Every launch on Hauntboard is reviewed by a person before anyone sees it. Not a model, not a keyword filter: someone opens your site, reads your listing and decides whether it belongs on the board. This post is the full picture of how that works, so you know what to expect before you submit.
Why Review at All
Open launch boards fill up fast with things that aren't launches: landing pages with nothing behind them, the same product posted five times, affiliate pages, spam. Every one of those pushes a real maker's launch further down the page.
Review is how we keep the board worth browsing. A board people trust is a board people come back to, and readers who come back are what send visits to every launch. Review also matters to search engines and AI assistants: a page on a site that checks what it lists is a better signal than a page on a site that lists anything.
What a Reviewer Checks
Every launch goes through the same six checks:
- The site loads and is a real product. We open the link, on desktop and on a phone. It has to load, and there has to be something a person can use or try.
- The description matches the site. What the listing says the product does is what the site actually does.
- The screenshots are real. Screens from the actual product, not stock images or concept mockups.
- The founder note says what it is, who it's for and where it's at. A few honest sentences from the maker.
- The categories fit. So people browsing a category find what they expect.
- Nothing harmful. No adult content, gambling, crypto schemes or malware.
For free launches there's one more step: the Hauntboard badge should be on the homepage. If it isn't yet, we can still approve the launch, but its link stays nofollow until the badge is up. Our post on why free launches show a badge explains how that check works, including what happens if our checker can't see it.
How Long It Takes
- Free launches are usually reviewed within about 72 hours, and go live on the next open Monday. If you ask to start early and this week still has free slots, yours can go onto this week's board instead.
- Paid launches (Launch Now and Spotlight) are reviewed within 24 hours, and go live in the week the maker picked.
Paid launches are reviewed first, but they're reviewed against exactly the same checks. Paying buys speed and placement. It doesn't buy approval.
You can edit your listing while it waits. When the review is done, your dashboard and the activity bell at the top of the site tell you the result, so you don't need to keep checking.
The Five Reasons We Say No
When a launch isn't approved, it's for one of five reasons, and you see which one:
| Reason | What it usually means | How to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| Thin description | A line or two of marketing copy that doesn't say what the product does | Explain the problem, what it does about it, and who it's for |
| The site didn't load | A timeout, an error page or a parked domain | Check it from a phone on mobile data, in a private window |
| Duplicate | The same product listed twice, or the site listed in the last 90 days | Update the existing listing instead |
| Not a real product yet | A waitlist or coming-soon page with nothing to use | Launch when people can try it |
| Spam | Misleading listings, affiliate pages or keyword stuffing | Can't be resubmitted |
Most rejections are the first two, and both take ten minutes to fix. Our guide to writing a launch listing people click covers what a good description looks like.
Resubmitting
Every rejected launch, except one rejected as spam, can be fixed and resubmitted once. Your dashboard shows the reason and a "Fix and resubmit" button, and the reviewer sees that it's a second try, along with the reason it was turned down the first time.
Paid launches that aren't approved are refunded in full, automatically. If you fix and resubmit a paid launch, you pay for it again when you resubmit, and the same refund applies if it's turned down again.
What Review Isn't
Review isn't a judgement of whether your product is good, or whether we'd use it. A rough, early product built by one person is welcome. So is something niche that only a few hundred people in the world need. The bar is that it's real, it works, and the listing tells the truth about it.
Review also never decides your rank. Once a launch is live, its place on the board comes from votes, with ties going to the launch that sent more visits. The top three each week, and one editor's pick, are invited to write a maker story. Stories can't be bought, on any tier.
If that sounds like a board you'd like your product on, submit your launch. It takes about two minutes, and a person will look at it.