App Directories: 20 Places to Submit Your App

What "app directory" actually means

Search the term and the lists you get are a mess. Some count Slack's App Directory. Some count download sites like Softonic. Some count Product Hunt. They don't agree on what "app" means.

Three kinds, sorted out.

Integration marketplaces. A plugin store for one big product. Slack's App Directory, Zapier's App Directory, the integration pages at Make and n8n, Notion's Marketplace, Pipedream's Sources. They don't list your product. They list "how your product connects to theirs." You build that connection first, they review it, then you get a page.

Software catalogs. Sites that list software so people can find and compare tools. AlternativeTo, GetApp, SaaSHub, Slant, StackShare, SourceForge, Softonic. You fill in a form. Some review for a few days.

Small app-only sites. AppaList, Appvizer, AppAgg, That App Show, Tool Finder. Not much traffic, but quick to submit, and several give dofollow.

The three differ on effort, on what you get, and on how long it takes. The rest of this guide goes through them in that order.

Is it still worth doing

Integration marketplaces. If your product should connect to Slack or Zapier anyway, this isn't a "worth it" question. It's required. Users in those marketplaces search with "I want to use X inside Slack" in mind, and that converts better than any directory. Just be clear that it's a dev project, not a submission.

Software catalogs. Yes, and they're the best value of the three. An AlternativeTo page can sit there for years, and it shows up whenever someone searches "X alternatives." GetApp and Capterra are both Gartner, so one form covers both.

Small app sites. Do them on the side. Each one sends little traffic, but together they're a batch of dofollow links, which a new domain can use.

One rule of thumb. If your product is a standalone tool, catalogs come first. If it's something people use alongside other tools, marketplaces come first. If it's both, do both.

What to prepare

The three kinds want very different things.

Marketplaces want: a working integration, a support page (a web page, not an email address), a privacy policy, your logo in a few sizes, and a description of what the integration does. Slack also runs a security review. Zapier wants real users in a beta before it'll list you publicly.

Catalogs want: product name, a one-liner, a longer description, a category, a few screenshots, your website link, and pricing. AlternativeTo also asks "what is this an alternative to," and how well you answer that decides which pages you'll show up on.

Small app sites want: name, link, one line, logo. Five minutes.

One piece of advice that applies to all of them. Write a standard kit once: product name, three description lengths (one line, 50 words, 150 words), five screenshots, logo in three sizes. Then copy from that for every site instead of rewriting each time.

The 20, in three groups

Integration marketplaces (6)

• Slack App Directory, DR 92, nofollow. Build a Slack app first, then submit it for directory review. The review checks security, your support page, and your privacy policy. Usually a few weeks. Once you're in, your app shows up in the app search inside the Slack client, and that's where the value is.
• Zapier App Directory, DR 91, nofollow. Build the integration on Zapier's developer platform. It starts in private beta, and you need real users on it before you can apply for public listing. After launch, Zapier generates a pile of "X + Y" combination pages for your integration. Google indexes a lot of them. That's the hidden upside.
• Make App Directory, DR 90, nofollow. Similar to Zapier. Build the app in Make's developer platform, submit for review, land in the directory. The user base leans European.
• n8n Integrations, DR 90, dofollow. Open-source automation tool. You write a community node, publish it to npm, then apply for verification. The integration page links to your GitHub repo, and we checked today: that link is dofollow. For developer tools, this is the only dofollow in the marketplace group. Don't skip it.
• Pipedream Sources, DR 84, nofollow. Write a component and open a PR to their repo. Once merged, it appears in their app list. Developer-leaning.
• Notion Marketplace, DR 92, nofollow. Two halves: templates and integrations. Templates can go up and sell right away. Integrations need approval. If your product has a Notion integration, this one's required.

Software catalogs (8)

• AlternativeTo, DR 81, dofollow. Anyone can submit, with moderation. The key field is "alternative to." Get it right and you show up when people search for alternatives to those products. Of all the catalogs, this is the one to fill in carefully.
• GetApp, DR 85, dofollow. Owned by Gartner. Shares a vendor portal with Capterra and Software Advice, so one form puts you on all three. The free tier gets you a basic page. Paid means buying clicks.
• SourceForge, DR 93, dofollow. Free hosting plus a directory page for open-source projects, and commercial software can claim a product page too. Old site, and Google trusts it.
• Softonic, DR 86, nofollow. Long-running download site with a developer submission channel. Good for products with a desktop client. Pointless for a pure web app.
• SaaSHub, DR 80, nofollow, free. Fast to submit, live in a day or two. It auto-generates "X alternatives" pages for you, and those rank decently.
• Slant, DR 70, nofollow. Q&A-style comparison site. You add your product as an option under the relevant questions. People see you while they're actually comparing.
• StackShare, DR 78, nofollow. Developer tools only. Non-technical products mostly get rejected.
• Product Hunt, DR 75, nofollow, free. Strictly a launch platform, not a directory, but most "app directory" lists include it. It works differently and has its own guide.

