Where to list your SaaS or indie project

Search for places to list a SaaS and you get pages with 200 directories each. Submitting to all of them takes days and brings almost nothing. The guides that look at results instead of counting sites keep coming back to the same short list. Here it is, grouped by what each listing is for.

The same caution as always: most of these guides are published by companies that sell submission services. We kept what several of them agree on and dropped their traffic figures, which don’t match each other.

For people comparing tools

• AlternativeTo. Free. People arrive there searching for an alternative to a product they already know. If you compete with something established, this is the first listing to make.
• SaaSHub. Free submissions, and the same kind of visitor: someone comparing options.
• G2 and Capterra. Free to list. These matter once you have customers, because a profile with no reviews does little. Their visitors are close to buying.

For a launch

• Product Hunt for the largest one-day audience, and a few smaller launch sites for a longer window. We compared them in Product Hunt alternatives for indie makers.
• BetaList before you open. One founder reported getting 30 to 40 early users from launch directories such as BetaList and SaaSHub.
• Hacker News, as a Show HN post, if the product is technical.

For a specific kind of product

• AI tools: There’s An AI For That is the one the guides single out, for sign-ups that keep arriving over months.
• Developer tools: DevHunt, and the awesome-lists on GitHub for your language or framework.
• Lifetime deals: AppSumo, if a one-time price fits your product. It brings buyers and a lot of support requests.

A listing in a directory for your niche usually beats one in a general directory ten times its size, because the people there are already looking for your kind of thing.

What to skip

• Mass submission. Lists of hundreds of directories are mostly sites nobody visits. Several guides warn that they rarely send users, and a pile of low-quality links does your site no favors.
• Listings sold as SEO. A paid link is supposed to be marked as sponsored, and then it passes no ranking value. Pay for a listing when the site has an audience you want, never for the link.
• Directories that stopped updating. Check the newest listing before you submit. If it is from last year, move on.

Do this before you submit anywhere

1. Write one sentence that says what the product does and for whom. You will paste it everywhere.
2. Prepare a square logo and two or three screenshots.
3. Add a tag to each link, such as ?ref=alternativeto, so you can see which listings send visitors.
4. Check again after a month and drop the ones that sent nobody.

Where Hivefo fits

Hivefo is ours, so weigh this accordingly. It is a directory in the shape of a map: one hexagon per website, with a logo, a link and a profile page that shows visits and clicks. It is paid, from $19 a year, and the links are marked as sponsored, so by our own rule above it is worth it only for the visibility. It is also new, and its audience is still small. You can browse the directory or see the prices and judge for yourself.