Show HN: I am Building a Producthunt alternative

[muhammadusman]

Don't use the term "hunt" in the name, to me it just screams "dupe" instead of something unique. Go the route of improving what PH has and adding things that are missing.

Some ideas: - Users should be able to update their post to some extent.

- There's no "product page" in your app, build something where I can see people commenting, reacting, and maybe even sharing their own screenshots of it because that's something PH does pretty well but can be improved.

- "LAUNCHES WORTH YOUR SCROLL" sounds kinda cringe, change to something like "Find the next best thing" or make it random on load and have a few less in your face versions of it. Reddit has "homepage of the internet" which seems appropriate. You can have "have you launched yet?", "find the next best thing", "what's trending today"...etc

I have more ideas, feel free to message me or drop a way to contact you if you'd like more feedback :)

[aardvark179]

Maybe not, “next best thing,” I don’t know about American English but in British English next best means second best.

[sam1r]

>>> Don't use the term "hunt" in the name, to me it just screams "dupe" instead of something unique. Go the route of improving what PH has and adding things that are missing.

Here's additionally a solution versus just criticism^^:

How about PoshProduct. ProductPower.

The word product screams attention to both product hunt and ProductPower users. Just make the emoji bolt your logo. Product Power! Be the first to know.

Good luck! This is awesome.

[dowager_dan99]

The thing that jumped out to me more the "hunt" word was "lie" - not great connotations. I assume it's supposed to be more like "ly"?

[jperras]

> Don't use the term "hunt" in the name, to me it just screams "dupe" instead of something unique. > [...] > You can have "have you launched yet?", "find the next best thing", "what's trending today"...etc

OP: I may or may not be in possession of hasitlaunched dot com, should you be interested in purchasing it…

[malfist]

It really is an unfortunate name. How do you pronounce it, hunt lie? Hunt Lee? I'm not sure, but my first impression was it was a portmanteau of hunt and lie, which wouldn't be something I'd want my startup to be associated with

[heyarviind2]

Hey thank you so much for the feedback. I want to hear more from you.

Can we connect on Twitter/x: @heyarviind?

[6510]

Get rid of it and make a link called "about" then do the boring thing and explain what is going on, why, how much, when, who? wtf?

[adamtaylor_13]

“Clever doesn’t sell, clarity does.”

[Brajeshwar]

When one builds a Product Hunt (PH) alternative, one needs to remember that PH succeeded because of Ryan Hoover. Just as with any new Startup App/Website of that time, it was not fancy, interesting or likable at all. Ryan’s shouts, marketing, and his everything everywhere all at once presence made PH. When I think of PH, I remember his avatar (profile picture); that 'P' reminds me more of Pinterest than PH.

PH is a successful directory-listing-ish website, there is always a limit to its success. Ryan, being a super smart founder, realizes that and moves out at the perfect time at its super-high hype cycle.

All PH-esque clones can focus on specific niches and become good lifestyle businesses. Like other business ideas, shred apart Craigslist and build PH of them.

[ndjdjddjsjj]

Discovery plays are usually a tarpit idea though. Supply of founders high. Supply of customers low.

It is the equivalent of queuing up for an X-factor (or whatever they call it these days) audition, aiming to be the next One Direction. Someone will win of course which makes it seem possible.

Find the short queues! If someone says "why the fuck you interested in that" it might be a good sign.

[rrhoover]

Appreciate that. :)

We also entered the market at the right time. 2013 was very optimistic as mobile hit mainstream and barriers to build lowered. We’re entering a similar phase with AI today.

[nadermx]

If I remember correctly it started as an email list too, like Craig's list, before it needed a site.

[barlog]

RH and chrismessina.me yay.

[IgorPartola]

What problem does PH solve/what problem would this solve?

Honestly PH always felt to me like a time waster. “Oh look at this idea. Neat. Next.”

Now, a website where I can type in the problem I am having and it suggests solutions (with a mix of self hosted vs commercial products depending on my settings) would be super useful. For example: “I want to organize a library full of old photos that don’t have metadata” or “I want a cheap online backup solution with support for Linux servers” or “I want to automate sending personalized-feeling birthday cards to people I know professionally”.

[breadwinner]

PH is a website that program managers from big companies such as Microsoft and Google go to get ideas for new features.

I recommend against post anything to PH unless you have patents, or a big marketing budget, if not your idea will just be copied by big companies before you can get the word out about your product.

[asdf6969]

It’s a way for developers to sell products to each other in a big circle without actually producing anything

[agnishom]

"Oh look at this idea. Neat. Next."

That's exactly what HackerRank feels like. Same with "normal" social media like Reddit or Twitter

[anonzzzies]

It can get you started, it did for many. It seems kind of crappy these days but it still works as a channel to get your product out.

[anonzzzies]

I would like a startups-which-are-not-shallow-llm-wrappers.com. Basically don't allow any product that you go to and shows you a chatbox 'type to create X'. It will be eaten tomorrow by openai, anthropic etc, so there is no product there; yet all is infested with these on sites like PH.

