The Hottest Product Hunt Award-Winning Apps That Made a Buzz in 2022 🔥 🏆
Discover the very best products in tech last year, directly from Product Hunt. There are fantastic and innovative software across different categories to blow your mind. 😻
Last week, the Product Hunt community got to choose the best products in 2022 across nominees from 25 categories. All products that follow their guidelines* can be nominated, and the top 20% of nominations move forward to the voting stage.
There are 4 winners per category, and they were chosen through community vote. The first place receives the Golden Kitty trophy and gets featured in the Hall of Fame! 🏆🙀
Let's see the amazing products from 2022? 🤸
*To sum it up, their launch was featured on the home page, with no spammy behavior, and no PH team members or family.
🏅 Golden Kitty Award Winners of 2022 🏅
1. Product of the Year 🏆
The “it” product of the year. The products in this category had the greatest impact on your stack and the tech community in 2022.
🥇Winner: ChatGPT
Optimizing language models for dialogue
PH Launch: 02.12.2022
ChatGPT, an advanced model from OpenAI, is a cutting-edge chatbot that can hold conversations in a natural and lifelike manner. It’s able to understand and respond to follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect statements, and even decline inappropriate requests.
Its launch at the beginning of December was a blast, which granted ChatGPT the most competitive prize of all! 👏
🥈Runners-Up
Notion AI: Meet your new partner in thought
Dall-E-2: NEW AI system to create realistic images from text
BeReal: Your friends, for real
2. Productivity 🏆
The products that helped you get it done this year by helping manage time and tasks more efficiently.
🥇Winner: All-new Spark
Smart. Focused. Email.
PH Launch: 04.10.2022
All-new Spark is a fast cross-platform email designed to filter out the noise and let you focus on what matters. You can prioritize contacts, group by sender, pin emails, and organize messages between Done Marker, Set Aside, Send Later, and Reminders.
The app also offers a focused home screen and a smart inbox, with an automated newsletter and notification inboxes. What a way to spark productivity and focus, right? 🤩
🥈Runners-Up
Obsidian Canvas: An infinite space to visualize and make sense of your ideas
Folk: Next-generation CRM, for you and your team
Amie: The joyful productivity app
3. AI 🏆
In a breakout year for artificial intelligence, these products applied AI models and concepts to our world and our devices so spectacularly that we questioned our future.
🥇Winner: ChatGPT
Optimizing language models for dialogue
PH Launch: 02.12.2022
Yes, two prizes in a row! We told you ChatGPT was a game-changer!
Check for instance this blog post entirely written by ChatGPT about itself: Why Everyone is Talking About ChatGPT: The Chatbot that’s Revolutionizing Communication 🤖, and this interview with them about the potential of AI to surpass human intelligence, its benefits to society, and the challenges to come: Unleashing the Power of AI: An Interview with ChatGPT 🧠.
Do you get what we mean? 😸
🥈Runners-Up
Midjourney: Create AI-generated images from a text prompt
Notion AI: Meet your new partner in thought
Dall-E-2: NEW AI system to create realistic images from text
4. Design Tools 🏆
These tools were sharp enough to land on the desktop of seasoned creatives, or simple enough to help the non-techies make art.
🥇Winner: Canva Visual Worksuite
Reimagine the way you work with docs, websites and more
PH Launch: 15.09.2022
Already a fantastic design tool by itself, Canva launched its Visual Worksuite to facilitate teamwork and collaboration. You get to choose between Docs, Websites, Whiteboards, Presentations, Print, Social Media, and even Videos. The creation process is quick and easy, with the same drag-and-drop editor and a variety of templates and resources to be used.
With this complete suite of tools, you have the power of design in your hands for all your visual communication. 🎨
🥈Runners-Up
Framer Sites: Design and publish websites faster than ever before
Xnapper: Take beautiful screenshots instantly
Spline Beta: Design and collaborate in 3D
5. SaaS🏆
CRMs, ERP systems, project management, sales, and marketing software — it might not sound sexy, but SaaS like this makes the world go round.
🥇Winner: LeadDelta 2.0
LinkedIn CRM for professionals and teams
PH Launch: 20.05.2022
LeadDelta 2.0 is a CRM tool designed to improve your relationships and contacts on LinkedIn and grow your business. The tool provides you with a Network Manager to sort and filter your connections, and a Smart Inbox to pin, star, filter, and tag messages, among other features.
