The Product Launch Checklist for Indie Makers (2026 Data)

A generic to-do list won't get a launch anywhere. What actually decides whether Product Hunt, Hacker News, and Reddit even show a post to anyone is the specific vote counts, timing windows, and account thresholds each platform enforces, and missing them is how launch day turns into one quiet post nobody sees.

Product Hunt: prep for weeks, execute in a day

Plan for 50 to 120 hours of total preparation to have a real shot at featured status. That includes building a waitlist, preparing assets, and lining up the first wave of supporters. Waitlists drive 3 to 5 times better rankings than launching cold, which makes this the single highest-leverage item on the list.

On the day: submit at exactly 12:01 AM PST for the full 24-hour window, and pick your day deliberately. Saturday and Sunday need the fewest upvotes to reach a top slot; Tuesday, Monday and Thursday are the most competitive.

• [ ] Waitlist built and warmed before submission
• [ ] Assets (gallery images, tagline, first comment) ready in advance
• [ ] Submit at 12:01 AM PST
• [ ] Reply to every comment in the first hour: 50+ comments outranks raw upvotes

Hacker News: one shot, one clean post

Show HN has its own rules, stated directly by the platform:

Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with

That means a live demo or public repo, not a landing page. Sign-up walls and marketing pages get flagged as off-topic. The vote math is specific:

5.22 is the average number of votes a post needed within an average time of 27.1 minutes to reach the front page for the first time.

Most posts never get there. An analysis of 13,159 posts found only an 8.15% hit rate for holding the front page more than an hour. Timing and account history both move the odds: 6am–12pm UTC on a weekend is the best window, and over half of front-page posts come from accounts with more than 1,000 karma.

• [ ] Live demo or public repo linked, no sign-up wall
• [ ] Posting between 6am–12pm UTC, ideally a weekend
• [ ] A maker comment ready to post immediately, explaining what you built and why
• [ ] No asking friends to upvote: it's against the guidelines and reads as manipulation

Reddit: karma and timing decide if a mod even sees it

Reddit for launch purposes means dozens of separate communities, each with its own tolerance for self-promotion. A new account with no history is the fastest way to get a post removed before anyone reads it.

The riskiest state for any account is under 100 karma and under two weeks old.

Build karma with genuine, non-promotional participation in the target subreddit before posting anything about your product. The right subreddits for a SaaS launch and how to avoid getting banned doing it cover the specifics per community.

• [ ] Account is more than 2 weeks old with over 100 karma in relevant communities
• [ ] Read each target subreddit's rules before posting, they vary
• [ ] Post framed as a contribution, not an ad

Beyond the big three

A directory submission this week can still be sending traffic in a year, which is what makes directories worth the time even though they don't spike the way a launch-day post does. Where to submit your startup covers the list worth doing, ranked by domain authority rather than volume.

Doing all of this by hand across three-plus channels in one week is the part that burns founders out, and it's exactly what LaunchEngine's launch kit generator exists to map out, channel by channel, before launch day arrives. For the Product Hunt specifics on their own, see our Product Hunt launch tips.