The Problem With Product Hunt's Ship
Help me out: am I too skeptical, or doing it wrong?
When I look at Ship on Product Hunt, I don't see why it would be a good place for me to build a community of people who would be enthusiastic about my product (which is how they position it). If I was building a product specifically for people who are building products, then maybe Ship's the place to find them. But I don't see how it's the best place to spend my time and my money.
But maybe Ship is a good place to find community other builders. Has anyone experienced that? Even if it is a good place for that, I'm not sure I'd pay the $$$ for that. How could it be worth more than the community we have here at IH?
Has anyone paid for Ship and found it to be worth it?
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@mizkirsten the free version is ok - and it's not terrible to use if you want to build up some momentum. We used it for Phlywheel to build up some support for our launch. That being said, it wasn't a silver bullet. You could probably build the same support on a regular mailing list (or coming soon page) on your site.
What I did find was that the ship followers didn't convert into support for our launch. That was the expectation...but I had to reach out to people individually to let them know we launched. They didn't respond to the ship messages.
Like @8bit says, don't spend the money there, but the free version isn't a bad idea.
the first platform, PH, is still great. SHIP, though, has not been given much love for a long time, especially after Ryan left formally.
Ryan hasnt left PH yet. He still runs it!
i mean, yeah, he kinda has. he's still "there" but he's moved on into investing. and you can see this most clearly in the (product) leadership around SHIP. it hasn't changed in years and is still broken in many parts of the app.
and yet, i still pay...
True. Ryan and the team's focus is now on yourstacks. So Ship/PH took a backseat I believe!
on to the next one... as they say.
chef's kiss
Great info. Thank you!
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
nonononon. i have > 8k followers on a SHIP page and it is terrible for community.
save your money.
Wait a sec. 8k is a great result! What's wrong with it?
it's useless as a community tool.
Ah... you mean no matter how many people you don't have their contacts and can't communicate with them? I thought Ship has such a feature, no?
it is. but, barely any interaction. it's essentially a glorified mailing list. but, folks don't use SHIP to build community... the alignment is all off from a product perspective.
I appreciate this candor, J!
So you can't draw a straight line from SHIP -> PH launch glory?
unsure of what you're asking, but... ultimately, spending time here on IH has proved to be one of the highest-ROI networks out there... any early-stage project / creator should be here, w/o question.
and, it doesn't cost a dime.
Yeah, sorry. What I meant was, is it essential to a successful PH launch? But you've totally answered that.
Merci!
I just tried their free sign up and it seems they want to help Uclusion set up a web site, use Atlas and AWS, etc. in preparation for a launch in the future. There wasn't even really an onboarding for a company like us who is already live.
Uclusion is building a product for people who are building products but I am also not clear how we would be able to use Ship at this stage.
Interesting! None of that (set up a web site, use Atlas and AWS) sounds core to community-building.
What inspired my post was this closing line from an email they sent out today: "It’s a tool to find early adopters and involve them in the building process."
I look at PH much like Kickstarter; you gotta bring your own community to succeed. They only accelerate the momentum you've already created, yourself.