When is the right time to launch on Product Hunt?
Because building products has become much more accessible thanks to AI, the bar has had to rise a bit, or at least the expectations have become stricter.
I built my own tool – SafeLimit, but personally, I wouldn’t launch it on Product Hunt yet because it’s still very basic and doesn’t even have a website. 😀
Personally, I wouldn’t use Product Hunt only to validate an idea or a problem anymore.
I would feel ready to launch once I reached these points:
– the product works with its core features (it doesn't break)
– it has been properly tested by developers, UX/UI testers, and a few potential users (with bugs fixed)
– it has its own landing page explaining the product
– it already has a version with payments integrated
– it follows Product Hunt’s launch and community guidelines (novelty, uniqueness, etc.)
– it has a small but engaged user base that can support the launch with comments or reviews (social proof)
When would you personally feel ready to launch on Product Hunt?
What would be your minimum requirements?
Replies
Softorino 💻📲
We're 12 days from our 20th launch, so my current answer: when the product survives a stranger using it with zero explanation. We soft-tested with our email list first, and the bug reports from that week were worth more than any launch-day tactic. The date matters less than most people think – the readiness does.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@yelyzaveta_kibets Can you please remind me on the launch day?
Softorino 💻📲
@busmark_w_nika Sure thing!)
Brilliant question @busmark_w_nika ! I’ve actually been wrestling with this exact question since yesterday.
On paper, we have a working product and a small cohort of real, active users (emphasis on real! 😄). But despite meeting those basic milestones, I’m still debating whether it’s truly ready for a full Product Hunt launch or if we need a bit more polish first.
Really appreciate this checklist.
Good luck with SafeLimit when the time comes!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@gor_geghamyan How many of those real users you have? And what is the product?
Thank you so much! :)
Thanks so much @busmark_w_nika for checking it out! 🙌 ForSuccess is a free platform with 35+ calculators and trackers across Health, Productivity, and Money, plus AI-powered personalized plans for premium users. Would love to hear what you think, and happy to answer any questions! ⚡
So far we already have about 10 users, and we haven't done any promotion for it yet)))
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@gor_geghamyan Had a look at the website – some social proof could help :)
@busmark_w_nika Thank you very much. This means a lot to me.
Whenever one is ready, pretty straight forward i guess :D
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@benedikt_fischer are you ready? :D
I’d add one more requirement: you should know what you want to get out of the launch.
Product Hunt can be useful for validation, but I wouldn’t make the launch itself the validation experiment.
For me, the minimum would be:
A stable core product
A clear landing page and positioning
Real users who have used the product before launch
Basic analytics to measure what happens after launch
A strong reason for people to choose this product over alternatives
A launch plan for what happens after Product Hunt
You don’t necessarily need a huge user base or a fully mature product. But you should have enough evidence that people actually care about the problem you’re solving.
The goal shouldn’t just be “Can we get votes?”
It should be “Can we turn the attention into real users and learn something meaningful?”
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@famitha To be honest, at this point would be great to collect more users of my solution so people are more likely to trust it. :)
Inventory
I always prefer the default time on Product Hunt to schedule, because it is so random and i never understand how planning an appropriate time can make a difference?
Maybe it makes a difference when you are doing a full planned PR but not for indie builders like me.
Like i launched 2 product today on default scheduled time.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@xshahneil Default setting? :D That's pretty random; it can be a suicide. Try to have as much time as possible to gather attention that you can later direct to your launch :)
Inventory
@busmark_w_nika True, still playing around getting my hands dirty and learning by doing. I guess that is the best way to adapt
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@xshahneil Well, but if there is the option to customise launch, do it :D
Inventory
@busmark_w_nika sure thanks, currenlty figuring out how to deal with copycats, someone just copied my whole idea of ruletheworld.lol as warmup.lol 😓
so i launched because test suite green, found out coding agent fixed failing test by weakening assertion instead of actual code. stayed green for days while broken ) launch only when you read actaul diffs not when test suite says everything works
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@konstantin_tikhaev Wait! Did anything break in your tool? On launch day? :/
@busmark_w_nika no. All was perfect, cause nobody came )))
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@konstantin_tikhaev that sounds a bit sad. Like no traffic?
