Free Launch Checklist 2026: 52 Steps in Eight Phases, Each With the Reason

How is this checklist different, and how should you use it?

Plenty of checklists tell you to “build a landing page” and “post on social media”. This one is shaped by the constraints of the free route, which our state of free launch platforms page records: some places queue free launches for weeks, some want a badge or votes first, one asks for your own domain, and Show HN has rules that rule out most announcements. Steps that depend on those facts are placed where they have to happen, and the reason is stated so you can drop a step that does not apply to your product.

It complements, not replaces, the shorter product launch checklist guide and the focused lists for launch day, pre-launch and post-launch. Read the timeline first, copy the steps into your own tracker, and mark each as done, skipped with a reason, or not applicable.

When does each phase have to start?

If you have less time, the launch in a weekend and launch in seven days playbooks compress this. Skip the queue steps in phase 5 and rely on places with no wait.

Phase 1: What do you decide before you write a word?

1. Write the one-sentence job of the product. Every listing field asks for it, in a different length.
2. Name the one person it is for. A listing aimed at everyone persuades no one, and the audience decides which places fit.
3. Search for the incumbents and the neighbours. You will be compared on every board, so know the comparison before a commenter makes it.
4. Choose the single main action. A first note saved, a first booking, a confirmed subscription: it is the number your launch is judged by.
5. Set an hours budget. The launch time budget template stops replies being the first thing cut.
6. Check you control a real domain. BetaList’s help page says it does not accept free hosting subdomains or direct app store links, and a domain is also something you can move later.

Phase 2: What must the product do before a stranger arrives?

1. Let a stranger reach the main action without help. Ask someone who has never seen it to try, and stay silent while they do.
2. Remove the sign-up wall in front of the first try, where you can. Show HN’s guidelines ask for something people can try ideally without sign-ups or emails, and say you get more feedback that way.
3. Test on a clean browser profile and a phone. Your own logged-in browser hides broken first runs.
4. Give errors and empty states a sentence. A blank screen after the first click is the most common way a visitor decides it is broken.
5. Publish a privacy note and a contact route if you collect anything. Cautious visitors look for both, and several stores ask for privacy details.
6. Make sure the address still works with a query string. BetaList’s guide says links that break when parameters are added are a common fault, and tagged links need them.
7. Install analytics and fire a test event for the main action. Finding out on launch day that it does not count loses the data you came for.
8. Keep a way to ship a fix within hours. Launch-day bugs are found in public, and a fast fix is something you can mention in a reply.

Phase 3: What do you write and design?

1. Write a headline that says what it does and for whom. Visitors decide in seconds; clear beats clever, as BetaList’s own guide says about pitches.
2. Write three lengths of the pitch: 30, 75 and 100 characters. The strictest limits we found run from 30 for a store app name to 75 for a BetaList pitch and 100 for a Shopify introduction. See the launch cheat sheet.
3. Write two descriptions, one of about 500 and one of about 700 characters. Stores and directories cap them near those figures, and a prepared version avoids a rushed cut.
4. Write one long description of up to 2,500 characters. Launching Next’s form allows that much, and a long version is the base for the short ones.
5. Capture a master set of screenshots. The launch platform screenshot sizes page lists ratios to crop to.
6. Export a square 1024 pixel icon with room around the mark. Stores ask for sizes from 128 up to 1024, per the logo and icon specs.
7. Make a share image and set Open Graph tags. The preview is often the first thing people see of your link; see the Open Graph image specs.
8. State the price, or say it is free, near the top. “How much is it” is a question every visitor has, and a missing answer reads as a trap.

Phase 4: How will you know what worked?

Measurement is cheap to set up before launch and impossible to recreate afterwards. These four steps are quick once the tag scheme exists.

1. Build the tag sheet. One row per place, using the scheme in the UTM tagging guide.
2. Name the main-action event in your analytics. The same word on the sheet and in the tool avoids a mismatch later.
3. Open the results sheet with today’s zeros. A baseline makes day-seven numbers mean something.
4. Decide in advance what would make you change the headline. A rule such as “if most visits leave without the main action” stops you re-writing at random.

Phase 5: Which places do you choose, and in what order?

1. Shortlist three or four places by audience. Fifteen submissions you cannot follow up lose to four you can answer. The launch platform comparison table helps.
2. Apply to the free queues first. A wait of 50 days or more is only useful if the clock starts early.
3. Read each platform’s own rules page for cost, thresholds and link treatment. Pricing and terms change, and a cell on any comparison page can be out of date.
4. Decide about badges. Some free routes want one on your site; put it in the page only if you are comfortable doing so.
5. Prepare a Show HN only if the product can be tried at once. Its guidelines exclude landing pages, newsletters and sign-up pages, and they ask you to be there to discuss.
6. Read each community’s self-promotion rule. Lobsters, for example, describes a rule of thumb of under a quarter of your stories and comments being self-promotion, and bars new members from it for 70 days.
7. Draft the first comment you will leave under each post. It explains why you built it and what you want to learn.
8. Line up a few real people to try it and say what they find. Ask for honest feedback, not votes; Show HN says asking friends to upvote or comment is not ok.

When you are choosing between boards, the where to launch a side project guide orders them by product, and the free launch directories list names the places.

Phase 6: What happens on launch day?

1. Publish where there is no queue first. Launch your product free on this board: one emailed link publishes it, and until you press Publish the page it opens lets you fix the draft.
2. Verify the live page from a phone. The emailed link makes it public, and the page is the first thing every later post links to.
3. Post in one community at a time. You can only reply well to one thread at once.
4. Leave the prepared first comment within minutes. Early context shapes the thread.
5. Reply to every comment, including the critical ones. An answer is a public record that someone is home.
6. Fix what breaks and say so in the thread. A fast, visible fix is worth more than a polished post.
7. Screenshot the day’s numbers at the end. Platforms rotate their pages, and you will want the record.

Phase 7 and 8: What do you do in the week and month after?

1. Update the sheet every evening. A week of small daily entries beats one long evening of reconstruction.
2. Sort feedback into bug, confusion, idea and praise. Count themes; three people with the same question is the finding.
3. Thank people and follow up with those who tried it. Private messages to engaged users become your first testers.
4. Ship one visible fix and mention it where the feedback came from. It shows the feedback was read.
5. Check return visits at day seven. It tells you if the product is worth a second look, per the launch metrics page.
6. Do not copy one post into ten places. Communities notice, and several have rules against it.
7. Compare the sheet against your hours. Stop the activity that took the most time and brought nothing.
8. Update every listing with what you learned. Here a published launch is final and corrections go to support; check how editing works on the others.
9. Relaunch only with something new. This board does not allow the same site to launch again within seven days, and other places have their own rules.
10. Write a short retrospective. One page: what worked, what did not, what to change. The post-launch checklist has a longer version.
11. Decide the next step: iterate, widen or stop. A decision made from the sheet beats one made from mood.

When the sheet says the product has legs, the next job is the next build or the next feature. The productivity ideas on the board are a good place to look for a second product, and the thirty-day launch plan shows how a month of follow-up fits together.