Product Hunt launch checklist: every asset and setting to prepare

A Product Hunt launch needs a personal account at least a week old with a verified email address, the product URL, a name of up to 40 characters, a tagline of up to 60, a description of up to 500, up to 3 launch tags, a square logo (240x240 recommended, up to 2MB), at least 1 gallery image at 1270x760, an optional video, and a first comment from the maker. Your landing page needs a working link preview, a fast load and a signup that works, and your supporters need to know to try it and comment rather than upvote.

Each limit below comes from Product Hunt's own help center guide to building your product page, read on 9 November 2026. Product Hunt can change these limits, so confirm each one in the submission form as you fill it in. Work through the list in order; the account wait and the site checks take the longest.

What do you need to prepare for a Product Hunt launch?

Five groups of work: the account and team, the listing text, the images and video, the maker's first comment, and your own site. The table lists every item, Product Hunt's requirement for it, and what "done" looks like, so you can tick it off the day before.

What goes in the name, tagline and description?

Plain words that say what the product does. Product Hunt asks for "Just the product's name," a tagline that says "exactly what the product does," and a description that leads "with the value, then the features that deliver it."

1. Name: exactly the product's name as your site writes it. No "AI-powered" prefix and no emoji; Product Hunt allows up to 40 characters.
2. Tagline: who it is for and what it does, in 60 characters or fewer. "Invoices for freelancers that chase late payers for you" works; "The future of finance" does not. The guide to writing a product tagline has more patterns.
3. Description: in 500 characters, the problem, what the product does about it, two or three features, and who it is for. Leave the story for the first comment.
4. Launch tags: required, up to 3. Pick the most specific ones that fit; a broad tag puts you beside everything.
5. Pricing and promo code: pick Free, Paid, or Free options, and if you offer a launch discount, add the code (up to 15 characters, with offer text up to 25 and an optional end date) and test it at checkout before the day.

Check the product against Product Hunt's featuring guidelines while you write. It features products that are useful, novel, high craft or creative, and does not feature waitlisted products (unless immediate access is provided), directories, templates, boilerplates, courses, services and several other formats. If your product is one of those, it will sit in the All feed rather than the homepage.

Which images and video does Product Hunt need?

A square logo and at least one gallery image, with a video if you have one. Product Hunt recommends 240x240 for the logo, in JPG, PNG or GIF up to 2MB, and 1270x760 for gallery images, and its checklist suggests 3 or more images. Videos and demos are added by link.

• The logo appears small next to your launch on the leaderboard, so use a plain mark rather than a screenshot. An animated GIF plays only on hover, so its first frame has to work on its own.
• The first gallery image is the one people see first; make it the product's main screen doing its main job.
• Use real screens of the product. Mock-ups of a product that does not exist yet run into Product Hunt's vaporware rule: it only features products "ready for use or have a clear path to launch."
• Export at exactly 1270x760 so nothing is cropped, and keep text on the images large enough to read on a phone.
• For the video, check it plays in a logged-out browser window, since most visitors will not be signed in to your video host.

What should the maker's first comment say?

Why you built it, who it is for, and what feedback you want. Product Hunt's guide says a good Maker comment covers who you are, why you built it, what it does, who it is for, what makes it different, what you want to hear and any offer, and it says "Ask for feedback, never for upvotes." The comment is posted and pinned at the top of the discussion, and you have up to 5,000 characters.

On tone, the guide says "Write like a person, not a press release. Humble and helpful beats hype every time." A structure that covers everything it asks for:

1. One line on who you are and what you built.
2. The problem, as you ran into it.
3. What the product does about it, in two or three short points, and what makes it different.
4. Who it is for, and who it is not for yet.
5. Pricing, and the launch offer if you have one.
6. The specific feedback you want, such as "Is the onboarding clear?" or "Which integration should we build next?"

Write it in the editor's First comment box before you schedule; it goes live with the launch.

Is your landing page ready for Product Hunt visitors?

It is ready when a shared link shows the right card, the page loads fast on a phone, and a visitor can sign up and pay without an error. Product Hunt sends people to the URL you submit all day, so test that page, not only your homepage.

A preview card that shows the wrong image often comes from a missing or cached og:image; the guide to an OG image not showing goes through the causes. For the rest of the week-before work, see the SaaS launch checklist.

What do you tell supporters?

The date, the time, and what to do: try the product, comment and share feedback. Product Hunt's rule is that "Asking people directly to upvote, or running anything that requires or rewards upvotes, breaks Product Hunt's rules." Its community guidelines add that mass messaging users, using bots and incentivizing upvotes are not acceptable, with removal or suspension of your account or products as the penalty.

1. A week before, tell your list and your co-makers the date, and ask anyone without a Product Hunt account to create one now, so they can comment on the day from an account of their own.
2. On the day, send the launch link with one line on what you built and a request for honest feedback.
3. Post the link on your own social accounts.
4. Do not send a direct upvote request, do not offer anything in return for votes, and do not message strangers in bulk.

The submission steps themselves, from Submit to Schedule launch, are in how to launch on Product Hunt.

Run the site checks before launch day

Most of this checklist is writing and images. The part that fails silently is the site. Run the free scan on the URL you will submit: 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 working submit path, a noindex on a live page, a missing sitemap, slow page loads and missing security headers. Fix what it flags a few days before launch, then check the link preview by hand, since the scan does not read Open Graph tags.