Favors.dev
A SaaS launch checklist should run across four phases — T-minus 2 weeks, T-minus 1 week, launch day, and the week after — and it should cover the one thing almost every template skips: not whether your product is ready, but whether a real crowd is going to show up. The boxes below are interactive. Tick them as you go; the page remembers nothing and judges nothing, so be honest with yourself.
I've read a stack of launch checklists, and most of them are quietly the same list: set up billing, finish QA, write the docs, wire the analytics, draft the email. All necessary. All about product readiness. None of them answer the question that actually decides launch day — who is going to be there? A launch amplifies whatever base you bring to it. Bring nobody, and a flawless launch amplifies nothing. This checklist fixes that gap.
How to use this checklist
Work it top to bottom, starting two weeks out. The boxes are real checkboxes — click them. Each phase ends with prose explaining the non-obvious calls, because a checklist without the reasoning behind it just teaches you to cargo-cult someone else's launch. If you're compressing into one frantic week, do the T-minus 1 week list and steal what you can from T-minus 2 weeks — but know that the part you'll shortchange is crowd-building, which is the part that matters most.
One framing to carry through all four phases: your product can be ready in a weekend, but your distribution can't. That asymmetry is the whole reason launches fail with the product working perfectly.
T-minus 2 weeks: the base and the crowd
Two weeks out, your job is to lock the fixed decisions and start the slow things — claiming queue-gated directory spots and, above all, recruiting the people who'll show up. Everything here has a lead time, which is exactly why it can't wait until launch week.
Two of these carry more weight than the rest. Claiming your directory spots early matters because the good ones have a queue: a free BetaList listing can sit two to four months before it runs, and the paid tier (now around $129, up from $99 as of April 2026) jumps you forward — alongside free community launches on Product Hunt Upcoming, Indie Hackers, and the relevant subreddits (FlowJam; awesome-directories, 2026; prices are tiered and move, so check before you pay). And recruiting a real crowd is the box every other checklist omits — so it gets its own section at the end.
T-minus 1 week: assets, dry runs, and your list
One week out, you're building the things people see and pressure-testing the things that break. The theme is rehearsal: nothing on launch day should be happening for the first time.
The dry run is the box people skip and regret. Open a fresh browser, sign up as a stranger, and time how long it takes to reach the moment the product becomes obviously useful. If that takes more than a minute or two, fix the onboarding before you fix anything else — launch-day traffic is the least forgiving audience you'll ever send through your funnel, and a confusing first run turns a hard-won visitor into a bounce.
Launch day: an hour-by-hour checklist
On launch day, your job is to be in the comments, not in the code. The single highest-leverage thing you can do is reply to every person who engages in the first two hours — that window disproportionately sets your ranking on most launch platforms, and a maker who answers personally outperforms one who posts and disappears.
Notice the last box, because it's a temptation worth naming. Plenty of guides still whisper "line up five friends to upvote in the first hour." Don't. Coordinated votes from people who never used your product are precisely what launch platforms detect and throttle — and the penalty is worse than the cold start you were trying to avoid. The legitimate version of arriving with a crowd is arriving with a realone. (For the platform specifics, here's how to launch on Product Hunt in 2026.)
The week after: the part everyone skips
The week after launch is where most of the durable value is actually captured — and it's the page everyone tears off the checklist. The spike fades fast; what you do in the following days decides whether it leaves anything behind.
The highest-return box here is converting launch-day goodwill into permanent assetswhile it's warm. The new users who were delighted today will not remember to review you next month — ask now. Those reviews and testimonials do double duty in 2026: they're social proof for the next visitor, and they're the kind of signal answer engines disproportionately cite. ChatGPT and Perplexity lean heavily on reviews, community discussion, and named-author content (Similarweb; 5W State of AI Citations 2026), so the proof you bank this week is also how your product gets named inside an AI answer later. A launch that ends in a pile of honest reviews keeps paying out long after the 48-hour spike is gone.
