How ShipX works

1. Eligibility

You sign in with X. We read your public profile and follower count through the official X API and evaluate it on our servers. Accounts with 0 – 999 followers can launch; accounts with 1,000 or more can browse, support, comment and keep a profile.

• The count is never entered by you and can’t be edited.
• We re-check it whenever you submit a launch (if the last check is older than 10 minutes).
• If X can’t be reached we don’t assume you’re eligible — you’ll see a retry button. Existing launches are never affected by a failed check.
• Your ShipX account is permanently tied to one X account by its immutable user ID, so identities can’t be swapped.
• If you later grow past the threshold, products you launched while eligible stay live. New launches are paused.

2. Launch weeks

Launches are organised by ISO calendar week (Monday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 UTC). Each week has 25 free slots and 5 premium slots. You pick a week when you launch; scheduled products go live when their week begins, and picking the current week launches you immediately. You can book up to 8 weeks ahead and move or withdraw a launch until it goes live.

Past weeks stay browsable forever at their own URL — see all launch weeks.

3. How ranking works

Within a week, products are ordered by a deterministic formula. Given the same activity at the same moment, it always produces the same order.

engagement = supports × 1
           + comments × 0.5
           + unique commenters × 1
           + supports in last 24h × 0.5

score = (engagement + listing quality × 2)
        × (1 + 0.15 × freshness)

• The maker’s own supports and comments never count.
• Listing quality (0–1) rewards a complete listing: description, screenshots, a demo or video, categories, tags, problem/solution and tech stack.
• Freshness (0–1) decays over the 7 days after going live, so products launched later in the week aren’t buried.
• Products with no engagement aren’t ranked. Ranks (#1, #2…) are only shown once at least 3 products in the week have engagement; until then the feed is newest-first.
• Ties break on supports, then earlier go-live time.
• When a week ends, final positions are frozen and shown on each product.

4. Premium & sponsored placements

ShipX is free to launch on. Optional paid placements exist to keep the lights on: premium launches (a guaranteed slot and a “Featured” label) and sponsored cards. Paid placements are always labelled, never change the community ranking, and don’t guarantee traffic or results.

5. Moderation

Anyone signed in can report a product, comment or maker. Moderators review reports and can hide, remove, or restore content and suspend accounts. Every moderation action is logged. Spam, misleading listings, and attempts to game eligibility (for example, launching on behalf of a large account) are removed.

6. Analytics & privacy

Makers see aggregated analytics: views, unique visitors, website clicks, traffic sources and engagement. We don’t use tracking cookies; unique visitors are counted with a daily-rotating anonymous hash, and we never store IP addresses. See the privacy policy.