@busmark_w_nika There was the traffic. Every user hit a broken feature. The tests were just "hiding" the bug insted of fixing
Construct Computer
We have been building our startup (Construct - managed AI workspace for SMBs) for 5ish months now, the most important thing we learnt is there is never a "perfect" time to launch if you keep waiting and building and improving your product. The most important thing is to launch as soon as you can and keep iterating to improve, and keep launching 💪
Especially with how fast everything is moving with AI, waiting for a perfect time to launch will just let competitors launch before you 😂 its become somewhat like a race even.
ps. we are launching Construct tomorrow btw, dropping the launch page as well in case anyone is interested in our product
https://www.producthunt.com/products/construct-computer
Cheers!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@ankushkun Can you remind me on the launch day? :)
Construct Computer
@busmark_w_nika sure thing!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@ankushkun Thank you! :)
The thing I wish I had known is that the question is not really when. It is featured or not featured.
I launched twice here this year and both were invisible. Not badly ranked, invisible: 4 upvotes at position 121, then 5 at position 126. I assumed I had picked bad days, or that the product was not interesting enough. Neither was true. Both were simply not featured, and an unfeatured launch does not show up on the homepage, in the newsletter, in search, or on any category page. It is a permalink you can send people to and nothing else. My own product still does not come up in Product Hunt search.
An earlier launch of mine that did get featured took 138 upvotes, with no more effort behind it than the two that got 4 and 5.
So my honest answer to when is: whenever you can make a real case that this version is a genuine iteration, because that case is the thing that actually gets read. Timing moves you a few positions. Featuring decides whether anyone sees you at all. Has anyone here had a launch go from unfeatured to featured, and did you find out why?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@whateverneveranywhere This actually happens. Usually, they don't feature launches that are not novic, somehow unique; they also do not feature courses, directories, etc.
That fits what I saw, and it is a more useful answer than the one I had. My first launch was generic in exactly that way. The tagline was the AI applies to jobs for you shape, which is indistinguishable from a hundred other tools, so there was nothing for a reviewer to find novel.
The follow-up I would love your read on: on a relaunch, is novelty judged on what actually changed since the last version, or does the product entry's history follow it around? I ask because the change here is not a feature, it is that the thing now refuses to claim an application was sent unless the employer's own system says so. That is genuinely different from what it was in May, but it is the same product page.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@whateverneveranywhere To be honest, I would first check whether similar products have been there before. If yes, the chance that they will be featured is shrinking.
Interesting...... I've also launched my product yesterday
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@xauhail How did it go?
@busmark_w_nika Yeah, it’s going pretty well so far! 😄 I’m still pretty new to Product Hunt/launching products, so I’d love to hear any marketing tips you have. How did you get your first users and traction? My product is rankbuy.lol
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@xauhail To be honest, I tried first to ask for trying it out and collect feedback + ask for good reviews from target audience (and ideally someone who is well known) – because it is more likely earning the credit :)
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
Inventory
I am always confused, people suggest launch with first MVP and then iterate over or just build the first great product ?
I believe in initial MVP and that's the same strategy i followed for my today's first iOS app launch, its difficult category to tap in but i had a cool idea and i tried building and releasing inital version. Let's see how is the response and then iterate over
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@xshahneil Okay, first, define MVP. What does it mean? Because I personally see MVP as something that solves the problem and works. In my case, it is already done. But I still wanna polish something, e.g. add pricing so I can see whether it converts.
Inventory
@busmark_w_nika
Yes exactly,
for my today's launche Multi intial idea was to have an app that solves my expense tracking, habit and reminders, to-do all in one. As i used to have different apps for different things.
So i built that solves that problem.
On top of it, i am now working on some design changes, utlizing apple on-device foundation models and more to make it an outlier product along with working on demo videos, nice app store screenshots
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@xshahneil Do you have any data on which of these 4 things people are using most? (expense, habits, reminders, to-do)
I am gonna support your launch! :)
Inventory
@busmark_w_nika
Yes, to-do is the highest followed by habit tracking, then expense and reminders are the last