Listings in top SaaS Directory and Review sites can have lots of benefits for SaaS companies. This is a key marketing checkbox for all SaaS companies that want to get discovered by B2B buyers searching for specific software solutions. It’s great to rank for specific terms and hope that your buyers are going to land on your webpage. The reality is buyers are doing heavy pre-purchase research on third party sites like G2 and Capterra long before they visit your site or talk to one of your sales reps. This guide dives into some of the benefits, questions, and best practices around getting listed on software directories, which site to get listed on, and offers a service for taking the manual legwork out of managing the submission and listing process.
Directories are generally considered a good targeted referral traffic source with no SEO benefit or harm. We're only placing you in hand picked, relevant product directories and review sites focused on SaaS. After years of abuse and shady SEO practices, Google likely ignores most directory links.Does that mean there's no reason to get listed on these platforms? No, it is still a key product discovery mechanism for serious B2B buyers. SaaS software purchasers are spending time on these sites so it's important to be there with at least a baseline presence to get considered for the short list.
There are different strategies here. Obviously it is ideal to have lots of glowing customer reviews, but even if you are not at that stage there are still product discovery benefits to getting listed early. Plenty of buyers may also be intrigued by startups in stealth mode or with new and innovation solutions and approaches. Buyers are often looking for alternatives to the obvious SaaS choices.
Domain Rating (DR) = Domain Rating is pulled from AHREFs Website "Authority Checker" Tool. It is is a measure of a website's authority based on its backlink profile. The scale runs from zero to a hundred. Generally speaking, the higher this number, the stronger and more authoritative the site is. https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker.
Alexa Traffic Rank = The Alexa traffic rank is a measure of a website's traffic. A lower # represents a highly trafficed website - Google.com is #1.
G2 has its headquarters in Chicago, IL. G2 raised a $157M round with over a $1B valuation on the strength of it’s 140,000+verified users and taxonomy 2,000+ categories and sub-categories of software.
It assists with business growth by providing companies with the ability to discover, buy, and manage technology to help unlock their potential.
They provide detailedreviews by asking over 60 questions, ensuring that you get comprehensive qualitative reports to compare a product’s features and benefits.
G2 has the followingtools and features:
● Insightful taxonomy to compare similar services
● Convenient searches and filters for service and agency reviews
● Easy submission and editing of reviews to ensure updated feedback
● Ability to filter services and providers based on location
● Profiles and descriptions of companies and services
G2 provides custom quotes thus ensuring that you get a fair and reasonable rate based on your specific usage and requirements. G2 is also a leading provider of intent data.
Capterra was acquired by Gartner in 2015.
It is a leading resource for software solutions for businesses and provides valuable insights and assistance in over 800 categories.
Capterra has over 1.5million rigorously validated reviews for over fifty thousand products.
As one of the most comprehensive SaaS directories, Capterra’s services help millions of companies globally to search through over 300 categories of software and identify their choices.
Capterra’s instructive user reviews, detailed buyer’s guides, and several informative blog posts enable users to make informed decisions. For added assistance, the site also offers advice from in-house software experts that provide personalized recommendations and make credible shortlists of appropriate programs.
TrustPilot is amongst the most popular online review platforms with over 17 million reviews posted in the span of a year, in 15 different languages. They covered over 120K businesses spanning 65 countries.
Buyers thus depend upon TrustPilot to direct them towards trustable, useful software with relevant features and resources.
It enables vendors to send 100 invitations a month, with free listings. Its advertising service starts from $300 per month.
TrustPilot also has a concrete system in place that filters fake reviews and provides analytics for existing reviews. These then appear in organic Google searches, Google ShoppingMerchant Reviews, Google AdWords Merchant Reviews.
Sprout24 partners with SaaS companies to showcase products in-depth, collect feedback, and enable effective outreach to prospects. Sprout24 marketing solutions drive awareness, trust, and demand.
Sprout24 stands as a premier contextual data platform for SaaS products, offering exhaustive insights, expertly curated content, and thorough analysis concerning business software applications and products. It aims to bolster decision-making professionals in a myriad of sectors, presenting them with unmatched data points and resources to thrive in their chosen domains.
