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Show HN: I am Building a Producthunt alternative

huntlie.com

159 pointsheyarviind2117 comments

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 :)

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

Can we connect on Twitter/x: @heyarviind?

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

At least in American English “next to best” would mean second whereas “next best thing” means something likely to be the best thing in the near future and it’s a very common idiom.

i am american and think "next best thing" means second best. maybe "next big thing" would be better but is a bit generic

How about “next favourite thing”

Do you not have sentence structures along the line of "I wanted the premium model but it was out of my budget so I went for the next best thing"?

I get we're trying to go for "next [best thing]" but yeah I (also UK) read it as "[next best] thing" and can't think of any examples where I'd read it as the former

I think you might be referring to the common american english idiom "next big thing", as "next best thing" means 2nd best in american english as well.

Note that "next bigGEST thing" also means the 2nd biggest thing.

This is the common usage in my experience (US).

To jump in on the confusion, I'm American and have seen it used both ways, completely dependent on context. When I read the original comment I understood it as 'next thing that we all think is best' rather than 'second best.'

But after reading the comments and thinking on it, I realize it's probably used more often in the context of 'second best.'

Another American here -- never heard "next best" meaning anything other than second-best to what you're currently looking at.

"Next big thing" is commonly used and unambiguously means what's intended here.

In American English "next best thing" means second best. It is used to suggest an alternative when you can't get what you want. "Don't have Coke, maybe get a Pepsi, it's the next best thing."

"Next big thing" means upcoming good thing.

I've seen it used both ways, "next best thing" is one of those phrases at least in American English that is highly context-dependent.

Which still makes it a bad choice for marketing copy.

They want something that isn't likely to be misinterpreted, and I've never seen that phrase used to mean "next big thing", only "second best".

As an American, I can't recall "The next best thing" ever meaning "second best' but rather the up and coming latest and greatest thing.

Big country though, could be a regional thing.

i guess it's somewhat ambiguous here, but "next-best" would be second-best, while "next best" means "future best"

I immediately got it. Understanding that the typical reader in this space is generally atypical “find the next best thing” would likely mean "look here to find the thing that's better than the current best." I guess it largely depends on who your audience is.

It's not "(next best) thing", it's "next (best thing)". As in the best thing that is coming up next. Not the thing that is next-best.

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

huntle would be better, or relativelyhuntled.com https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/c5ab6ff2-0439-4ae2-8782-08830bf...

“Clever doesn’t sell, clarity does.”

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?

>>> 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.

> 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…

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"?

That was the first thing I noticed too.

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.

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

Holy D*n. I think you are correct, and I was one of the early subscribers subscribed via Twitter Login (only option or something like that).

Holy Dickin'?

`D x n` multi-dimensionality reference?

Thank you!

It started out on a service called Linkydink https://medium.com/@rrhoover/the-wisdom-of-the-20-minute-sta...

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.

In the case of my suggestion, it is not to win, more of a play to be present and seen. Monetize via endorsement (paid listings) or ads. If you have like 10s of them, less than 10% have to attract just above average to be self-sustaining.

RH and chrismessina.me yay.

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.

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”.

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.

Do you have any examples of this happening? How many products on Product Hunt do you think are patent-able?

My startup was posted on PH, and many years later we're quite successful. We had $0 budget and it was just me at the time, and it worked out wonderfully.

That's a pretty cynical view....besides, big companies would take months/years to to copy an idea - even if it's a good one - and by then the market has moved.

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

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

then what keeps you here I'm curious

you misunderstand. People actually _like_ this feeling.

Occasionally people post here about stuff aside from making money, which is nice

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

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.

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.

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.

Product hunt clones should all launch on each other

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

Product Rat King

Done:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/product-hunt/alternativ...

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?

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

Why do you think that's a good idea?

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

it is pronounced as hunt-lee

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

It really isn't though. Any native English speaker is going to see Hunt Lie.

Confirmed. I immediately read “hunt lie.”

In the context of discovering brand-new companies, it does come across as somewhat ironic.

Maybe consider the "Kodak recipe" for an alternative? [1]: "Keep it short, easy to pronounce, and avoid similarities to existing names or associations." (short is harder in 2024 though!)

I'm on the fence on whether the name should have meaning. There are plenty of successful companies on either side.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak#Name

Imo better to start with a generic name in the early days at least. Best case your generic name becomes a brand name, ie airbnb.

I am not a native speaker, but the very first thing I saw was "Hunt Lie". It conveyed the message "Product Hunt, but for scam".

