Which directories should I list my new product in, and what do they charge?

What the directories say, in their own words

Three of them, word for word.

What that means if you have just launched

• Release first, on your own domain. SaaSHub does not accept unreleased products, waiting list pages or free subdomains, and AlternativeTo does not accept unreleased apps. BetaList is the exception: it features startups before launch and just after, and it too requires your own domain.
• A fee buys a place in the queue, not approval. AlternativeTo says so of its priority review. BetaList and There's An AI For That both say they refund in full when a submission is turned down.
• Do not review your own product. The rule quoted above is G2's. Its guidelines also prohibit collecting reviews only from happy customers, making a reward depend on a positive review, and rewarding reviewers without telling G2.
• Fill in what speeds review. SaaSHub puts a submission that lists no competitors at the bottom of its queue, and gives higher priority to a product verified with an email address on its domain.
• A launch is a different thing. Product Hunt has its own rules and its own page here.

The numbers

Each price is as its page shows it, with a dollar sign and no currency named. None of these pages carries a date.

G2's plans page, in the layout it serves to small screens, adds that these are year one prices and that year two rises to $599 a month or $6,000 a year.

These six are a sample, chosen because their terms could be read on their own pages. SaaSHub's own list of places to submit a product counted 110 websites on the same day. Futurepedia has no row: its home page linked to no submission page, only a form for updating a tool, and its editorial guidelines say it does not sell rankings.

What Google says about directory links

Among its examples of link spam the same page lists low quality directory or bookmark site links, exchanging money for links, and using automated programs or services to create links to your site. Paid links are within its policies when they carry a nofollow or sponsored attribute. Sites that break the policies may rank lower or not appear at all.

BetaList's support page says the link on a featured listing does not use nofollow, and every submission there is paid. Whether a link like that counts is Google's decision, not the directory's. So judge a paid listing by the readers it brings. SEO covers what Google asks of a new site.

What a listing does, and what it does not

A listing is a page about your product on someone else's site, with a link to yours. On G2 it is also where customer reviews collect. What it brings you is not known until you measure it.

Two directories publish an estimate for a paid option, and label it as one. SaaSHub says featured products receive an estimated 15 to 29 referrals a month. At $99 a month that is about $3.40 to $6.60 a referral, before anyone signs up. There's An AI For That estimates 700 to 10,000 or more clicks for a submission, and says results vary with how new the tool is. Both are the seller's own figures. The figure that counts is in your own records: signups by source, and the customer acquisition cost they give you.

Whether a search engine or an AI assistant reads a listing is a separate question, covered in ChatGPT and AI search.

How Sami uses it

Sami ranks directories against the other channels for your product, such as Product Hunt, Hacker News and SEO, and says why each is in or out. A free listing is weighed with the free methods, which the plan puts before paid ones. A paid listing is a paid step: one week if your product is bought on the page, with a limit set before it starts.

AskSami never posts anywhere for you, never spends your money and never writes to your code. You do those things yourself. The numbers you bring back, such as clicks and signups from each directory, become dated records. Signups and payments are tied to their source where the snippet in your product recorded one.