Key Sprout24 facts:
- 10+ years experience with 500+ SaaS companies across 30+ categories
- Millions of monthly visitors - more than competitors
- Authentic reviews and ratings build buyer trust
- Market intelligence provides actionable insights for SaaS providers
- Helps companies identify in-market buyers and improve conversions
TrustRadius with over 342,000 reviews from verified users, TrustRadius provides trustworthy and reliable feedback to interested customers regarding potential software, enabling them to decide which software would be right for them based on the experiences of other users.
They are highly trusted by customers as they do not allow vendors to sell leads or pay for placements. This prevents results from being skewed or manipulated, giving buyers authentic, reliable insights and detailed reviews.
SourceForge focuses on developers and open source software with a web based code repository. However there is a well populated SaaS product directory and the audience certainly have purchasing power and use the site for product discovery and user reviews. SourceForge claims 2.1M registered users and 30M page views a year.
Product Hunt can be a great product directory, but it's a little different than others on this list. PH is primarily for new or relatively unknown tech products and usually more SMB/startup focused; and needs to be posted from a personal account profile (not a company account).There is a whole launch strategy around posting on Product Hunt including having a rep from your company responsive to the 'hunt' on the day of the posting. It can drive a large amount of traffic but deserves it's own strategy. It's a much more personal and social approach and doesn't lend itself to a product directory submission service.
FinancesOnline claims 2.5M monthly readers, 14K+ software products listed, 11K+ 'detailed reviews' and 15K+ real user reviews. Main categories include remote work software, CRM, project management software, accounting, HR, and Help Desk.
Acquired by Gartner in2014, Software Advice is a free platform that helps businesses find software that caters to their needs.
It guides users towards the most suitable software that they can use, providing them with different options that they can then try and finalize, instead of going through a lengthy procedure of researching and trying several unsuitable software. This helps customers save time, effort, and money.
Good Firms direct customers towards software solutionsacross spheres ranging from Accounting to Animation to Warehouse Management.
With over 30000reviews from authentic customers who provide unbiased feedback regarding over60000 service companies and software listed with them, users may find relevantsoftware with ease.
Based in Barcelona, GetApp was acquired by Gartner in 2015.
GetApp is a comprehensive web resource for companies in need of software-as-a-service(SaaS) solutions.
With GetApp's free interactive tools and thorough product data, buyers can evaluate software applications side by side. It provides buyers with information, insights, trends, and verified user evaluations, allowing them to make informed business decisions.
Crozdesk allows customers to explore software for all kinds of businesses and industries, to find the correct software with functions that suit their requirements.
It helps direct customers to appropriate vendors.
With software meant for a host of different applications, with a strong focus on HR, Project Management and Workflow Management. Crozdesk is a valuable directory to connect customers in need of SaaS to appropriate providers.
AlternativeTo boasts of having 101,764 apps as part of its directory, with an inventory of over 810,500 opinions regarding alternatives.
As the name suggests, it allows users to find alternatives to products and services that they may already know of, or be using. It points out the different features of each service and provides detailed insights into what they offer. This is crucial to helping users understand what product they might prefer to use.
A key aspect ofAlternativeTo is that it enables users to make lists of products they might be interested in, making it easier to access and store services for future reference. From entertainment to business, AlternativeTo provides suggestions for all kinds of sectors.
StackShare allows businesses to search and compare popular developer tools available ,and browse through them based on different categories and find alternatives.
Vendors can also submit tools to the directory and approve existing tools.
StackShare is mostly focused on software for startups and SMBs and provides PPC and inbound analytics for vendors.
Its search bar enables buyers to filter software based on different categories such as pricing models, devices, buyer’s organization type, and features.
TechnologyAdvice is a B2B program for software recommendation and review.
Its database of decision-makers provides multiple marketing channels that help create valuable leads for vendors. Its model is based on a system whereby the price depends upon the level of connection that has been established between a customer and vendor.
TechnologyAdvice, true to its name, publishes buyer’s guides and targets different decision-makers through its content-delivery platforms. It offers suggestions and recommendations based on a search bar that enquires about specific requirements and expectations to generate relevant results.
Note As of 3/28/24 TechnologyAdvice requires a call with an ad sales rep before they will publish a free directory listing.
SoftwareSuggest is a review and recommendation platform, and one of the largest in India.
