Open-Launch

#showdev #opensource

How I Built an Open Source Alternative to Product Hunt!

I found myself with a month’s free time before starting my final year internship, and instead of watching series, I decided to dive into my first open source project.
It didn’t take me long to come up with the idea, and I thought it would be interesting to create a complete alternative to Product Hunt.
I’d never really seen one, so I went for it.

Introducing Open-Launch

That’s how Open-Launch was born — the first complete open source alternative to Product Hunt.
The functionalities are basic and already seen, but I tried to do it right.
I used Next.js, TailwindCSS, Shadcn, Drizzle, Cloudflare and hosted the whole thing on a VPS thanks to Coolify.

Where’s the Project Today

Open-Launch is now functional and available on GitHub under the MIT license. The platform already allows submitting projects, voting, commenting, and offering premium launches.
At the time of writing, there are 700+ registered users and 400+ projects launched/scheduled.

What’s Next?

I’m actively working to increase open-launch’s domain rating. This kind of service works much better if creators can get quality backlinks when launching their product.
I think this is a big next step that will take some time.
But the feedback is great, and we’re at 95 stars on github.

Current Success and Money

I offer a limited amount of free launches per day, and only 9 days after launching the platform, the queue for a free launch has exceeded 1 month!
About revenues, I made around $300 in 3 weeks :)