Product Hunt launch checklist for 2026

Post the product yourself, on a day you can stay for, with a page that says what it does and a first comment you wrote beforehand. Then reply. That is a Product Hunt launch. The checklist below is the fields and the rules, taken from Product Hunt’s own pages in October 2026. The longer how-to is how to launch an app on Product Hunt. The hours next to X and TikTok are the launch-day run sheet.

We haven’t launched a client’s app on Product Hunt. Ignura is a new studio. Nothing here is a rank we earned. Where two of their pages disagree, both are linked.

Before the page exists#

Product Hunt’s before-launch page says a newly created account has to wait a week before it can post a product. A week is the floor. They recommend joining three months or more ahead, and actually using the site: comment, follow makers, upvote things you mean.

You can hunt your own product. Hunting means posting. Their before-launch page says 79% of featured posts were by makers who self-hunted, and 60% of number-one Product of the Day winners were self-hunted. Those are Product Hunt’s figures. Waiting for a famous hunter is the distraction they tell you to drop.

The page, field by field#

Their preparing page is the form. Drafts save. You can schedule up to a month ahead.

The description length is the field to double-check. The launch guide in the help centre, updated the week we read it, caps the description at 260 characters. The preparing page still says 500. Use the counter in the form. If the two pages still disagree when you submit, the form is the one that will reject the paste.

The thumbnail does not need to move. Their preparing page says less than a third of Product of the Day products used an animated GIF as a thumbnail. A sharp still of the product beats a strobing loop. They may edit a GIF that is unreadable.

The first comment is the one they measure. The preparing page says 70% of products that reached Product of the Day, Week, or Month had a first comment by the maker. It sits under the gallery. Include what it does, who it’s for, the story, and any offer. Ask for feedback. Their heading on that bullet is “Ask for feedback (NOT upvotes).”

Schedule it, then leave it#

Every scheduled launch goes live at 12:01am Pacific. Their preparing page calls 12:01am the way to get the full 24 hours on a homepage that runs a Pacific day. You can also press “launch now” later. Later is a shorter day.

For a UK team, 12:01am Pacific is 08:01 in the morning while the UK is on British Summer Time and the US is on daylight time. The weeks the clocks change on different dates are in the run sheet.

Their preparing page says there is no best weekday that the data will hand you. They do say products launched on the weekend get 15% more “Visit” button clicks than weekday launches. That is their figure, about clicks on the button, not about installs of your app. Pick a day someone can cover the first hours and the hours your users are awake. Don’t pick a day you’re on a plane.

There is no golden rank. Their launch guide says to decide the goal before you lock the date. Loom, in their telling, has launched 15 times. You can launch again when you ship a real update.

The rules that get a launch removed#

This is the part to read twice. It is Product Hunt’s, not a house style.

Don’t ask for the upvote. The launch guide says never ask outright for upvotes, or run anything that requires them. It can get the launch disqualified.

Don’t build a vote ring. Their sharing article tells you not to mass-message people, by email or DM, asking them to upvote. It tells you not to offer a discount, a freebie, or any other reward in exchange for an upvote. It tells you not to encourage a group to upvote as an organised push. Their fair-voting article names voting rings and fake accounts as things they act on. If they decide votes are not genuine, they remove the votes. They also say to avoid coordinated campaigns and incentivised campaigns that look artificial to the detection.

Don’t pay a hunter, and don’t pay for traffic. The before-launch page says paying people to hunt your product goes against their guidelines. The how-it-works page says the same about paying anyone to hunt or to send traffic: the product can be removed, and you can be banned. They mention bots and upvote giveaways as the tactics those paid pushes have used.

A promo code is not a vote bribe. The form has a promo field: offer, code, expiry, for people who visit. That is their field. A code that says “upvote and I’ll send this” is the incentive their sharing article forbids. Put the offer in the maker comment as an offer, and ask for a comment, not a vote.

What you can do, in their words: share the direct link, post about the launch where you already talk to people, and reply to comments. Maker followers get an email if the post is featured. A hunter’s followers do not. That used to be different. Their sharing article says it has not worked that way for several years. Add your makers.

On the day#

If you are hiring someone for the day, the job is prep and company, not a badge. What a Product Hunt launch agency does is that split, with the prices those agencies publish. We don’t buy upvotes. A four-week Ignura launch, which includes the day with X and TikTok, is from £16,000.

The day after#

Keep replying for a few days. Their launch guide says to hold the day up against the goal you wrote down, write back to people who tried it, and ship the fix the comments actually asked for. A new major release can be a new launch. The first one does not have to be the last one.

What we do here, scope and price: Product Hunt launch.

If your date is inside a month and the page is still a doc, book an intro call. Bring the tagline. Sixty characters is enough to see if it says what the app does.