Small app-only sites (6)

• Tool Finder, DR 59, dofollow. Tool directory with human review after submission.
• AppaList, DR 55, dofollow. We checked two listing pages, one dofollow and one nofollow. Depends on which category you land in.
• Appvizer, DR 52, dofollow. B2B software comparison site that started in France, with an English version. Free listing.
• AppAgg, DR 51, nofollow. Mobile app aggregator. It pulls from the big stores automatically. If you have a store page, you can claim it.
• That App Show, DR 50, dofollow. A podcast plus a directory. Submit and you're in.
• Chrome Web Store, DR 99. Browser extensions only. One-time $5 developer fee, review takes a few days. If you have an extension, this is the highest-DR page on this list.

Each site's submit page, review time, and the things we tripped over are on its detail page. Click through.

Getting through marketplace review

This is where people get stuck, so it gets its own section.

Slack, Zapier and Make check roughly the same things:

• Support page has to be a web page. Not a mailto link. Not a Discord invite. A FAQ page with a contact form is enough.
• Privacy policy has to say what data you take. A template won't do. Spell out which fields your integration reads.
• Don't over-ask on permissions. Slack's review asks what each scope is for, one by one. Remove the ones you don't use before you submit.
• Have real users. Zapier says outright that public listing needs people on the beta. Slack doesn't say it, but apps with zero installs clearly pass less often.
• Screenshots have to be real. Your integration actually running, not a mockup.

Expect the first submission to bounce on one or two items. Fix, resubmit. Budget a month for the whole cycle.

Filling in catalogs so they send traffic

Whether a catalog page brings traffic comes down to two fields.

Category. Traffic on AlternativeTo, GetApp and SaaSHub comes from category pages and "X alternatives" pages. The category you pick decides which pages you appear on. Don't pick the biggest one. Pick the most accurate one. A note-taking app goes under "notes," not "productivity."

Alternatives. AlternativeTo's "alternative to" field and SaaSHub's auto-generated alternatives pages are where people actually click in from. List three to five products people really compare you with. Don't pad it with industry giants.

In the description, get the product name, the core feature, and the target user into the first two sentences. Google indexes these descriptions, and the first two sentences become the snippet.

After you're listed

Marketplaces. Add an "Integrations" page on your own site that links back to each marketplace page. Zapier's combination pages will link to your site in turn.

Catalogs. A week or two later, search site:alternativeto.net your-product-name to confirm Google indexed the page. If it hasn't, share the page's link once on social.

All of them. When pricing or positioning changes, come back and update. Stale info on a directory is worse than none. People click in, it doesn't match, they leave.

Common mistakes

• Treating a marketplace like a directory. Slack doesn't take "I have a product." It takes "I have a Slack app." No integration, no point going.
• Padding AlternativeTo's alternatives field. Ten unrelated big names gets the submission rejected.
• Submitting a non-dev tool to StackShare. It mostly won't take it.
• Submitting a pure web app to Softonic. It's a download site. Nothing to download, nothing to list.
• Applying for public listing on Zapier before the beta has users. It gets sent back.
• Picking the biggest category. The biggest category has the most competition. You won't place.
• Trying to skip the Chrome Web Store developer fee. There's no way around it. It's $5.

Side by side

FAQ

Do the App Store and Google Play count as app directories? No. Those are stores. Every directory in this guide gives you a page without hosting your product.

Are nofollow links from marketplaces useful? The link itself does nothing for rankings. But the users the page sends are real, and Zapier's combination pages get indexed heavily, so people searching "X Slack integration" will find you.

Which ones give dofollow? Ones we've checked: AlternativeTo, GetApp, SourceForge, n8n, Tool Finder, That App Show, Appvizer. AppaList depends on the category.

Which should a SaaS do first? AlternativeTo and GetApp, half an hour total. Then check whether the product has a Slack or Zapier integration. If so, go do the marketplaces.

How long until it's live? Small sites, same day to two days. AlternativeTo and GetApp, a few days. Marketplaces, weeks.

Should Product Hunt go in the same batch? No. Product Hunt is a single-day event and needs its own plan. It has its own guide.

Where the rest of the list lives

The 20 above are the representative ones. Our directory has over a hundred sites tagged "saas" or "directory," each with link type, pricing, and submission notes.

Browse by category: SaaS directories, general directories, developer tools. On the homepage, set the DR filter to 70+ and link type to dofollow for the batch to start with.