You shipped the thing. You posted it. Then you refreshed the page for six hours and watched almost nothing happen.
Most founders learn the same lesson the hard way: one launch platform can't carry a product anymore. Product Hunt's front page belongs to teams with mailing lists and launch-day Slack armies. That's why the hunt for a decent product hunt alternative turned into its own cottage industry, with a long tail of directories promising traffic, backlinks, and attention.
Nick Launches sits in that long tail. Here's what it actually does.
Nick Launches at a Glance
Nick Launches is a weekly leaderboard directory for indie and AI products. Submission is free. Listings get a dofollow backlink. No badge is required on your own site, which already puts it ahead of a good chunk of its competition.
The board moves fast — 87 products launched in a single recent week across 37 categories. AI leads with 462 total listings, followed by Productivity at 406 and Developer Tools at 191. That distribution tells you exactly who shows up here.
Where to Launch Your Startup Now
Launch platforms fragmented, and the math changed with them
Five years ago the answer to where to launch your startup was one word. Now it's a spreadsheet. Product Hunt still generates the biggest single-day spike but the odds of catching it dropped sharply. Builders responded by spreading launches across dozens of smaller directories instead.
The real value isn't launch day
Here's the reframe most reviews skip. A directory listing rarely produces a traffic event. It produces a permanent indexed page pointing at your domain. Twenty of those compound. One doesn't.
Judged that way, the best product launch platforms aren't the ones with the biggest audience. They're the ones with genuine domain authority, a dofollow policy, and listing pages that stay indexed.
How Nick Launches Works
Submitting. You sign in, fill out the form, and pick up to three categories. The site claims under two minutes and that's roughly accurate if your logo and tagline are ready to paste.
The weekly reset. The leaderboard runs on calendar weeks with medals for the top three finishers. This matters more than it sounds. Product Hunt gives you 24 hours. A Thursday submission here still has days left to collect votes, which removes most of the penalty for launching at an awkward moment.
The backlink. This is the actual draw. The homepage advertises a DR 68 domain, though the site's own directory table lists it at 69. Small discrepancy. Pull the number yourself in Ahrefs before you build a strategy on it. Either figure is unusually strong for a listing that costs nothing.
Pros
- Free submission with a dofollow link and no badge requirement
- Weekly leaderboard resets give late submissions a fair shot at the top
- Public API and MCP endpoint let you automate the entire listing
- A 168-directory comparison database that's useful on its own
- Weekly recap posts give every product a second indexed mention
- Operator publishes hands-on reviews rather than scraped listings
Cons
- Audience skews AI and dev tools; consumer products see thinner traction
- 87 launches a week means listings scroll off the homepage quickly
- Upvoting requires sign-in, which suppresses casual engagement
- DR listed as 68 in one place and 69 in another — verify independently
- Featured placement pricing isn't visible without signing in first
- Builder traffic validates ideas better than it converts customers
Nick Launches Rating
★★★★☆ — 4.2 out of 5
Strong fundamentals for a free listing. The main drag is discoverability, since a crowded weekly board buries individual products fast.
Who Should Launch Here
If you're shipping an AI tool, a developer utility, or anything SEO-adjacent, this belongs on your list. The audience is native to your product and the link is worth having on its own merits.
If you're launching a consumer app and expecting signups, calibrate down. You'll get builders looking at your landing page. Builders are excellent for feedback and unreliable as customers.
Either way, treat this as one row in a twenty-directory launch sequence rather than the main event. That's the correct use of any platform in this category, Nick Launches included.
Verdict
Nick Launches won't replace Product Hunt. It isn't trying to. You get a free dofollow listing on an authoritative domain plus a weekly reset that rewards showing up. Worth ten minutes of any launch week.