[blakeburch]

Glad to see someone working on an alternative!

Personal note - I used to be a pretty frequent user of ProductHunt. Some folks I worked with jokingly called me the SaaS King. If you had a problem, I knew of 3 tools to potentially solve it.

The biggest reason why I stopped using ProductHunt was because people opted to submit and upvote low quality "list of X" aggregation services and minor updates, not real products. Hopefully you've thought about how to refine the curation.

Also, agreed with the feedback from muhammadusman about having a product page. Right now, it's just a list of links with synopsis - not enough to intrigue me to explore further.

[klntsky]

Product hunt clones should all launch on each other

[crowcroft]

We need to go meta and build a Product Hunt clone focussed on being the best Product Hunt clone directory.

[stevekemp]

ProductHunt has been gamed to the extent that it's no longer in any way real - it's just who can spam the most.

What will stop your site from the same fate?

[heyarviind2]

I want to take an approach of Instagram algorithm, no matter what votes you have you will see all the products once every visit.

[triyambakam]

How is the name supposed to be pronounced? It looks like the two English words hunt and lie which doesn't sound very nice.

[codazoda]

I also read it as “hunt lie” instead of “hunt lee” FWIW.

[OJFord]

Fwiw it parsed to me as 'Hun tile', certainly no better.

If it's meant to be hunt-lee per sibling comment then 'huntly' (with the domain hunt.ly) is by far the established (still-annoying) way to do that.

[Brajeshwar]

I think he meant Huntly, but unfortunately, we Indians have our own idiosyncratic way with English. The founder/builder is Indian (I'm Indian, and I know).

[heyarviind2]

it is pronounced as hunt-lee

https://www.names-hub.com/name/huntlie

[uwemaurer]

I tried to post my side project (https://awesome.facts.dev/) but nothing happened when I clicked 'Submit'.

I see that a POST to https://huntlie.com/api/products returns Server Error 500 {error: "Failed to create record."}

I hope it helps!

[faizmokh]

Not gonna lie. It kinda feels like the site was generated by AI with minimal modifications. Hence, it made me wonder how long it will last.

[that_guy_iain]

There are so many product hunt alternatives that it's hard to keep track. There are literally services to go around and list you on all of the alternatives. I believe it's about 60+.

The problem with ProductHunt is that it's basically the glory days are behind it. If you want to have a successful ProductHunt launch the key is simple, wait until you're established and then send an email to all your customers to upvote you.

People focus so much on having a good ProductHunt launch like it'll make a difference. They go around begging everyone they know and spamming everyone they don't know asking for an upvote. They'll spend weeks focusing on this product hunt launch and overall get less traffic than they would from posting on here with Show HN and less traffic than they would get from posting on the right subreddits.

Product Hunt and similar launch sites are just focusing don't he false hope that new founders have that the launch matters.

[rukshn]

The initial PH was more like the SHOW HN, turned into a website, filled with people who are geuninly buidlding things and showing things.

Then marketers came, and the whole thing became a place where people just game, where people that I were preparing for weeks for PH launch, sending reminders for people to vote and try to get to the top. It became a place where people wanted to sell you something rather than people who share what they build.

Looking at this website, I feel like it's already a place where it's more about selling, and not a PH alternative. Black Friday deals, promoted items, it may not be a place of gamification, but still it's more about selling.

I would love to se a place where there is old PH. But I guess it will forever be Show HN

[thehadiahmadi]

Hi, I liked the idea. There are some issues, maybe these are in your todo list, but I want to tell you based on my usage.

1. there is no difference before and after login. (maybe login is unsuccessful) 2. I cannot edit/delete my submitted project. 3. No search for projects. 4. No Dark mode :)

[nhatcher]

There was a slightly similar product some days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41860810

[rootsudo]

I don't want to be a debbie downer, but I'm seeing this sort of post often now on HN. If not bimonthly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41714345

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41867294

[olegp]

Congrats on launching! I just submitted https://www.freeats.com

I liked the submission flow, it was nice and simple. The only issue is that at the end of the process I got a page that looked like it was broken, so had to manually navigate to the main page.

[heyarviind2]

sorry about that, i am fixing it

[Pikamander2]

Looks like the site is broken? The login feature doesn't work, and trying to post a product gives a 500 error.

{message: 'Request failed with status code 500', name: 'AxiosError', code: 'ERR_BAD_RESPONSE', config: {…}, request: XMLHttpRequest, …}

[davidedicillo]

I tried to add a product (https://platformchecker.com), and initially, the process wasn't clear. The icon isn't marked as mandatory (it is) and the discount code is (it is not).

[seanw265]

I received a 500 error when attempting to submit a product.

I also attempted to log in (with Google) and it doesn't seem to have taken. I still see the "Login" button at the top of the page.

I kind of regret giving you my data via Sign in with Google now.

[supertofu]

When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Re: the black visit buttons. Save black for the top 3 featured, and make the rest a milder color. It's cognitively fatiguing to have a giant list of primary buttons.