Their SoftwareEvaluation Tool allows buyers to compare different software and features to help select the right one.
They also provide free consultations to further assist buyers.
PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station) provides detailed reviews and answers to all kinds of questions relating to software products and services. IT Central Station raised a $30M Series A round in October 2021 to focus grown on Enterprise software buyers.
Over 548,788 enterprise tech professionals use the platform to exchange information and share advice with peers.
CrowdReviews provides merit-based suggestions to customers by enabling users to view rankings of suppliers before settling on a specific product or service.
CrowdReviews has over600 categories that are ranked on the basis of public opinion.
This means that certified users that have experience with using a particular product provide helpful reviews that can advise potential customers on the merits and demerits of the product and help them make a decision.
AppSumo is another SaaS marketplace of sorts where you need to get approved and work with their team on a special "lifetime" membership package or deal. The Pros are that this can provide an influx of upfront cashflow and a lot of buzz and new customers. The downside is you will have to support these customers indefinitely with possibly no additional or recurring revenue, and AppSumo users may be the wrong types of customers, burden your customer support, be vocal online about negative reviews, etc. Take special care to come up with packages that users can get fair value out of but also perhaps give you the option for upsell/cross-sell into additional features or plans later. AppSumo is a different sort of software discovery platform and does not have a free listing option; however it is still mentioning and considering.
FeaturedCustomers allows vendors to use their validated customer references and reviews to convince buyers to purchase their software. This means that buyers are able to verify a product and make a confident, informed decision regarding which software shall fulfill their needs.
With over 1,200,135vendor validated customer references and over 250,000 monthly B2B users,FeaturedCustomers is amongst the big fish of SaaS directories.
It has over 695 vendor categories from over 34,548 vendor profiles, which means that buyers flock to this directory, assured to find something to suit their needs. This results in better sales for vendors and satisfied buyers.
Update: SaaSGenius is no longer accepting any free listings.
SaaSGenius helps companies find the right software for their business by providing simple ratings and easily accessible reviews that can be used to ascertain relevant software that shall provide maximum utility.
They can also be browsed based on categories, making the process more streamlined and convenient.
CabinetM is a service that helps users to track, optimize, and report their technological infrastructure, expenditure, and strategy. Users can use the platform to list their stacks of software and compare up to 3 products simultaneously. CabinetM is strictly focused on Martech vendors – if that is your niche, this is a directory worth focusing some of your efforts around.
CabinetM also provides several white papers that assist in attracting more marketers.
Its premium profile costs $500 a month and its lead generation options include banners on different category and subcategory pages.
CabinetM is an extremely useful recommendation platform that also provides marketing software reviews and caters to buyers and vendors. Its detailed reports on data flows, integrations, performance of technology, along with the ability to identify new technologies on the basis of real-world data is extremely impactful.
SaaSworthy helps stakeholders make a better product decisions based on unbiased & insightful reviews, comparison, question & answers, social popularity and buyers guide.
Cloud Ratings Category Reports combine user reviews with verified vendor data to impartially identify leading software products. Markets covered include Sales, Marketing, and Finance with quadrant style, in depth research reports, market trends, and more. Other offerings include a True ROI report for specific software and a monthly SaaS Demand Index that breaks down trends in buyer demand by SaaS category.
AI Driven Software Recommendation Engine - users describe their project, company, and needs and Cuspera uses generative AI to deliver a personalized software recommendation report
There is also another set of directories to consider keeping updated - Business Databases. These sites store information like your corporate mailing address, rounds of funding, office locations, and more. These sites are all resources that SaaS buyers may check out as part of their software research and purchasing process. Keeping up to date information in these directories can help with social proof and building a level of trust with your target buyers as they build short lists and research SaaS solutions.
Looking for content in podcast form about B2B SaaS Sales Outsourcing? Here are some of the best episodes we've found:
All kinds of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS-related companies can be found organized conveniently in SaaS directories, each with valuable information that can help boost your business.
They enable consumers to quickly identify and access any SaaS company category, where they can learn more about these websites' descriptions, photographs, how they work, and also view crucial ratings and feedback from previous users.
It’s absolutely worth the time and effort to get your company listed in key software directories and review sites. Consider using a service like SaaSBoost.io’s software submission service to save time, headaches and get your listings live as quickly as possible.
