I had the opposite experience (illustrating that our stories are just anecdotal), but I don't blame Product Hunt at all -- I was grateful for the chance to be featured on their main page. My Show HN brought ~6K visitors in the first two days where my PH post brought <1K. I didn't know anyone, just emailed their team and... added PH to the extension (no one asked me to, just thought it'd be cool).
Not trying to draw a comparison between traffic levels, but saying that it's very easy to submit and bomb on HN, and so drive users to an alternative as their next hope. Obviously some people submit anywhere and everywhere.
But if HN is a home to many of us, it'd be nice if it was also a viable testing ground for our new projects, feedback, etc.
It wasn't just traffic: it was the feedback. I got over 50 comments on HN on about 55 votes. on PH, I got 3 comments on about 35 votes. If HN is known as being too negative, I find PH comments come from almost forced optimism -- people are too cautious with what they say at the expense of constructive feedback.
[1] Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9992735 [2] PH: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/kiwi-conversations
Admittedly, it was a bit humbling to see a cat "meow" soundboard quickly surpass my project on PH -- but like I said, no regrets.