Peerlist Launchpad: how to launch on a weekly cycle

Most launch guides are written for Product Hunt, where you get one day and one leaderboard. Peerlist works differently, and the difference is the point. You launch on a Monday, the week is the event, and nobody makes you wait six months to try again.

That makes it a good first launch for some solo builders and a poor one for others. So this guide covers the mechanics in the order you meet them, a week-by-week map of what to prepare, what a win is actually worth, and a plain comparison with Product Hunt so you can pick.

What is Peerlist Launchpad, and how does the weekly cycle work?

Peerlist is a professional network where builders show their work. Launchpad is the part of it where you put one of your projects in front of the community and collect feedback and early users. In Peerlist's introduction to Launchpad the launch window opens on Monday every week, and the Launchpad FAQ adds that the launch continues for a week.

Three rules from that FAQ shape how you play it. For the first two days, Monday and Tuesday, projects appear in random order so every launch gets equal exposure. After that, ranking comes from an aggregate score of upvotes, comments, views, link visits and overall traction. And only qualitative comments count, with upvotes and feedback from verified profiles weighted higher.

Launchpad pages are numbered by week, so you can see the current cycle and the past ones on the Peerlist Launchpad page. Read last week's board before you launch. It shows what a project that gets real feedback looks like, and what the top of the board does with its cover image and tagline.

Who can launch on Peerlist, and what is a complete profile?

Individuals can launch. Companies cannot. Peerlist's Launchpad rules and guidelines say only individual profiles are allowed to launch projects, the profile needs a valid name and a profile picture, and it must not represent a company. A launch that breaks this can be suspended.

There are five steps between you and a live launch. The first three happen on Peerlist before launch day, and the third is the one people trip on.

1. 01Create a Peerlist profile with a real name and photo

   Only individual profiles can launch. The profile needs a valid name and a profile picture and cannot represent a company. A launch from a company or non-personal profile is a listed reason for removal.

2. 02Verify the profile

   Peerlist's launch guide lists a verified profile as a prerequisite. Workplace verification is free and identity verification carries a small fee, so the workplace route is the cheaper one if you have a current employer or company email.

3. 03Add the project to your profile and take it to 100%

   Open the Work tab, click New project and fill in every required field: name, tagline, cover image, demo link and the rest. Only projects at 100% completion are eligible, and a launch that is not complete when Monday arrives fails.

4. 04Launch on Monday, or schedule the launch ahead

   Go to the Launchpad page on Monday, click Launch, pick the project from the list of eligible ones and confirm. If you will miss the Monday, open the project, click Launch and choose Schedule Launch for the coming week.

5. 05Work the week

   The launch runs for a week. Answer every comment, share the project link with people who actually want it, and ask for feedback instead of upvotes. Peerlist treats asking for upvotes as a rule violation.

Two details are easy to miss. The guide says you need a verified profile to launch, yet the verification page calls verification optional for building a profile. Both are true: you can have a profile without it, but you cannot launch without it. And the projects themselves can be almost anything you made. Peerlist lists coding projects, design projects and digital products such as ebooks, Notion templates and UI kits.

What to prepare, and when

Because the window opens on a Monday, the useful deadline is the Friday before. A project page at 100% takes an afternoon the first time, and finding out on Monday morning that a field is missing is how launches fail.

• Friday: verify the profile if you have not, finish every required field on the project and check the cover image and demo link actually load.
• Weekend: write the three replies you will give most often, such as what it does, who it is for and what is missing. Line up a handful of builders who want to try it. That is the part the Favors.dev launch calendar is for: founders in the founder marketing co-op earn points in the points economy by trying a product and leaving specific feedback.
• Monday: launch, then stay close to the page. The first comments set the tone, and a fast, specific reply invites a second comment.
• Tuesday to Sunday: reply to everything, post small updates as you fix what people report, and thank people by name. Qualitative comments are the part of the score you can influence.

Do not ask for upvotes. Peerlist says plainly to ask for feedback by commenting and sharing instead, and treats spam as a zero-tolerance issue: DMing people you do not know with launch links, over-sharing the link on Scroll, and replying under other people's posts to ask for votes. This is the same line Product Hunt draws, and our guide to what gets you banned on Product Hunt shows how far a coordinated ask can go wrong.

What is winning a Peerlist badge actually worth?

Less than the badge suggests, and more than nothing. Per Peerlist's FAQ, the top three projects are featured in its weekly emails and social channels and receive a special badge for the product. That is exposure to the Peerlist audience and a credential you can put on your own landing page.

The SEO question is where most roundups get loose. Peerlist's FAQ answers it directly: do all projects receive a backlink from Peerlist? No, only the top 5 projects of the week are awarded a backlink. One competing directory says the links are nofollow. Peerlist's documentation does not say, and I could not confirm it from the pages I could open, so I will not repeat it as fact. What is certain is that most launches get no backlink at all.

If links are your goal, there are cheaper routes. The startup directory backlink list ranks where links are worth the effort, and Peerlist's own entry sits in our launch directories atlas.

Peerlist vs Product Hunt: audience, cadence and the link question

Pick Peerlist when your product is for developers or designers, when you want a week instead of a day, or when you want to launch more than once. Pick Product Hunt when you want a wide tech audience and can bring a crowd on a single day. They are not exclusive, and the sensible order for many solo builders is a quiet Peerlist week first, then a Product Hunt launch with what you learned.

The Product Hunt column is general, because Product Hunt's pages block automated checking and I would rather not state its rules from memory. If you are weighing the two, our Product Hunt launch guide and the relaunch rules cover that side, and Product Hunt alternatives puts Peerlist next to the other places to launch. For where all of them sit in a submission order, start with the launch directories guide. And if BetaList is on your list as well, here is how BetaList submissions work now that they are paid.

Frequently asked questions