How to launch on Product Hunt: submission, first hour and the rules
Launching on Product Hunt is free: log in, click Submit, then New Product, fill in the fields, schedule 12:01 am PT and hunt it yourself.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·7 min read
Launching on Product Hunt is free: log in with a personal account, click Submit in the top right, then New Product, enter your URL and fill in the listing, and schedule it for 12:01 am Pacific so it gets the full 24-hour day. Hunt it yourself, share the link on the day, and never ask anyone to upvote; that rule, and the ban on company accounts, are the ones that get launches flagged.
Before any of that, make sure your site can take the visitors. A Product Hunt launch sends people to your homepage all day, so the link preview, the page speed and the signup flow need to work before 12:01 am. This guide walks the submission field by field, then the day, then the rules.
How much does it cost to launch on Product Hunt?
Nothing. Product Hunt's launch guide answers "Is Product Hunt free?" with "Yes. It's 100% free to use," and all you need is a free, personal account. There is no paid launch tier, and Product Hunt treats paying people to hunt or send traffic as a violation.
Its guide is explicit: "Please do not pay anyone to hunt or send traffic to your product," because 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." Product Hunt does sell advertising, such as display campaigns and newsletter sponsorships, but that is separate from the launch and runs as advertising.
How do you submit a product to Product Hunt?
Log in with your personal account, click Submit in the top right, then click New Product, and enter the product's URL. Product Hunt then asks for the listing details. Prepare them before you start so the form takes minutes.
Create your account at least a week ahead. Product Hunt says newly created accounts must wait 1 week before posting a product, and it recommends joining three months or more ahead to build a presence.
Log in, click Submit in the top right, and click New Product.
Enter the URL: "a direct link to the primary product page, usually your own landing page or homepage where the product can be used or downloaded."
Fill in the fields below, add your co-makers by their Product Hunt usernames, and choose a pricing option: free, paid, or paid with a free trial or plan.
Schedule the launch, up to 1 month in advance, for 12:01 am Pacific. If you want it live straight away, Product Hunt offers a Launch now option.
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
How much does it cost to launch on Product Hunt?
Nothing. Product Hunt says it is 100% free to use, and all you need is a free, personal account. It warns against paying anyone to hunt or send traffic to your product, which can get the product removed and you banned.
No. Product Hunt's guide says "Hunting is just posting," a hunter can be anyone with a personal account, and it encourages makers to hunt their own products because "there's no discernible advantage to using a third-party hunter." Its own figures: 79% of featured posts were by makers who self-hunted, and 60% of number one Product of the Day winners were self-hunted.
Paying a hunter, on the other hand, breaks the rules. "Paying people to hunt your product goes against our guidelines," and products caught breaking the rules "will be unfeatured or removed and the makers associated with the product may be permanently banned."
When should your launch go live?
At 12:01 am Pacific Time. Product Hunt runs on a 24-hour cycle in Pacific time, and its preparation guide recommends 12:01 am so that people have the full 24 hours to see your product. As for the day, Product Hunt's view is that "the best day to launch is the day on which you're most prepared."
Weekdays are more competitive than weekends on the leaderboard. The guide to the best time to launch on Product Hunt converts 12:01 am Pacific to other time zones and compares two weeks of daily leaderboards.
What happens on launch day?
Your launch appears at 12:01 am, and the homepage leaderboard "changes throughout the day based on the number of upvotes, comments, time since submission, and other factors." Not every launch is featured on the homepage; the rest appear in the All feed under "See all of today's products," where they can still collect comments and upvotes.
Spend the day on three things:
Post your maker comment as soon as the launch is live. Product Hunt says 70% of products that achieved Product of the Day, Week or Month had a first comment by the maker. Say why you built it, who it is for and what feedback you want, and ask for "feedback (NOT upvotes)."
Share the link with your list, co-makers and your own social accounts, asking people to visit and comment.
