. Waitlists without immediate access, templates, courses and services are not featured.
Schedule for 12:01 am Pacific so the launch has the full 24-hour day.
Post your maker comment at once, with your story, who it is for and the feedback you want.
Tell your own people: your email list, co-makers, customers and social followers. Send the link and ask them to try it and leave a comment.
Reply to every comment through the day; conversation is part of what the leaderboard counts.
Build the network before the launch. Product Hunt recommends joining three months or more ahead and taking part in the community, and new accounts must wait 1 week before posting.
Advertising that is sold and shown as advertising. Product Hunt sells its own: self-serve display campaigns, including a Momentum Display Campaign for the days after a launch, and self-serve sponsorships in its newsletter, which its advertising page gives as 650k+ subscribers. Other launch sites sell placements openly too. The options below are ranked for a maker who wants labelled visibility by the week.
1. LaunchScaler Featured: labelled placement by the week
LaunchScaler leads here because every Featured slot is labelled as paid placement and counts views and click-throughs while it runs, so you know what the money bought. It sells three placements: the homepage hero at $199 a week, the top of a category at $49 a week (one of five slots in the category), and a Spotlight card in the discovery rail at $19 a week, live immediately with no queue. Each comes with a Featured badge on the listing, and you book 1 to 4 weeks, with the start date shown up front.
2. Product Hunt's own advertising
Product Hunt's advertising page lists a Basic Display Campaign, a Momentum Display Campaign "in the days after your launch," newsletter sponsorships, managed campaigns and promoted discussions or AMAs. It does not publish prices on that page.
3. Newsletter slots and boosts on launch sites
BetaList sells a boost to featured startups at $99 a week or $199 a month, adding homepage placement and a newsletter slot. Uneed sells newsletter sponsoring at $399 for a slot in front of 26,000+ subscribers, and a Premium Spot on all listing pages from $197. The guide to newsletter sponsorships for startups covers how to judge one before you pay.
If you were about to pay for votes, put the money where it buys visibility you can measure. LaunchScaler's Featured placement sells a Spotlight card at $19 a week, the top of your category at $49 a week, or the homepage hero at $199 a week, each labelled as paid placement, each with views and click-throughs counted while it runs. Book 1 to 4 weeks and see your start date before you pay. Get featured.
Product Hunt says products caught breaking the rules will be unfeatured or removed, and the makers associated with the product may be permanently banned. It also warns that paying anyone to hunt or send traffic to your product will result in it taking action to remove the product.
03
How do you get more upvotes on Product Hunt legitimately?
Launch a product its community wants to try, schedule for 12:01 am Pacific, post a first comment, and tell your own network the launch is live, asking them to visit and comment. Product Hunt's rule is that you cannot ask people directly to upvote.
04
Is buying upvotes illegal?
In the US, the FTC's final rule on fake reviews, announced on 14 August 2024, prohibits selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by bots or hijacked accounts. Whether it covers a given case is a legal question, but the platform rules already forbid it.
05
What can I pay for instead of upvotes?
Placements sold openly as advertising, such as Product Hunt's own display campaigns and newsletter sponsorships, or newsletter slots and boosts on other launch sites. LaunchScaler's Featured placement is labelled as paid and costs $19, $49 or $199 a week.
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