You can also update and export your data, work with Zapier, and build workflows with no hassle — and no distractions.👩💻
🥈Runners-Up
Sessions 2.0: Videoconferencing that finally WOWs
Bardeen: One-click automations for your repetitive tasks
Arcade 2.0: The easiest way to showcase your product
6. Best Designed 🏆
Nailed it. Let’s recognize the products gave us a beautiful, uncomplicated UI and delivered a killer UX this year.
🥇Winner: Amie
The joyful productivity app
PH Launch: 17.03.2022
Amie is a productivity app that, to sum it up, lets you schedule time for todos, events, and contacts. But it is much more than that. You can join calls with 1-click, re-create meetings, multi-select todos, and create personal CRM — with specific pages for each of your contacts, with reminders, birthday, and quick notes.
The app also lets you share booking links or specific slots with people — which makes it pretty easy to schedule meetings and publish your availability.
🥈Runners-Up
Cron for iOS: The power of Cron Calendar on your phone
Endel x James Blake: Wind Down: Better sleep starts with unplugging from stresses of the day
SigmaOS 1.0: The Browser that thinks like you
Intermission: Curiosity
Are you tired of searching through multiple platforms and accounts just to find a single file or message? Meet Curiosity, the ultimate all-in-one search bar 🔎
With Curiosity, you can easily search through all your data without having to upload anything anywhere. The app connects with all the tools you already use, like cloud apps, Slack, Notion, Evernote, and much more. This way you can quickly find what you’re looking for with no frustration.
But that’s not all. Curiosity also works as a command center to launch programs and perform quick actions. And the most important part: all your data remains safely stored on your own computer, giving you complete control over it.
No need to waste time jumping from one platform to another when you can have everything you need in one place, at your fingertips. 😉
7. Bootstrapped & Crowdfunded 🏆
No investors, no problem. The products in this category achieved notable success through bootstrapping or crowdfunded campaigns.
🥇Winner: ruttl
Collect visual feedback directly on websites, PDFs and images
PH Launch: 05.07.2022
Ruttl is a website feedback tool that allows you to leave comments directly on live websites and make real-time CSS edits, so that you can share precise feedback with your team.
In addition to websites, the platform also lets you share comments on web apps, PDFs, and images. If you’re working on a project with clients, you can even have them add comments without needing to sign up.
🥈Runners-Up
Reflect: Fast networked note-taking
Motionity: The web-based motion graphics editor for everyone
Pika: A free, open-source colour picker app for macOS
8. Community & Social 🏆
The products in this category helped us most in connecting and communicating with others this year.
🥇Winner: daily.dev
A developer homepage that makes staying up-to-date easy
PH Launch: 03.11.2022
Daily.dev is the one-stop for all your dev news. You can discover valuable content in an efficient and personalized way. The feed aggregates articles from over 600 sources and uses AI to filter out low-quality articles and show you only top-rated content.
There is a tagging system to customize your feed, and a Companion Widget — which allows you to discuss, upvote, and bookmark any article directly on the article itself (even if they don’t have a built-in comment section). This means you can join the conversation anywhere and connect with like-minded developers from around the world.
🥈Runners-Up
BeReal: Your friends, for real
Peerlist: A professional network with robust work profiles at its core
Chptr: A place for communities to remember lost loved ones
9. Creator Economy 🏆
With these tools, creators such as artists, musicians, and writers, are empowered to create and monetize their talents.
🥇Winner: Polywork
Discover opportunities to collaborate
PH Launch: 14.09.2022
Polywork is a social network that aims at work collaboration amongst different professionals. This tool helps you find opportunities in many fields — not only full-time positions, but also side projects, partnership possibilities, and one-time collabs.
You can personalize your offer or express your availability to the best of your wishes. The app also provides private spaces, called clubs, to gather professionals with interests in common.
🥈Runners-Up
EarlyBird: Build a landing page and validate your new idea in 10 mins
Butter for Mobile: Buttery-smooth collaborative sessions — now on the go
Bio Link: Claim your beautiful bio link that loads in less than 100ms
10. Data & Analytics 🏆
From number crunching to visualizations, the products in this category make data more accessible.