Reply to every comment. Product Hunt's Launch Day dashboard tracks your position, upvotes, comments and reviews through the day.
Product Hunt's Daily Digest newsletter, which its guide says reaches over 350,000 readers, features the previous day's top 10 most upvoted products, and its writers can also pick launches that did not top the leaderboard; a thoughtful first comment gives them material. If your launch does not reach the homepage at all, the guide to a Product Hunt launch that was not featured walks through the featuring guidelines.
Which rules get Product Hunt launches flagged?
Asking for upvotes, posting from a company account, paying for hunts or traffic, and anything that artificially inflates activity. Product Hunt's guide calls the upvote rule "the only real rule," and its community guidelines spell out the rest along with the penalties.
Rule
Product Hunt's wording
What happens if you break it
No asking for upvotes
"You cannot ask people directly to upvote your product. Instead, ask them to visit and comment."
Covered by the community guidelines' penalties below
No company accounts
"We don't allow company or brand accounts to post products or comment." Profiles must "represent an individual"
Removal or suspension of the account
No paid hunting or traffic
"Please do not pay anyone to hunt or send traffic to your product"
Product removed; you "could be permanently banned"
No artificial activity
"Mass messaging users, asking for upvotes, using bots, incentivizing upvotes, and any other form of artificially increasing activity on your contribution is not acceptable."
"Removal or suspension of your account and/or products"
No self-promotion in comments
"Self-promoting in comments will also be removed."
The comment is removed
The line between sharing and asking is the one people cross by accident. "We launched on Product Hunt today, we'd love your feedback" is sharing. "Please upvote us" is asking, and so is a message to a group chat with a direct request to vote. Buying votes is the extreme case, covered in buying Product Hunt upvotes.
If someone else hunts your product before you, Product Hunt's launch-day questions page gives two options: ride the momentum, or contact support through the chat widget straight away to have the post removed before your own launch.
Is your site ready for Product Hunt traffic?
Check three things the day before: the link preview, the page speed, and the signup flow. Every visitor arrives through your launch link, so a broken card, a slow first page or a signup form that fails costs you the one visit Product Hunt sends.
The link preview. Paste your URL into a private chat and look at the card. It is built from your Open Graph tags; the protocol's required four are og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url.
The speed. Run PageSpeed Insights on the homepage and the page your Product Hunt link points to, and read the mobile result.
The signup flow. Click every call to action with the mouse and the keyboard, submit the signup form with test data, and put a test payment through checkout.
A day before launch, run the free scan on the URL you are submitting. LaunchScaler needs only the URL and no account, and runs 156 checks across 6 of its 7 categories, including a primary call to action that does nothing, a form with no submit path, a noindex left on a live page, slow Largest Contentful Paint and Interaction to Next Paint, and missing security headers. Fix what it flags, then check the link preview by hand, since the scan does not read it.
Log in with your personal account, click Submit in the top right, then click New Product. Enter your product's URL, fill in the name, tagline, description, launch tags, thumbnail and gallery, then schedule the launch or choose Launch now.
03
Do I need a hunter to launch on Product Hunt?
No. Product Hunt encourages makers to hunt their own products and says a third-party hunter gives no advantage; 79% of featured posts were by makers who self-hunted, and 60% of number one Product of the Day winners were self-hunted.
04
Can I ask people to upvote my Product Hunt launch?
No. Product Hunt's rule is that you cannot ask people directly to upvote your product; ask them to visit and comment instead. Its community guidelines also forbid mass messaging, bots and incentivized upvotes.
05
How long before launch should I create a Product Hunt account?
At least a week, because newly created accounts must wait 1 week before posting a product. Product Hunt recommends joining three months or more ahead and taking part in the community.
A launch tagline says what the product does and who it's for in plain words, inside the form's limit (60 characters on Product Hunt). Formula and examples.
Product Hunt is worth it for tools makers and early adopters try on the day: free, a day of attention, feedback and a lasting page. Featuring is not yours.