"Huntly", maybe?

why not spell it Huntly? like most annoying apps do

What you've linked is a site for human names, not product names.

English has funny cases where readers will implicitly pronounce personal names differently than they might products or brands.

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

Reminds me of expertsexchange.com before they put the hyphen in it (now experts-exchange.com)

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.

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).

Lie for lee though? That would make me read it like लिए / लिये

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!

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.

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.

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

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 :)

There was a slightly similar product some days ago:

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

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

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.

sorry about that, i am fixing it

No problem, it's better to launch early.

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, …}

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).

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.

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.

I've added a product (SWIRL) it shows 0% off. :) How can I change that?

have you enabled the discount checkbox?

Anyway let me know the coupon code and percentage off, i can add it manually ;)

same here, didn't specify a discount either

What we really need is one of these service directories that excludes commercial results. I don't care about what I can buy, I care about what I can do for free.

SaaS Groupon, but for free?

Congrats!

I tried submitting https://fdeploy.com but the product icon wouldn’t upload. Which file formats are supported?

Looks promising! May I offer some gentle feedback on your blurb above the fold?

> fDeploy is a self-hosted deployment software for Windows being currently built in Stockholm, Sweden by developers with over 10 years of experience in the industry, focusing only on the most essential and most valuable features.

I'd recommend focusing on what the most valuable features are and making those the highlight. Leading with who is building it and where doesn't add much unless your team is especially well-known or noteworthy. Also, citing "10 years of experience" as social proof might not resonate strongly—it's not a differentiator for most audiences (10 years is not that long). Instead, consider showcasing the unique aspects of the product that would immediately grab attention.

I will set some time aside to rewrite that. Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated!

I hope to see a catalogue for open source tools, so when I’m trying to accomplish something I can find a tool that can do that.

A well organized pegboard for OSS

Added an icon, and still it says:

> Product icon is required

Having the same issue here! Cheers on launching

This could use an RSS feed (Blogtrottr reported there isn't one). Looking forward to seeing how it develops!

500 error when attempting to add a product.

> "Failed to load the submitted data due to invalid formatting."

Switching between newest and featured brings me to the top of the late each time

That’s pretty annoying

Should just stay where the surfer is

I can't add a product, it asks me to add an icon despite the fact that I already uploaded one.

you can click on next even after it gives an error

Tried to add a product but nothing happens when I submit.

Domain isn't the easiest to remember IMO.

Looks interesting!

Could I get a short pitch on what makes your alternative better/different?

Why?

0% off, use coupon "undefined"

fixed it, :P

Great, just posted my product there PandaExtract

PH-Sites, are that the new ToDo-List-Examples?

Terrible name.

Hunt doesn’t mean anything. Huntly is bad. Huntlie is terrible. Forget about product hunt. Invent a new brand.

Let people submit for free but you choose when they get published. If they want to pick a date charge for that.

    An open source applicant tracking system that grows with your company
    50% Off, use coupon HUNTILE

I first read it as "Huntile" which is like Product Hunt + quartile. Then I saw it's Huntlie, "HUNT LIE" which has negative connotations. And then I click the site and see the coupon code is "HUNTILE". christ

How to correct a post?

:-)

Is this a pisstake??

Just tried posting my site (which I was gonna launch on HN today anyway).

https://strawberry.army ("Hover Youtube Thumbnails for Instant Summaries")

...but got a 500 error. No other clues in the console.

Good luck with this!

hunt lies rebrand!

Are you going to launch it on PH?

Joking aside, I really think you need a unique angle and a solid distribution strategy: there are 1,000 PH clones but they don't stick because they're the same as PH, just with less users/traction/eyeballs.

Unrelated, but I am thinking about how do I get alpha users for an app I am building, and decided to check Product Hunt if they offer any sort of feature to help with that, and I ended up on this page https://www.producthunt.com/questions

Looks like someone is trying to pull a Forbes...

And I guess related to you, please don't do that :)

Crikey, that looks horrible...

Any ideas what that is about? Sorry I don't understand the Forbes reference.

Forbes, a name that probably makes people think about business articles, has been publishing all sorts of non-business pieces and they did extremely well on SEO because the domain has a lot of authority and inbound links.

So well that basically people were speculating the SEO part would take over the more traditional business.

Google caught up recently (as in a few weeks ago) and has heavily punished their ranks.

Ironically if you search Google for “Forbes SEO” you’ll find many articles about what happened. I think it all started with something titled “The parasitic company trying to take over Forbes”

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