The places worth launching a small product are few: Product Hunt and Show HN, both free, plus one or two directories that fit your category and a community where your users already talk. Most launch directories now charge to skip a queue that is months long. Pick three or four, prepare once, and spend the rest of the week talking to whoever turns up.
The usual advice is a list of 100 directories and a spreadsheet to submit to all of them. That produces a hundred listings nobody reads, a weekend gone, and very little else. What follows is the short list, what each one actually costs, and what it is honestly good for.
What a launch directory does, and what it does not
A directory listing does three things. It puts your product in front of people for a day or a week, it gives you a page that search engines can find, and it gives you a deadline, which is the most underrated part.
It does not give you users who stay. People who browse launch sites are mostly other makers, curious, and gone by tomorrow. Treat a launch as a burst of feedback from people who look at a lot of products, not as distribution.
The short list, compared
Costs and waits as listed on each site's own pages, checked in October 2026. These change, so read the current page before you plan around a date.
| Where | Cost to list | Wait | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product Hunt | Free | You pick the day | Consumer and prosumer tools, if you have people to tell |
| Show HN | Free | None, you post it | Developer tools and anything technical people can try instantly |
| BetaList | Paid only, refunded if not selected | Depends on the plan | Pre-launch or recently launched startups with their own domain |
| Uneed | Free, or $14.99 / $29.99 to jump the line | Free: a date up to 5 months out | Small tools and SaaS |
| DevHunt | Free, or $49 to pick your week | Free: around 6 months on average | Developer tools only |
| Shipfolks (ours) | Free | Reviewed by hand first | Shipped products with a permanent home |
Product Hunt
Posting is free, and you can post your own product without a "hunter". It needs a personal account (company accounts cannot post), and launches run on a 24-hour day in Pacific Time, so a launch planned in advance usually goes live at 12:01 am PT.
Two things trip people up. Not every post reaches the homepage, and Product Hunt does not publish exactly how that is decided. And its own launch guide is blunt about the one real rule: you cannot ask people directly to upvote. Ask them to look and leave a comment instead.
It is worth one well-prepared attempt if you have an audience to tell on the day. Without one, a launch there tends to be quiet, and that is useful information too. There is more on this in what a Product Hunt launch actually gets a solo maker.
Show HN
Free, instant, and the strictest about what counts. The Show HN rules say the thing has to be something people can try: no landing pages, sign-up pages, fundraisers, newsletters or blog posts. Ideally nobody needs an account or an email address to try it. "Quickly-generated one-offs" are explicitly not welcome, and asking friends to upvote or comment is against the rules.
If your product passes that bar, the audience is technical and will tell you exactly what is wrong with it. Be in the thread for the whole day and answer everything. The comments are the value; the traffic spike is a side effect.
BetaList, Uneed and DevHunt: the paid queues
These three are honest about the trade, which is more than many directories manage: wait for free, or pay to go sooner.
- BetaList has no free option at all. Every submission is paid, and you get an automatic refund if it is not selected. It wants pre-launch or recently launched startups, and it requires your own domain: free hosting subdomains and direct app store links are not accepted.
- Uneed puts free launches in a line and assigns the date, up to five months out. Fast-track is $14.99 for a slot in about two weeks; Skip the line is $29.99 and lets you choose the date.
- DevHunt is developer tools only, with weekly launches voted on by developers who sign in with GitHub. A free launch waits around six months on average; $49 lets you pick the week.
Paying is reasonable if a specific date matters to you. It is not reasonable as a growth strategy. Whether the backlink from any of these is worth the money is a separate question, covered in do directory backlinks help SEO.
Communities beat directories
The places that produce users who stay are the ones where your users already spend time: a subreddit about the problem you solve, a Discord for the framework you built on, Indie Hackers if your users are other makers, a forum for the profession you serve.
The rules there are stricter than on any directory, and they should be. Read each community's rules before posting, post as a person rather than a brand, and lead with what you learned building it rather than with a link. One genuine post in the right community usually beats a week of directory submissions. How to get your first 100 users goes further into this.
Shipfolks, since it is our site
Shipfolks is a small directory of products independent builders shipped, and it is ours, so weigh this paragraph accordingly. Listing is free. Every listing is reviewed by a person before it goes up, and it needs a permanent home: your own domain or an App Store or Google Play link. Preview subdomains are refused.
It launched in July 2026 and it is small. It will give your product a permanent, indexable page next to your name and a reviewed listing in a category. It will not give you a launch-day spike, and you should not expect one. If that is useful, you can list a project.
The order to do it in
- Fix the basics first. Own domain, a working sign-up, a way to contact you, and analytics so you can tell what any of this did.
- Post where your users already are. One community, done properly.
- Show HN, if people can try your product without signing up.
- Product Hunt, on a day you can spend entirely in the comments.
- One or two category directories, chosen because their audience matches yours, not because they are on a list.
Then stop submitting and start replying. The launch is the week after the launch, when the few people who stayed tell you what they actually needed.