🥇Winner: June 2.0
Product-led analytics
PH Launch: 17.02.2022
June 2.0 provides a simple way of setting up product analytics for B2B SaaS in an easy-to-understand manner. You can ship features and track their impact, identify promising accounts, and even activate and retain customers with improved onboarding.
The app integrates with your most used tools to allow instant updates and faster responses.
🥈Runners-Up
Equals: A next-generation spreadsheet with SQL data connections
Google Trends Supercharged: Make Google Trends 100x more powerful
Datapad 2.0: Store all your KPIs in your pocket
11. Developer Tools 🏆
With products in this category, coding will never be the same, from code editors to debugging tools, version control systems, and more.
🥇Winner: Appwrite
Open Source backend server for Web, Mobile, and Flutter developers
PH Launch: 21.09.2022
If you’re a software developer looking to simplify complex and repetitive coding, Appwrite is there for you. This platform was collectively created as a secure backend server that provides core APIs to build modern apps, with a variety of adapters for authentication, database, storage, messaging, and logging.
You can stick to what you’re familiar with coding since it supports 11 different programming languages with a dozen SDKs. And the tool is still growing with new features to be released and facilitate the developer’s journey.
🥈Runners-Up
Warp: The terminal for the 21st century
Fig: Autocomplete for the Terminal
DhiWise 2.0: Convert Figma designs into Flutter 3.0 and React code rapidly
12. E-commerce 🏆
The products in this category enable people to sell their products and services online.
🥇Winner: Medusa
The open-source Shopify alternative
PH Launch: 07.02.2022
Medusa is a complete commerce platform with the plus of being open source. You get to use building blocks to customize your setup as you wish, and there are multiple integrations to payments, CMSs, shipping, and analytics.
This way you can handle everything from your commerce in one platform, and build long-lasting relationships with your customers.
🥈Runners-Up
Toolsy: Etsy SEO and inspiration tool
Jotform Store Builder: Create an online store with no code
Sleek Pay: Checkout from any store with 1 click
13. Education 🏆
The products in this category help people learn and develop new skills.
🥇Winner: Refocus
Saving 137M jobs from AI — the retraining platform for SEA
PH Launch: 18.12.2022
Refocus is a digital academy with courses to help people from outside the field to master new skills in IT. Students get theory and practice lessons, mentor support, and practical knowledge that can be presented in their portfolio to apply for a job.
🥈Runners-Up
Uteach: Start your teaching business in minutes
Maven: 100+ live courses taught by experts, education reimagined
14. Fintech 🏆
“Financial services” might seem boring, but if we’re being honest this tech that makes banking, investment, and payments easy is thrilling.
🥇Winner: Causal
Business planning for modern teams
PH Launch: 24.06.2022
Causal is a business planning platform that empowers your team to build models, connect them to your data, and share them with interactive dashboards. It promises to do anything you can do in Excel, but without the effort that you need to create all the formulas by yourself. This leads to fewer errors, and models created in seconds, from multiple sources and business entities.
🥈Runners-Up
Fuelfinance: Cloud-based financial department for startups
Uprise: We optimize your financial life, for free
15. Health & Fitness 🏆
From apps to wearables, these products help people track and improve their health and fitness.
🥇Winner: Endel x James Blake: Wind Down
Better sleep starts with unplugging from stresses of the day
PH Launch: 11.04.2022
Wind Down is the latest Endel sleep soundscape, inspired by James Blake’s signature vocals. It was designed to provide you with the perfect night's rest, by helping you focus, relax, and sleep. Their library has collabs with other artists as well, such as Grimes, Miguel, and Plastikman.
There is real-time personalization, based on science — to adapt the soundscape to your circadian rhythm, location, weather, and even heart rate.
🥈Runners-Up
Earth.fm: Like Spotify, but for natural soundscapes
Fitmint: Earn NFTs and crypto tokens for staying fit
Level Supermind: Get a supermind of your own
16. Marketing & Sales 🏆
From email tools to ad platforms, these products helped products get noticed and sold.