The crowd & support checklist
Here's the section no other launch checklist ships, and the reason most launches underperform: the crowd. You can tick every product-readiness box and still launch into silence, because none of those boxes asked who's in your corner. Before launch day, you want this list true:
Why does this matter so much? Because the difference between a launch that climbs and one that stalls is almost never the product — it's whether anyone's there in the first two hours. Side by side:
| On launch day | Launch cold | Launch with a crowd |
|---|---|---|
| First 2 hours | Crickets; the ranking stalls before it starts | Real comments and votes; the ranking climbs |
| Social proof | Zero reviews, no testimonials to point to | Honest reviews you can quote for months |
| After 48 hours | The spike fades to nothing | New users, backlinks, and favors to repay |
| AI visibility | Nothing for answer engines to cite | Reviews and mentions that feed AI answers |
The honest problem is that a real crowd is hard to assemble when you have no audience — and the usual fix, an ad-hoc "support my launch" group chat, collapses every time. The askers outnumber the givers, the givers burn out, the group goes quiet. Goodwill doesn't scale unless it's metered. This is the same distribution problem behind getting your first 100 users: you need access to an audience you don't own, and the most reliable source is other founders who each bring a real account, a credible voice, and a genuine reason to help.
That's the exact gap Favors.dev was built to close. It's a marketing co-op for founders where reciprocity runs on a points economy instead of goodwill: you earn points by doing verified marketing favors for other founders, and you spend them to get the same help back. You can't spend what you haven't earned, so the crowd that turns up on your launch day has genuinely engaged — every favor is verified before points move. Set your date on the launch calendar and rally that crowd, and the last box on this checklist — the one you can't tick alone — finally checks itself.
Frequently asked questions
What should be on a SaaS launch checklist?
A SaaS launch checklist should cover four phases, not one. T-minus 2 weeks: lock the date, nail positioning, set up signup/activation analytics, claim your directory spots, and recruit a real crowd. T-minus 1 week: build launch assets, draft the email, dry-run signup and billing, and confirm support shifts. Launch day: an hour-by-hour script that front-loads replying to every comment in the first two hours. The week after: convert goodwill into reviews, testimonials, and a recap post. Most templates only cover product readiness — the part that decides whether you launch to a crowd or to silence is the part they skip.
How far in advance should you prepare for a product launch?
Start about two weeks out for a solo founder, and ideally longer if you're building the audience from scratch. Two weeks is enough to lock the date, claim directory spots that have a queue (Product Hunt Upcoming, BetaList), prepare assets, and — most importantly — recruit a crowd of people who've actually used the product. You can compress it to one intense week if you must, but you'll miss the crowd-building that makes the single biggest difference on the day. The product can be ready in a weekend; the distribution can't.
What should you do on launch day?
Go live, then spend launch day in the comments, not in the code. The first two hours matter most: reply personally to every comment and DM, because engagement in that window sets your ranking on most platforms. Mid-morning, share in the communities where you've already been useful for weeks. Midday, post a genuine progress update. All day, keep one eye on the signup and billing flow — a broken signup is the only true emergency. In the evening, thank every supporter by name and ask your happiest new users for an honest review. The one thing not to do is manufacture upvotes from people who never used the product.
Why do product launches fail even with a perfect checklist?
Because most checklists are about product readiness, not distribution. You can tick every box for billing, QA, analytics, and assets and still launch to an empty room, because the checklist never asked the only question that decides the day: who is actually going to show up? A launch amplifies whatever base you bring to it. Bring a real crowd and it climbs; bring nobody and a flawless launch amplifies nothing. The missing box on almost every template is the crowd-and-support list.
How do you get a crowd for your launch day?
You earn one before you need it by helping other founders first. A real crowd isn't friends pressured into upvoting — that's exactly what platforms detect and throttle. It's founders who genuinely tried your product and support it because they mean it. The reliable way to assemble that crowd with no audience is reciprocity: do verified marketing favors for other founders for a few weeks, bank the goodwill, then call it in on launch day. On Favors.dev that exchange is metered by a points economy, so the people who show up have actually engaged — every favor is verified before points move.