Self-promotion rules in founder communities, quoted from their own pages

Almost every founder community lets you mention your own product. Few let you do only that. Hacker News, Lobsters and WIP limit how much of your activity can be about your own work; Quora and Hashnode count promotional posts as spam; Indie Hackers publishes no rules page at all, only its founder's advice. This guide quotes what each community's own pages say, as we read them on 29 and 30 September 2026.

Each community links to its page on our list, where the source and the date sit next to the quote. We don't post in these communities or measure what a post brings, and we take no money from the places we list.

01The rules at a glance

In our reading of each community's own page:

• Show HN: only non-trivial things people can try now; no quick generated one-offs, landing pages or fundraisers.
• Lobsters: self-promotion should be less than a quarter of your stories and comments.
• Dev.to: posts must not be made mainly for promotion or backlinks, and need substantial content, not just a link.
• Indie Hackers: no formal rules page; the founder's posting tips ask for discussions, questions, lessons and useful links.
• WIP: excessive self-promotion, spam and asking for upvotes are not okay. Membership is paid.
• GrowthHackers: no over-promotional or non-growth content, and no accounts under company names.
• Quora: posting questions to promote a business, or excessively promoting the same product, counts as spam.
• HackerNoon: disclose any vested interest in companies your story mentions.
• Hashnode: no spam, including unsolicited promotional content.
• Bubble and Cursor forums: share what you built in the Showcase category; Cursor asks you to say so if you sell it.
• Stacker News: every post costs a small fee, and repeat posts cost ten times more.

02Hacker News, Lobsters and Dev.to

These three are where developers talk, and their rules are quoted in full in where to launch a developer tool. In one line each:

• Show HN is for something people can try now. HN's Show HN page (opens in a new tab) adds: "The project should be non-trivial. Don't post quickly-generated one-offs; anybody can do that now."
• Lobsters is invitation-only, limits new users for their first 70 days, and asks that self-promotion stay under a quarter of what you post. See the Lobsters section.
• Dev.to's terms (opens in a new tab) say content must not be "designed primarily for the purposes of promotion or creating backlinks". See the Dev.to section.

03Indie Hackers: advice, not a rule

Indie Hackers has no public rules page that we could find. When we looked on 30 September 2026, its /guidelines address returned a 404 and its FAQ address sent us to the About page. What it does have is a public post by its founder, tips for making successful posts (opens in a new tab), from 2020:

Start interesting discussions, ask useful questions, teach people what you've learned, and share links to relevant resources.

Treat that as advice from the site's founder, not an enforced rule. We don't know how the site moderates promotional posts, and it doesn't publish a threshold for new accounts. What it does say is how much it costs to take part:

C027Indie Hackers·Cost

“The Indie Hackers Services are currently free at the basic tier, but we reserve the right to charge for certain or all Services.”

Our reading: Free at the basic tier; paid extras (IH+ subscription, Premium Profiles) are optional

In practice the tips point toward a post that teaches something (how you found your first customers, what your pricing test showed) over one that announces a product. Indie Hackers also has a subreddit, r/indiehackers, run separately and with written rules; it's in the subreddit guide.

04Indie Hackers alternatives

Indie Hackers is two things at once: a forum where founders talk, and a record of founders sharing the revenue behind their products. Lists of alternatives tend to mix places that replace one or the other. The places on our list that fill either role, side by side:

By what it takes to join:

• Free. GrowthHackers costs nothing but reviews each application and wants growth topics only. Broadwise is a forum for founders with a category for talking about your project. On Reddit, r/indiehackers is run separately from the site, with its own rules.
• Paid. WIP is membership only, monthly or yearly, and posting your progress is the point. Ramen Club is a paid Slack community for founders that says "Try it for 30 days: full refund if it’s not for you."
• A fee per post. On Stacker News, posts and comments "incur a small fee to prevent spam", set by each topic area.
• An invitation first. Indie Maker is invite only, and so is Lobsters.
• Revenue stories without the forum. Starter Story calls itself "The Researched Database of Real, Profitable Businesses", and says "There's no cost to be featured."

Check a community's price on its own page. One list of Indie Hackers alternatives (opens in a new tab), dated March 2026, gives WIP a lower monthly price than WIP's own join page, which we read again on 2 October 2026 and which shows a monthly and a yearly plan, nothing free.

05WIP: a paid community with written guidelines

WIP describes itself as a community of makers who help each other ship projects. It's paid membership only: by its join page, as we read it on 30 September 2026, $29 a month or $199 a year, with no lifetime plan and one price worldwide. The full price text is on its page on the list.

Its guidelines (opens in a new tab) list what isn't okay, and self-promotion is on the list:

Spam or sleazy growth hacks Stalking, or other creepy behavior Asking for upvotes, retweets, etc Excessive self-promotion

"Excessive" is the key word: WIP exists for posting your own progress, so posting about your product is the point. Asking members to upvote it elsewhere is not.

06GrowthHackers: reviewed membership, no company accounts

GrowthHackers reviews each membership application, and its community page (opens in a new tab) says joining is free. The same page answers "What is not allowed?":

Creating unadentifiable accounts or under company names Posting over-promotional content Posting non-growth related content

So join as yourself, and post about growth: an experiment, a result, a tool you use and why. The spelling in the quote is the site's.