🥇Winner: RADAAR
Not just another scheduling tool
PH Launch: 23.03.2022
It’s not simple being active on all social media all the time, especially with a business. This is where RADAAR comes in. Its collaborative platform helps everyone in the team manage social media scheduling and publishing of posts, and then analyze their results.
There is an easy-to-navigate dashboard, and the app provides valuable insights about your campaigns and metrics with the analytics tool. Integrations with Canva, Zapier, and Slack, among others, make the creation process as smooth as it can be.
🥈Runners-Up
CleanShot X: Capture your Mac’s screen like a PRO
OptiMonk 3.0: Personalize, optimize and monetize your website with ease
Taplio: The all-in-one tool to grow your personal brand on LinkedIn
17. Mobile App 🏆
These products made into the “most used” apps list on your phone or tablet this year (even if you used them on desktop sometimes too).
🥇Winner: Cron for iOS
The power of Cron Calendar on your phone
PH Launch: 16.11.2022
Cron Calendar was launched in 2021 on Product Hunt as a time management tool seamlessly integrated with Google Calendar, and it was a huge success. Last year, they launched their mobile version for iOS, bringing all the power of the desktop version to your iOS device.
With features like the ability to show, hide, and add multiple time zones with just a swipe, and the ability to block events across connected accounts, this app is the perfect companion for busy professionals on the go.
🥈Runners-Up
Bravo for Android and iOS: Celebrate wins on the go
Readwise Reader: The all-in-one reading app for power readers
Literal 2.0: Discover, organize and discuss books
18. Most Innovative Use of Technology 🏆
The products in this category used technology to solve a problem or meet a need in a wonderfully creative and original way.
🥇Winner: Rewind
Automatically record your meetings, and enhance your memory
PH Launch: 01.11.2022
Rewind is a macOS app that records anything you’ve seen, said, or heard and makes it searchable. All recordings are stored locally on your Mac for privacy. It uses state-of-the-art Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), native macOS APIs, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to recognize and index all the words on your screen. 💬
This is particularly useful for meetings, where the content of discussions, debates, and decisions are often lost forever as soon as a meeting is over.
🥈Runners-Up
Notion AI: Meet your new partner in thought
Video SDK 2.0: The world’s most developer-friendly live audio and video SDKs
Lex: AI-powered word processor, to help you write faster
19. Most Viral 🏆
You should know these products. They generated the most buzz and gained viral attention on social media this year.
🥇Winner: Wordle
A daily word game
PH Launch: 10.01.2022
Well, it’s no mystery why Wordle made it to the top. It’s a simple, quick, and really addictive puzzle, with a clean UI and a great concept behind it. And the ‘one challenge a day’ scheme makes it accessible even for the busiest people — with extra points for the buzz it generates across all social media when sharing personal results online. 🧩
Created by Josh Wardle for his partner that loved word games, Wordle was promptly acquired by The New York Times to be featured as one of its daily puzzles. Definitely a great pick for the most viral of 2022, don’t you agree?
🥈Runners-Up
Dall-E-2: NEW AI system to create realistic images from text
BeReal: Your friends, for real
Lensa AI: Magic Avatars: Generate your personal avatars
20. No Code 🏆
You can build apps, websites, and beyond without writing a single line of code and these newcomers are the best to help you do it.
🥇Winner: Make
Design, build and automate your work
PH Launch: 23.02.2022
We’ve all wondered at some point if there was someone who could do repetitive tasks for us. And that’s the magic of automation. With Make, this is no longer restricted to developers — you can easily build and automate anything with no code.
Their visual platform provides a playful and flexible experience, with many integrations, templates, and endless possibilities. 💻
🥈Runners-Up
Framer Sites: Design and publish websites faster than ever before
FlutterFlow 3.0: Build beautiful, modern apps for mobile and web
Softr Mobile: Create Airtable powered mobile apps, without code
21. Privacy Focused 🏆
Privacy is the priority for these apps and tools, whether it's to provide security for your personal data or to help companies build their tools in a safe way.
🥇Winner: SpyBuster
Unmask a spy and save your data
PH Launch: 23.03.2022
Keeping data safe is one of our main concerns these days, especially during difficult times such as what Ukrainians have been through with the Russian war. This is how SpyBuster came into being.
