How to launch an app on Product Hunt
the short version
- Schedule it for 12:01am Pacific if you want the full day. Product Hunt’s homepage runs on a 24-hour Pacific cycle.
- The tagline is 60 characters. It has to say what the app does, in plain words, or the card does nothing.
- Write the maker comment before the day. Product Hunt’s own preparing page says most of the products that ranked had one.
- Ask people to try it and say what they think. Asking for upvotes is against Product Hunt’s rules.
In this post8 sections
Schedule a Product Hunt page for 12:01am Pacific, with a tagline of at most 60 characters that says what the app does, a gallery of the real product, and a maker comment you wrote the day before. Then spend the day replying. That is the launch. The rest of this post is the checklist that gets you there.
The hour-by-hour across X, TikTok and Product Hunt lives in the launch-day run sheet. This post is only the Product Hunt page: what to prepare, in what order, and what their own guides tell you not to do.
We haven’t launched a client’s app on Product Hunt. Ignura is a new studio. The list is the one we’d run with you, taken from Product Hunt’s launch guide and their preparing-for-launch page, not from a shelf of badges we don’t have.
Make the account before you need it
Register under your own name, not the company’s. Product Hunt’s launch guide says personal accounts are who the community connects with, and it tells you to open one early: comment, follow makers whose work you actually rate, upvote things you mean. An account born the night before a launch looks like what it is. Their older notes have required an account to have been around for at least a week before it can submit. Treat a week as the floor.
You do not need to pay someone to hunt you. The current launch guide says you can and should hunt your own product. Add your teammates as makers, using their usernames, so more than one person can reply. One person awake is a shift. Two is a day.
Pick the day, then schedule it
Every scheduled launch goes live at 12:01am Pacific. Product Hunt’s preparing page calls 12:01am the way to get the full 24 hours, and says you can schedule up to a month ahead. You can also press “launch now” later in the day. If the goal is a full day on the homepage, later is a shorter day. For a UK team, 12:01am Pacific is usually 08:01 in the morning. The run sheet has the weeks when the UK and the US change the clocks on different dates.
There is no magic weekday. Product Hunt’s preparing page says a lot of things you can’t control will matter more than the theory in a thread. Weekdays are when larger companies tend to launch. Weekends can suit a smaller team. Pick a day when someone can cover the first few hours and again when your audience is awake. Don’t pick a day you’re on a plane.
Save the draft. A launch you mean to “just post in the morning” gets posted at lunch, which is already late in Pacific time.
The tagline is the whole card
The tagline is capped at 60 characters. It is the line on the homepage, and it has the same job as a landing-page headline: say what the app does, in words a person would use. Product Hunt’s preparing page is blunt about this. A gimmick that makes the product harder to understand is not a tagline.
These apps are made up, so nobody writes in about their real line.
| Instead of | The tagline |
|---|---|
| “The future of shared living” | “See which flatmate owes you money” |
| “Finance, beautifully reimagined” | “A week of dinners from the fridge” |
| “The all-in-one platform for teams” | “A standup written from yesterday’s commits” |
The name field is only the name. Their own example of what isn’t allowed is a slogan in that box (“The best cat app”). The short description is where their pages disagree, so believe the form: the help-centre guide caps it at 260 characters, and the older preparing page still says 500. Write two sentences either way. What it is, and who it’s for. The story goes in the maker comment. The counter on the box wins.
You get up to three topics. Pick ones a person would actually browse. A fridge app is not “artificial intelligence” because a model wrote the shopping list.
The gallery shows the product
Product Hunt requires two gallery images before the gallery shows on the post. They recommend 1270×760. The thumbnail is separate, square, and they recommend 240×240, under 3MB. If you use a GIF as the thumbnail, it does not autoplay: it moves on hover, so the first frame has to be the one you’d want as a still.
Put the thing a new person should see first in slot one. A logo on a gradient is a wasted frame. The same rule as screenshot 1 and the stop-scrolling test: if the first frame doesn’t say what this is, the rest is for people who already decided to stay.
Order it the way you’d explain the app out loud: the hero moment, the problem, two or three real screens, then a short demo if you have one. A video is optional. If you add one, Product Hunt only accepts a YouTube link, and it cannot be private or shortened. A launch film can live here if the cut starts on the product, not on a logo. Use the same screens as the App Store set, so the store feels like the same app.
The maker comment, written the day before
This is the comment under the gallery, from you. Product Hunt’s preparing-for-launch page says 70% of products that reached Product of the Day, Week or Month had a first comment from the maker. That figure is theirs, from that page. We haven’t had a launch to add to it. The practical point still holds: you can attach the comment when you submit, so write it before the day, not while the comments are already arriving.
Their page asks for a short list: who you are, why you built it, who it’s for, what’s free or paid, and one real question. Then stop. End by asking for feedback. They capitalise it: “ask for feedback (NOT upvotes)”. A comment that closes with “please upvote” is the one people skip, and it can get the launch disqualified. We don’t ask, and we won’t ask you to.
Hi, I'm <name>. I built <app> because <one specific annoyance>.
It's for <a person you could point at>. It isn't for <who you are happily not serving>.
<What it does, in two sentences.> <What's free, what's paid.>
I'd love to know <one real question>. If something's confusing, say so.Product Hunt, on the day
Show up. Reply in your own words, including to the critical comments. Don’t paste one thank-you twenty times. Their guide asks you to invite feedback rather than fish for votes, and to keep replying for a few days after the spike.
Decide what a win is before the day, in a sentence you can check. “Honest notes from ten people who’d actually use it” is a win. “Product of the Day, or the day was a failure” throws away a useful day at midnight. Their guide is explicit that the point is the conversation, not the point total.
If the store link isn’t live yet, say so and update it when it is. If the server falls over, say so, with a plain time estimate. The run sheet has the shape of those replies. Write the actual sentences the night before.
The checklist
Questions
Do I need a hunter?
No. Hunt it yourself, from a personal account you’ve actually used. Product Hunt’s launch guide says there’s no need for a special hunter. Add your teammates as makers so more than one person can reply.
What time does the day start?
A scheduled launch goes live at 12:01am Pacific and the homepage day runs 24 hours. In the UK that is usually breakfast to breakfast. You can launch later. You just get less of the day.
Can I ask friends to upvote?
No. Ask them to try the app and leave an honest comment, including a critical one if that’s what they think. Asking for upvotes breaks Product Hunt’s rules and can get the launch disqualified.
What if the app isn’t on the store yet?
Point the page at the landing page, say so in the maker comment, and add the store link when it’s real. A Product Hunt page with a broken store badge is worse than a page that says “TestFlight today, the store this week” and means it.
Launch day, as a thing we run with you, is one week plus the day, from £2,000, on the pricing page. The whole launch, Ignite, is four weeks from £16,000. Our first 3 clients get up to 50% off, on the terms on that page.
If the date is already in the calendar, book a free 15-minute call and bring the draft tagline. We’ll tell you whether a stranger could tell what the app does.
