One week, one board
Every product on launches.app launches into a week, and the week is the unit everything is measured by. A launch is live for seven days, ranked against the other launches of that same week, and then the week closes and its results are final.1
That one decision shapes the rest. A launch that goes live on Monday competes with exactly the same set of products on Thursday as it did on Monday morning. Nobody gets ahead by posting at midnight, and nobody is buried because a busier day came along after them. A closed week can also be read later as a record: these are the products that shipped in that week, in the order people backed them.
It also means the board has a fixed size. Each week takes 50 free launches from the , so a week's board stays short enough for people to read to the end. If you're used to launch sites where a product scrolls out of view within hours, this is the main difference to plan around: you have a week, not a morning.
Before the week: the queue
When you submit, your launch goes into the next week that has a free spot. If the coming week is full, it goes into the one after, and so on. Your submissions page always shows which Monday that is, so you can plan your own announcement around it.
Nothing is locked while you wait. You can keep editing the tagline, the description, the screenshots and the list of makers until the launch goes live, and you can keep improving them afterwards too. Waiting a week or two is often useful: it's time to get the first screenshot right and to line up the people who said they'd support you.
If a date matters, say a press day, a conference talk or a release you've already announced, a books the week you choose instead. Picks come from their own 10 spots a week, on top of the free ones, so buying one never pushes a free launch back. A pick can also join the week that's running now, as long as enough of it is left to be worth joining.2 The current options are on the pricing page.
Monday: going live
At 00:00 on Monday the new week opens, and every launch booked into it goes live at the same moment. There's no running order within the week and no advantage to being first awake. Each launch gets its page, its place on the board and an email to its makers saying it's live, with the link to share.
The board starts as a level field. Launches are ordered by votes, and on Monday morning they're all close to zero, so the first hours matter less than they do on a daily list. What counts is how the whole week goes. If you can only do one thing on Monday, share the launch page with the people most likely to care, and let the rest of the week build from there.
During the week: votes
Anyone with an account can vote once per launch, and can take that vote back while the week is open. The board updates as votes arrive, so you can watch your launch move. At the halfway point, on Wednesday, every maker gets a short email with their current rank and how many votes would move them past the launch above. It's a natural moment to remind your own audience before the weekend.
Votes are the only thing that ranks a launch. Sponsored cards sit between launches but never get votes or a rank, and a paid pick is ranked exactly like a free launch. We explain why we hold that line in why we rank by votes only.
What helps during the week
- Share the launch page itself, not just your homepage. It's where people can vote and leave a comment.
- Answer comments as they come in. Questions from strangers are some of the most useful feedback you'll get.
- Use the midweek email as a prompt. It tells you exactly how close the next place is.
- Keep the page current. You can still fix a screenshot or sharpen a line while you're live.
What doesn't help
- Asking people to create accounts just to vote. One vote from someone who actually tried the product is worth more to you than several from people who didn't.
- Posting the link in every community you belong to at once. Pick the places where your product genuinely fits.
- Rewriting the whole page halfway through the week. Small fixes are fine; a different product description confuses people who've already seen it.
Sunday night: the result
When Sunday ends at 23:59 UTC, the week closes. Votes stop, the ranking is fixed and the week moves into the exactly as it finished.3 On Monday morning every maker gets an email with their final rank. Every launch gets a badge it can put on its own site, and the top three get a medal on the badge and on their launch page.
The weekly newsletter goes out the same Monday with the previous week's top launches, and the next week's board opens. That handover is the whole rhythm of the site: one week closes, the next opens, and the closed one stays readable.
After the week
A week is a moment, not the end of your launch page. The page stays up with its rank, its comments and its link, it keeps its place in its categories, and anyone can find it through the archive or through search. Many of the people who discover a product do so long after its week, so it's worth keeping the page accurate as the product changes.
If you ship something substantial later, you can launch the same product again after a gap, and the people who backed you the first time can hear about it. When to relaunch, and what counts as new covers how that works and how to tell whether an update is worth it.