Most launch checklists I find are either five vague bullets or a 90-item spreadsheet nobody finishes. This is the one I keep coming back to. It's grouped by when you do things, and each step has the reason, because I skip steps when I don't know why they're there.

Four weeks before

Write one sentence that says what the product does and who it's for. Every listing, post and AI summary is going to be built from that sentence, so if it's fuzzy, all of them will be.

Pick a launch date and two or three main places to launch. Some boards have waiting lists that run for weeks, and a date makes everything else on this list real.

Make the landing page obvious: headline, a demo (gif or short video), pricing, one button. Launch visitors decide in a few seconds.

Fix your title, meta description and share image. Directories pull them in, social sites show them, AI assistants read them. A missing share image makes every link you post look broken.

Check that AI search crawlers can read your site. If robots.txt blocks them, ChatGPT and Perplexity can't recommend you.

Test sign-up and payment yourself, end to end, in a private window. A broken sign-up on launch day wastes the only spike you get.

Get on a waitlist site and into any free queues now (BetaList, Uneed's free line). Free queues take weeks.

Two weeks before

Make a listing kit and reuse it: name, tagline, short and long description, logo, 3 to 5 screenshots, demo video. You'll paste the same details into a lot of forms, and keeping them identical helps search engines and AI assistants recognise you.

Get one or two reviewed directory listings live so you have a followed link early. Google needs time to notice it.

Write down your Domain Rating. You won't know if any of this worked without a starting number.

Write your launch posts now, not on the day. A launch board post, Show HN or a Reddit post, an X thread, LinkedIn. Each place wants a different tone, and writing under pressure goes badly.

Make UTM links for every place you'll share. Otherwise analytics just says "direct" and you learn nothing.

Find 10 to 20 people who said they'll try it on the day. Real comments early on make the page look alive to everyone who shows up later.

Launch week

Post at the board's reset time and leave the first comment yourself.

Reply to every comment and question within the hour. Replies are most of what people judge on a launch page.

Share once in each community that fits, and follow its rules. The same link pasted everywhere gets removed, and sometimes gets you banned.

Email your waitlist with a short personal note. They're the most likely to try it and pay.

Watch sign-ups and fix anything that breaks the same day. People rarely come back after hitting an error.

Don't buy votes or join upvote groups. Platforms catch it and can pull your launch.

The month after

Submit to 20 to 30 reputable directories over a few weeks. A steady trickle of relevant listings builds trust. A big burst of junk looks like spam.

Thank your early users and ask one question: what nearly stopped you from signing up? The answer usually points at the one fix that matters most.

Write a short "what we learned" post with real numbers. Founders read those, and you get a second wave.

Compare results by source. Most launches get most of their users from one or two places, so put your time there next.

Check your Domain Rating and backlinks again after 30 days.

The tools I use for this

I built an interactive version of this checklist on CapyLaunch. It saves your progress in your browser and you can copy it out as Markdown. The other free ones I'd use from this list are the meta tag and share preview checker, the AI crawler checker and the Domain Rating checker. Full disclosure, CapyLaunch is my project. The tools are free and don't need an account.

The longer version, with templates, is in the SaaS launch checklist guide.

What would you add? I'm sure I've left something out that bit someone on launch day.