07Quora: what counts as spam

Quora isn't a founder community, but founders answer questions there. Its platform policies (opens in a new tab) list, among the things that count as spam:

Posting questions to promote a business or service, or for solicitation Excessively promoting the same product or service

That rules out asking a question as a setup for your own answer, and answering every question with the same product. The policy says nothing against naming your product where it answers the question, but "excessively" is Quora's call, not yours.

08Writing platforms: HackerNoon and Hashnode

On these, you publish an article, not a link.

HackerNoon has a staff editor review each story:

C069HackerNoon·Approval

“Staff Editor should review within 3 business days..ish.”

Our reading: Staff editor review, roughly 3 business days

Its submission checklist (opens in a new tab) asks you to "Confirm that you have the rights to submit the content and all vested interests of companies mentioned in the story have been disclosed". If the story is about your own product, say so in it.

Hashnode gives you a free blog whose posts can surface in its community feed. Its terms (opens in a new tab) forbid posting or distributing "spam, including unsolicited promotional content, bulk messages, or automated content generation for the purpose of manipulating search results or engagement metrics."

On both, a post about how you built something, or what went wrong, fits the rules better than an announcement.

09Product forums: Bubble and Cursor

If your product is built on a tool with its own forum, the forum's showcase is a natural place for it.

• The Bubble forum's Showcase is for work built on Bubble. Its guidelines (opens in a new tab) say: "Do not send direct messages that contain anything that could be reasonably considered spam."
• The Cursor forum's Showcase welcomes projects built with or for Cursor. Its guidelines (opens in a new tab): "Sharing what you've built with or for Cursor is welcome and it's one of the best parts of this community. The Showcase category is an especially great place for this." In our reading, they also ask you to take part first and to say so if you sell what you share.

10Smaller boards: Broadwise, Indie Maker, Stacker News, Ramen Club

• Broadwise is a Discourse forum for founders with a category for it: "Let's talk! Talk about yourself, your project. Share an exciting article or video."
• Indie Maker says: "We're an invite only community of Indie Makers." You need an invitation before any rule applies.
• Stacker News is a forum like Hacker News where, by its FAQ (opens in a new tab), "Posts and comments incur a small fee to prevent spam and to encourage quality contributions." Each topic area sets its own fee, and "fees increase by 10x for repetitive posts and self-reply comments to prevent spam."
• Ramen Club is a paid Slack community for founders. We found no written self-promotion rule on its site. Its price, in its own words, is on its page on the list.

11Newsletters are a different job

Newsletters and blogs pick what they feature; you suggest it and wait. The Changelog, for example, doesn't take commercial products as news and points them to sponsorship. Those rules are in startup blogs and newsletters.

12What the rules have in common

• A ratio, not a ban. HN's guidelines (opens in a new tab) say it's ok to post your own stuff "part of the time"; Lobsters puts the line at a quarter; WIP's word is "excessive". None of them asks you to hide your work.
• No vote asks. HN, WIP and several subreddits say it outright.
• Your name, not your company's. GrowthHackers bans company-name accounts, and Product Hunt's help page on posting (opens in a new tab) says company accounts cannot post products.
• Substance over a link. Dev.to wants substantial content, HackerNoon and Hashnode are built for articles, and Indie Hackers' founder asks for lessons and discussion.
• Disclose it. HackerNoon and Cursor's forum ask you to say when you have a stake in what you share.

13Reddit is different

Subreddits set their own rules, and many send all promotion to one pinned thread a week or a month. We quote each subreddit's line on posting your own work, and say where we couldn't read one, in subreddits for founders. All communities on the list are in room 02.

14How we checked

We read each rule on the community's own page on 29 or 30 September 2026 and quote it word for word, spelling included. Each community's page on the list shows the source and the date. Where a community publishes no rule, we say so and quote what it does publish, and we don't treat advice as a rule.

We don't post in these communities, and we don't know how each one enforces its rules. Nobody pays to be listed or to appear in a guide. Read how we check for the details.

15Questions

01

Does Indie Hackers allow self-promotion?

Indie Hackers publishes no rules page that we could find in September 2026. Its founder's public tips post from 2020 asks for interesting discussions, useful questions, lessons learned and links to relevant resources. Treat that as guidance rather than a rule.

02

Can I promote my own project on Lobsters?

Some of the time. Lobsters' about page says self-promotion should be less than a quarter of your stories and comments. You also need an invitation, and new users are limited for their first 70 days. The details are in our developer tool guide.

03

Is self-promotion allowed on Dev.to?

Posts about your own work are fine if they stand on their own. Dev.to's terms say content must not be designed primarily for promotion or creating backlinks, and posts must have substantial content rather than just a link to the full post elsewhere.

04

Is WIP free?

No. WIP's join page offers paid membership only, monthly or yearly, with no lifetime plan. The prices, in its own words, are on WIP's page on the list.

05

Can I promote my startup on Quora?

Quora's platform policies count posting questions to promote a business or service, and excessively promoting the same product or service, as spam. Answering a question where your product is relevant isn't named in the policy, but excessive promotion is Quora's call.