“Why isn't my Product Hunt launch getting featured?” : My Linkedin Dms are flooded
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Lately, my DMs have been full of this question.
While I can’t say exactly what changed after Product Hunt’s Aug’25 update (since the featured criteria seem a bit mysterious now), here are a few patterns I’ve noticed:
Version updates: New versions or re-launches (like Product v2.0) often don’t get featured anymore.
No freemium or free trial : Launches without a free plan or trial seem to be struggling to get featured.
Hunter ≠ Featured : Having a well-known hunter doesn’t guarantee a feature. In fact, recently, the two seem almost mutually exclusive.
Look & feel: Launches that use the same template design or layout as others often get skipped.
Curious to hear your thoughts - have you noticed similar trends?
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Hey @cheerst, totally in the same boat. And yeah, agree that having a well-known Hunter doesn’t really influence being featured anymore. What still seems to matter though is driving genuine traffic to the PH platform from outside. If you can create that early surge, especially in the first 4 hours. It still gives your launch a solid chance to climb the charts..
@george_esther If the account is at least 4 to 6 week old, it counts.
Sprinto
@george_esther @vu3ozm whats the average warm up for an account you guys re observing ?
Wepost
This is scary tho! How do they expect us to drive traffic and hype up our launch if a lot of the work we do to actually give PH some attention isn't giving any results? Seems kinda weird that they do it, anyone know the reason why?
Interesting observations! I’ve noticed that even with a strong hunter, products that don’t offer a freemium option or stand out visually tend to get less attention.
Noticing something similar - also I personally don't love the new notifications experience as I feel my support of many products / launches removes a lot of the user centric things that I used to get in spades.
Warmup Inbox
Yes the feature condition are quite opaque.
I also notices that relaunch have a low chance to get featured.
It seems that tool with large team have better chances to get feature than indie hacker product.