Where to promote an indie product in 2026: 18 places that still send traffic

Most launch lists are hundreds of directories long and nobody has checked whether any of them send a visitor. This one is shorter. Eighteen places, grouped by what they are, with what each costs and who it suits. It includes our own board, ADPO, at the end; we have tried to be as plain about that entry as the rest.

Launch platforms

Places built around a launch day. Traffic spikes, then fades; the point is the spike and whatever comes from being seen by the people who watch these.

1. Product Hunt — still the biggest launch audience. Free. Worth a proper launch: a hunter or your own account, a maker comment, a demo, and a day of replying to every comment. Weekdays are more competitive than weekends; a top-five finish on a quiet day beats tenth on a busy one.
2. Hacker News (Show HN) — free, unpredictable, and the best-quality traffic on this list when it works. Post a plain title starting with “Show HN:”, explain the technical bit in the first comment, and do not ask friends to upvote. Developer tools and genuinely novel things do best.
3. BetaList — for products that are pre-launch or in beta. Free listing with a queue; a paid option skips it. Small but targeted early-adopter audience.
4. Uneed — a daily launch board with a friendlier, smaller crowd than Product Hunt. Free, with paid options to skip the wait. Good for a second launch a few weeks after the first.
5. MicroLaunch — monthly launch cohorts for small products. Free. Suits solo founders and side projects that would be lost on the larger platforms.
6. Fazier — daily launches with badges and a monthly ranking. Free, paid featured slots. Another useful second or third launch.
7. Peerlist Launchpad — weekly launches inside a professional network for builders. Free. Works best if you already keep a Peerlist profile.
8. Dev Hunt — a launch board specifically for developer tools. Free and open-source. Skip it if your product is not for developers.
9. Tiny Startups — a newsletter and directory for small products and small teams. Free listing. Good fit for anything you would describe as “tiny” without embarrassment.

Communities

Where a post is a conversation, not a listing. These reward showing up regularly more than showing up once.

10. Indie Hackers — post the product, but more usefully post the numbers and the story. The forum notices founders who share revenue, mistakes and what they tried; a bare launch post gets little.
11. Reddit (r/SideProject, r/startups, r/InternetIsBeautiful, and your niche) — free, and each subreddit has its own rules on self-promotion, so read them. r/SideProject is the most tolerant of “I built this”; niche subreddits convert best if you are honest that you made the thing.
12. X, LinkedIn, Bluesky and Threads — building in public. Free, slow, and the only entry here that compounds. A launch post to an audience you have spent months building outperforms almost everything else on this list.
13. Discord and Slack communities in your niche — most have a #show-your-work or #launches channel. Free. Ask before posting; the ones that welcome it are worth more than the ones that tolerate it.

Directories

Evergreen listings people find while comparing tools. Slow to build, but they keep sending a trickle long after launch day.

14. AlternativeTo — list your product as an alternative to the incumbent it replaces. Free. People arrive here already looking for a switch, which is the best intent you can ask for.
15. SaaSHub — similar model, focused on software; free listing with paid promotion. Also worth claiming the comparison pages it generates for your product.
16. G2 and Capterra — for B2B products with paying customers. Free to list; reviews take work to collect but the pages carry weight with buyers who need to justify a purchase.
17. There’s An AI For That and Futurepedia — the two large AI product directories. Free with paid fast-track options. If your product is AI-adjacent, both are expected; if it is not, skip them.

Pay-to-takeover boards

New in 2026. A public board where the screens go to whoever has paid the most: submit a URL, pay at least $5, and pay $1 more than the holder to take their place. The appeal is that the position is bought openly rather than earned through upvotes, and everyone can see what it cost.

18. ADPO — ours. From $5, no decay, nothing expires, on a 3D city square: #1 takes over the hero screens, the top 25 are on the boards, everyone is on the ranked panel and in the ticker. Each listing gets its own page with public click counts, and the board is young, which is the honest reason a screen currently costs little. How it works · Launch your ADPO.

What to do with this list

• Do not launch everywhere on the same day. Stagger: Product Hunt or Show HN first, the smaller launch boards over the following weeks, directories whenever you have an hour.
• Prepare one kit and reuse it. A one-line description, a two-paragraph description, an icon, three screenshots, a 30-second video. Every entry above asks for a subset of these.
• Tag your links. Add utm_source to every URL you submit (ADPO adds it for you) so that a month later you know which of the eighteen actually sent someone.
• Reply. On every one of these, the founders who answer comments get more from it than the ones who post and leave.