This free anti-spyware tool for macOS can detect apps and websites that have ties to Russia and Belarus or connect to servers in those countries, and identify potentially unsafe connections. This allows users — particularly Ukrainians — to take action if they feel the need and secure their personal data amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
🥈Runners-Up
CookieYes: The only cookie consent solution you’ll ever need
Heyhack Scan: SaaS pen-testing that surpasses the level of ethical hackers
Vessel: Your passport for the internet
22. Product Demo Video 🏆
Whether it made you go “lol” or “wow!”, this award recognizes outstanding launch videos from the year.
🥇Winner: Clay
Discover, organize, and deepen relationships
PH Launch: 25.10.2022
Social community apps have been a thing for quite some time now. This has significantly helped people all over the world to connect with one another. But it has also contributed to fragmenting these relationships into different platforms — making it difficult to express care for the ones in your life.
Clay was created with that in mind. The app intends to deepen these connections by integrating other social accounts — like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and email — with smart notes, contacts, updates, reminders, and a search tool that you can use to reconnect with people.
🥈Runners-Up
Fairmint: Share your company’s success with your community
Chptr: A place for communities to remember lost loved ones
Visualize Habit: Find tiny habits to crush 2023
23. Remote Work 🏆
Remote work couldn’t happen without remote-supportive products, and these ones are changing the way teams collaborate and communicate.
🥇Winner: Miro Teams Workspace
Your content always up to date on Miro
PH Launch: 18.11.2022
Miro Teams Workspace is a fully-featured whiteboard and mind-mapping tool that can be shared with anyone, anywhere for collaboration in real-time — now with new integrations. Miro also offers hundreds of templates and up-to-date insights.
You can easily import, review and annotate your videos, and preview and edit docs directly on the board. That lets you lets you coalesce your team around a vision, streamline workflow prioritization, and deliver solutions no matter where they’re working from.
🥈Runners-Up
WorkHub: Affordable team efficiency platform
Deel’s Global Payroll: Streamline payroll for global teams across 90+ countries
Switchboard: Work side-by-side, even when you’re not in the same room
24. Maker of the Year 🏆
The individuals in this category stood out this year for their creativity, focus, and dedication to building a product or products that impacted the tech community. This award is selected by the Product Hunt team.
🥇Winner: Tibo
Maker History
Nov 2022: Taplio
Sep 2022: LinkedIn Carousel Generator
Aug 2022: Viral Post Generator
Jul 2022: Dinamic Twitter Banner
Jun 2022: Twitter Streak by Tweet Hunter
Apr 2022: Taplio Stats for LinkedIn
Feb 2022: Elon Sh*tposts Quiz
Jan 2022: Twitter Growth Challenge
🥈Runners-Up
Danny Postma: Building the biggest Tailwind library
Alyssa X: Founder of Sonuum, Screenity, and more
Pascio: Digital Creator and Notion Ambassador
25. Community Member of the Year 🏆
The individuals in this category made notably valuable contributions to the Product Hunt community through helpful comments, discussions, and support. This award is selected by the Product Hunt team.
🥇Winner: Sveta Bay
Community Badges
Buddy System
Contributor
Gemologist
Thought Leader
Top Product
🥈Runners-Up
Ben Lang: Community NotionHQ, angel investor
Chris Messina: #1 Hunter!
Flo Merian: Developer-focused marketer
Wrapping up
Wow! Just wow. What a list of smashing apps this is! 🤩
Congrats to all these amazing creators for another huge achievement. It is not easy to get noted by the community at Product Hunt, and you deserve all the recognition and more. ✨
This list is definitely something to keep in hand and check every now and then when you’re stuck at work, either to get proper help or just to get inspired and creative.
We would love to know, which of these fantastic products was your favorite? 💖 Tell us in the comments! And remember, Curiosity is always there to make your life more productive with one search bar for everything! 😉
Technical note
Despite being part of the Awards, we have removed from this list any projects related to NFTs, blockchains, and Web3. If you’re confused why, check out @web3isgreat or @smdiehl on Twitter.
If you enjoyed this article, you might want to check out:
- How to Make Product Videos in 7 Simple Steps 🎬
- How to Create Beautiful AI-Generated Art Images With the Right Prompts
- Best B2B Software: The Top-Rated and Most Loved 🌟
