SaaS launch checklist 2026: the 30 steps, with each platform's lead time and limits

This checklist is for a working product with a handful of users and no large audience. If your product is not usable yet, the pre-launch steps still apply; the launch-day steps do not. Toolfound publishes this checklist and is a row in its table.

Lead times and limits, platform by platform

The single most useful fact in a launch plan is how far ahead each platform needs you. Every value below is taken from the platform’s own help, pricing or submit page; a dash means the platform does not publish it and we will not guess. Rows dated 2026-08-09 come from our dataset review and have not had an individual check since.

T-14 days: book dates and remove blockers

Two weeks out is when every date-dependent step has to start. Do these nine first.

1. Choose your sequence. Community feedback first, then the calmer launch boards, then Show HN if the product is technical, then Product Hunt. The launch guide lays out the four-week version.
2. Submit to the long free queues today. AI directories with 30 to 90 day free queues will not land inside a two-week window unless you submit now or pay for speed.
3. Book your Toolfound date and verify the domain. Free dates sit at least 7 days ahead, and DNS changes take time to propagate. Unverified submissions are deleted after 14 days.
4. Create a personal Product Hunt account if you do not have one. New accounts wait one week before they can post. Company accounts cannot post, vote or comment.
5. Make the product usable without a barrier. Show HN asks for something people can try, ideally without sign-ups. Product Hunt states that products that only offer an email sign-up are not eligible for its homepage.
6. Put the product on its own domain. BetaList does not accept free hosting subdomains, and domain verification elsewhere assumes you control DNS.
7. Publish a privacy policy and terms page. Some directories, such as the Claude Connectors Directory, reject submissions without a privacy policy.
8. Publish your MCP server to the official registry, if you have one. Several downstream directories ingest it.
9. Decide where you will pay. Pay only where a fixed date matters. The launch directory cost guide lists every published price.

T-7 days: prepare the assets to each platform’s size

One week out, every listing asset should exist at the sizes the platforms state. These nine steps cover them.

10. Write a tagline in plain words. What it does and for whom. Check each form's character limit before you paste.
11. Write a description within 260 characters for Product Hunt.
12. Write a long description past 100 original words. Toolfound indexes a listing page only above that threshold; longer copy also gives every other directory something specific to show.
13. Make a square thumbnail at 240x240. A GIF must be under 3MB and animates only on hover.
14. Make at least 2 gallery images at 1270x760. Show the interface doing the actual thing.
15. Upload the demo video to YouTube and confirm it is not private. Product Hunt accepts YouTube links only, as full URLs; shortened links do not load.
16. Schedule the Product Hunt launch for your chosen day, or use Create Draft to review it with co-makers first. It goes live at 12:01 AM PST.
17. Write your first comment for Product Hunt and Show HN: what the product does, what was hard, what you want feedback on.
18. Line up ten people who will try it on the day. Ask them to try it, not to vote.

Launch day: be present, follow the rules

Launch day rewards presence: the platforms rank engagement, and both Product Hunt and Hacker News state that you must not ask anyone to upvote.

19. Be online when the listing goes live.
20. Answer every comment within the hour, in public.
21. Do not ask for upvotes or run a vote ring. Product Hunt says asking may drop the product in the ranks or remove it from the homepage; Hacker News says it is not ok.
22. Tell your existing users first, with one short message and the link.
23. Post Show HN on its own day with a title that begins "Show HN", not on the same day as another board.
24. Use tagged links for every channel so signups can be traced back.
25. Log visits, signups and paid conversions by source at the end of the day.

T+7 days: the evergreen layer and the recap

The launch day ends; the listings stay. These five steps turn one day into permanent coverage.

26. Batch-submit the free evergreen directories in one session. The free directories guide lists them.
27. Check the link on each live listing. Open the listing, inspect the outbound link and record its rel attribute. The dofollow guide shows how we verify.
28. Grow thin descriptions past 100 original words where a directory indexes by content.
29. Publish a recap with real numbers. Visitors, signups, paying users and where each came from.
30. Note the relaunch rules. Product Hunt asks for two months between launches plus a significant update; a product that was not featured can be resubmitted after six months.

How to get your first 100 users from a launch

Launch platforms deliver a spike of visitors, and 100 users is visitors multiplied by your own signup rate. That is the plain arithmetic, and it is why a single board rarely gets a new SaaS to 100 users on its own.

The audience figures platforms publish are self-reported and not independently verified: Uneed states 125,000 monthly visitors and 22,000 visitors sent to product sites per month, shared across every product it lists; BetaList states over 500,000 pageviews a month; There’s An AI For That states over 3.5 million monthly visitors. Those are platform totals, not what one launch receives.

What the arithmetic implies: if 1 in 50 visitors signs up, 100 users needs 5,000 visitors. Stacking platforms in sequence, plus the communities where your users already talk, is how products without an audience reach that number. Measure your real rate on the first board, then decide how much more traffic you need. Toolfound’s free waitlist conversion calculator does this math from your own counts.

How we know

Every lead time, size and limit above comes from the platform’s own help, pricing or submit page. On 2026-11-01 we re-read Product Hunt’s help centre (posting, access to post, scheduling, Create Draft, daily hunt limits, relaunch, featuring guidelines, unreleased products and upvote requests), the Show HN guidelines, Uneed’s pricing page, BetaList’s FAQ, Fazier’s submit page, Launching Next’s submit page and Toolfound’s own launch rules. Rows dated 2026-09-06 come from our verified dataset with evidence URLs. Audience numbers are labelled self-reported because no platform publishes an audited figure. Where a platform does not publish a value, the cell shows a dash.

Toolfound publishes this checklist and appears in the table with the same kind of facts as every other row. The rules we apply to ourselves are on the methodology page.

Common questions

Toolfound gives you a public queue date the moment you submit, a free permanent listing with a dofollow link, and a launch your agent can run over MCP: book a free date. Related guides: what launch directories cost · is Product Hunt worth it in 2026? · the complete launch guide.