Where to submit your SaaS, and in what order

Deciding where to submit your SaaS is mostly a question of when to stop. The lists are endless and the returns fall off a cliff after the first ten or so. Here is the order that wastes the least time. Disclosure: outclimbed is one of the places named and it is ours.

Prepare the assets once

Every submission form asks for the same eight things. Write them once, in a file, and each submission drops from twenty minutes to five:

• A one-line description, under about 60 characters
• A longer one, around 150 characters, that stands alone
• A square logo, at least 512 pixels
• One screenshot that shows the product doing its job
• Your category, in the words directories use
• A URL with a tracking parameter, different per directory
• A contact email you will still read in a year
• Your pricing, in one sentence

Step one: two free, specific directories

Not the big general ones. Find the two directories that serve your exact category and submit there first. They are smaller, they are faster to get listed on, and they answer the only question that matters at this stage: does anybody arriving from a directory actually sign up for your product?

Give it two weeks. If the answer is no, that is worth knowing before you submit your SaaS to another hundred places with the same result.

Step two: the general directories, selectively

Now the larger ones. Check each for three things before filling in the form: does the category page rank for anything when you search it, is the listing page indexable, and can you edit your listing later. A directory that fails the third one will misdescribe you for years after you rename something.

Step three: one paid listing, if the first two worked

One, not five, so the result is attributable. Pick the place that sent the most people in the free rounds and pay there. If nothing sent anybody, paying is not the fix.

How to tell when to stop

The stopping rule is simple: stop when the next submission would be to a directory you cannot describe the audience of. If you cannot say who reads it, you are not submitting to a directory, you are filling in a form for the feeling of progress.

In practice this lands somewhere around ten to fifteen places for most SaaS products. The services selling two hundred are selling volume because volume is what can be counted, not because two hundred is where you should submit your SaaS.

Which directories to submit your SaaS to

There is no universal list that suits every product. What there is, is a pool to pick from and a way to build your own list from it in about an hour.

For the pool, we keep a free list of startup directories with the Domain Rating, traffic and link type of each, checked by hand. Use it as a place to start filtering, not as a to-do list: the advice below still applies to every name on it.

Start by searching the phrase a buyer would use, plus the word directory, plus your category. Then search two competitors by name and look at where they are listed, which is the fastest way to find the places that serve your exact market. Then check any list-style article that comes up, not for its recommendations but for the names in it.

For each candidate, open it and answer one question: can you describe who reads this site? If you cannot, it does not go on the list. That single filter usually cuts a list of eighty down to a dozen, and the dozen is where the returns are.

Sort what survives by how specific it is to your category, most specific first. That is the order to submit your SaaS in, because the specific ones answer the conversion question fastest and cost the least to be rejected by.

Writing the listing itself

The description does most of the work and most people paste the same one everywhere. Two things separate a listing that gets clicked from one that does not.

The first is that it has to stand alone. Your listing appears next to twenty others, with no context and no landing page around it. A description that starts with your product name and says what the thing does in the first six words will outperform one that opens with a claim about the industry.

The second is that it should be written for that directory's readers. A developer tools directory and a small business directory want different sentences about the same product. Rewriting the description per submission takes three minutes and is the highest-return three minutes in this entire process.

What to avoid

• Bulk submission of identical copy. Vary the description. The same 150 characters appearing on eighty domains in one week is a pattern, and patterns are what automated systems are built to notice.
• Directories with no visible audience. If the site has no traffic, your listing is on a page nobody reads, followed link or not.
• Paying before testing. The free round costs a weekend and tells you whether the paid round is worth anything.

When a submission is rejected

It happens, and it is rarely personal. The four usual reasons: the product does not fit the category the directory covers, the description reads as advertising copy, the site looked unfinished when the moderator opened it, or the account submitting had no history on a platform that requires some.

Only the last one is about you rather than the submission. The other three are fixable in an afternoon, and a polite reply asking which it was will usually get an answer. Directories are mostly run by one or two people and they are not trying to keep you out.

After the listing goes live

Two things are worth doing and almost nobody does either.

Check how your listing actually looks on the page, next to the others. Logos render differently, descriptions get truncated at lengths you did not expect, and a screenshot that looked fine at full size can be unreadable at thumbnail. Five minutes here is worth more than the next submission.

Then put a reminder in six months to review every place you submitted your SaaS to. Products get renamed and repositioned, and a listing that was accurate at launch is frequently wrong a year later. The directories where this matters most are the ones that rank, which are exactly the ones sending you people.

The link question, briefly

Most directory links carry nofollow or ugc, which means they are not followed and do not pass an endorsement. That is normal and it is not a reason to skip a directory. Submit for the people, not the link. Dofollow versus nofollow on directory links goes through what the attributes do, with Google's own documentation quoted directly.

When to submit your SaaS

Earlier than most people do. The instinct is to wait until the product is polished, and the cost of waiting is that the slow channel starts late.

A listing takes months to accumulate search traffic, so a submission made in month one is working by month four, while one made in month six is working by month ten. If you submit your SaaS when the product is merely usable and the description is honest about what it does, the waiting happens in parallel with the building rather than after it.

The exception is anything genuinely broken. A moderator who opens your site and finds a half-finished page will reject the submission, and some directories will not take a second one. Usable is the bar, not polished.

How to know it worked

1. Visitors from each tracked URL, per directory, over 90 days.
2. Signups from those visitors, not just sessions.
3. Whether your product now appears when somebody searches its name, which is the slow benefit and the one nobody measures.

Three months is the right window. Directory traffic arrives gradually from search rather than in a spike, so a two-week verdict will tell you it did not work when it had not started yet. That is also the window in which to decide whether to submit your SaaS to more places or to stop, and it is long enough that the decision is made on numbers.

Where this one fits

outclimbed is a paid directory with public prices: a place starts at $10 and the position each listing holds is openly priced rather than decided by an editor. Position can also be earned by sending people to the board, which is the part meant for founders who cannot outspend anybody. The rules have the mechanism, and about says plainly what a place does not buy. It is not a launch platform and does not pretend to be.

Common questions

Where should I submit my SaaS first? Two free directories specific to your category, to find out whether directory traffic converts at all.

How many is enough? Ten to fifteen that you can describe the audience of.

Does it help SEO? Rarely through links. It helps by making you findable by name and by sending visitors.